FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND THE Cause and Prevention of Disease BY Matthew Jos. ^odermund, M. D. THIS VOLUME POSITIVELY EXPLAINS, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY, THE CAUSES OF YELLOW-FEVER, SMALL-POX, DIPHTHERIA, SCARLET-FEVER-, -•- MEASLES, CONSUMPTION; w The author of this volume was the frst physician {^positively demonstrate that the heart does nft'milttiU rhg'Vm, Wit that the main power which produces the, circulation is received through the lungs, from the air breathed. Chicago: Twentieth Century Publishing Co. J90L COPYRIGHT BY MATTHEW JOS. RODERMUND. IF I COULD BE INSTRUMENTAL IN FREE- ing deceived and suffering humanity from the bondage of fraud, deception, and murder perpetrated upon it by the courteous and gentlemanly medical profession I should feel prouder of it than of any honor that this country could confer upon me. To the informing and benefiting of humanity I respectfully dedicate this volume, ths author. THE PRIZES. In order to positively demonstrate the correctness of the position I take upon the subjects outlined in this volume, I propose to make it of interest to the man who desires to prove that I am wrong, and to do this I make the following offers: Five prizes of one thousand dollars each to be distributed to the win- ners in the following order: One thousand dollars to be given to any person who can demon- strate by nature's laws that vaccination is not wrong. We invite those who have been murdering, poisoning, and deceiving humanity for one hundred years to show one single evidence in harmony with nature and all her known laws to prove that vaccination is not dangerous and even damnable. If they accomplish this they are welcome to the prize. One thousand dollars to be given to any person who can demonstrate by nature's laws that quarantine is not wrong. Now, you who have deceived the world for centuries and call it proof, come down from your pedestal and at least endeavor to be honest for once, and show some evi- dence based upon nature's laws. One thousand dollars to be given to any person who can demonstrate by nature's laws, that any disease is contagious. One thousand dollars to be given to any person who can demonstrate by nature's laws, that germs are the cause of any disease. One thousand dollars to be given to any person who can cure con- sumption of the lungs. In order to shut out those who are always ready to impose on others for mercenary or notoriety's sake, I will add that an additional condition is to be fulfilled, namely, that any one winning any of the prizes shall receive ten dollars a day for the time spent in demonstrating that he was right, but if he loses I am to receive ten dollars a day for the time spent in attempting to prove that I am wrong. The author stands ready to make this arrangement with any one who desires to attempt it. Both parties shall deposit in some reputable bank, to be mutually selected, the necessary amount of money, and each sign and bind him- self to not withdraw any of the money until the proper tribunal that 5 6 THE PRIZES shall be appointed shall have given its decision. All I desire is that the truth be demonstrated. Further, I agree to buy back the books and burn them up if I am beaten. If the principles I have laid down are not in the right direction, then the book becomes worthless, and may even do positive harm. This ought at least to stimulate every reader to not only read it, but to study it, as no chapter is complete in itself, but only a part of the whole book; all the subjects are correlative, just as each part of a machine; yea, just as all parts of nature are correlative. CONTENTS. The True and False Position Regarding Health and Disease. it The Practice of Medicine a Murderous Fad 36 Intellect 78 Positive Proofs That the Blood can Circulate without the Aid of the Heart 87 Air and Sunshine in There are no Contagious Diseases . 139 The Injury of Quarantine 161 The Difference Between Contagion and Infection 182 Are Diseases Curable-Is Hygiene Better than Medicine? 183 Germs are not the Cause of Disease 194 Vaccination the Prince of Frauds. 224 Learning the Laws of Nature 249 The General Causes of Disease 256 How to Prevent Disease 293 Strengthening Organs and Faculties 326 How to Study and Learn the Laws of Health 340 All Functions Manifested only by Organs 355 Rules for Preserving and Regaining Health 357 The General Causes of Consumption 363 The Prevention of Consumption 405 Marriage-Consumption and Sexual Abuses 443 Female Weakness-Its Causes and Prevention 456 Fads-Women's Diseases 460 Sleep-Its Necessity 463 Complexion Indicates Traits of Character 466 Cheerfulness-Its Influence upon Health 471 Animal Warmth, Skin Action, Sleep and Breathing 475 Functions, Structure of Nerves 482 Free Will 490 Ought Disease to be Treated? 492 Appendicitis Fad 494 The Antitoxin Fad 499 Improving Ourselves our Greatest Duty 506 The Doctor's Reputation Maker 511 Truth Will Out 515 Over- Fating and Excess of Carbon a Prolific Cause of Disease . 517 Schools 522 Evolution of Special Creation 529 Longevity a Feature of Temperate Climates 531 Worry 532 The Mind or Will Power over Health and Disease 535 Reason 542 7 8 CONTENTS Hypnotism 545 The Skin 546 Patent Medicines-Their Benefits and Injury-What they are made of, 548 La Grippe 552 Catarrh-Its Causes and Cure 556 The Exercise Cure 558 Should We Work or Not Work 563 Colds as the Cause of Disease 576 Let the Girls Romp 581 Fevers are Friends. 583 Constipation-Its Causes and Prevention 585 Yellow Fever 587 From Another Point of View 591 Scurvy 592 Typhoid Fever-Its Causes 594 Dyspepsia-Its Cure 596 Whooping Cough 59g Eye Defect and other Disturbances as a Cause for Chorea, Headaches, etc 602 Ingrowing Toe Nails 614 Should Consumptives Marry ? 615 The Cure of Nervousness 628 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals 631 Short Notes 633 PREFACE. A preface is generally written as an apology for the book in which it appears. In writing this one I have no apology to make. I do not think that any reader will dispute that its object is a most worthy one, and hope to succeed in arousing in the minds of those who read the book the idea, as nearly as possible, akin to those I had in mind when writing it. A second volume is planned, which is intended to explain more in detail some of the subjects discussed herein and to fully set forth some subjects that have been omitted in this volume. This volume is the outgrowth of a paper read before one of our State Medical Conventions several years ago, combined with the observations, experience and practical experiments in natural phenomena during all my years of practice. I love all that is noble and right in the medical profession, but I oppose all its murderous methods and fads. These methods and fads are ruining the constitutions of the present generation and must have a similar and even more serious effect on those yet to be born. My views have met with almost universal opposition from medical men, although some members of the profession are in accord with some of them, especially those concerning vaccination and the germ theory as a prevention and cause of disease. In my positive position that there is no such thing as disease being contagious and that quar- antine is murderous, I stand, so far as I know, alone, except that there are many among the laity who at least believe there is nothing of value in present theories and practices. Personally I have no ambition in this matter, except that I have a strong desire and deter- mination to bring out the truth and present to the public the mean- ing of certain actions, expressions and phenomena of Nature's laws, for those laws are the only ones we can recognize in studying the cause and the prevention of disease. To put these truths before the people in a plain and comprehensive manner and to release them 9 10 PREFACE from the bondage, deception, fraud and murder that is now forced upon a suffering humanity by a dishonest and most courteous pro- fession, is the only desire of the author. If any error of statement has crept into its pages the writer will be glad to have it pointed out, and he earnestly requests any one who may read the book to write him regarding any point or question, as it may assist in making the second volume, combined with the first, a text book of health that will faithfully serve all future generations and leave no doubts upon the question of the -cause and prevention of disease. The author wishes to here acknowledge his gratitude and express his high appreciation for the valuable assistance of Miss Anna Hanra- han, Dr. W. A. Ladwig, and Mr. Arthur Rodermund, given during the six months of experimenting in demonstrating that the main power in causing the circulation of the blood was received through the lungs from the air breathed, and also to express my appreciaton of the serv- ices of Mr. H. W. Rathbun in reading and correcting the proofs of this volume. M. J. Rodermund, M. D. Appleton, Wisconsin, November, 1900. THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION REGARDING HEALTH AND DISEASE. To the thoughtful mind no spectacle can be presented in this world that is so solemn, so mournful, as the unnecessary suffering and disease among humanity; then no spectacle can be more cheering, more val- uable and a greater blessing, than knowledge of the cause, its conse- quences and the prevention of disease. Is there anything we more crave, desire or long for, than good health? Is there anything, in spite of the advanced knowledge in other branches of science, that we are more ignorant of? The proof of this is that nearly everyone has a health creed of his own, while the fact is that the cause of disease, as well as the laws of health, is and has been and always will be governed by one and the same law. True, we have gradually outgrown the gods and ghosts of the past and now laugh at the old oracle tricks played upon the people; yet, we still remain as superstitious as were our ancestors of thousands of years ago. We have only changed the form. The people of earlier days trembled before the priests of the oracles, who them- selves were nothing more nor less than a superstitious body, but through faith and reverence they believed the falsehoods and tales, of communication of this board of trade of gods and ghosts. We of to-day believe a set of oracles divided into sects or so-called medical schools; namely, Regulars, Homeopaths, Eclectics, Hydro- paths, Osteopaths, Electropaths, Christian Scientists, etc., each calling the other quacks. In the last sentence all are telling the truth, because the very fact of the existence of all those various sects is admission that medicine is not a science, henpe they must admit that all now practicing medicine are quacks, meaning by the word quack, experi- menter with or pretender to knowledge they do not possess. Of course, some of them are very learned quacks, while others are unlearned 11 12 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE quacks, illustrating the humorism of Josh Billings, who said, "What is the use of knowing so much if what you know is not so." They plainly belong to the class that Mark Twain referred to, those who make the accumulation of ignorance the business of their lives. Experience and observation have convinced me that as a rule the very reputable and learned quack is more dangerous to the lives of the patients than the less learned; these so-called very learned quacks often take more risks, are more reckless in the administering of poisons, while besides they are in a ring that protects each other against the legal consequences of their blunders. I boldly affirm the truthfulness of these statements and I am willing to be tried and tested in any honorable way to demonstrate my posi- tion. The facts are that no one pretends, whose pretentions are worthy of decent respect, that medicine is a science or approaches any of the principles of a science. It is absolutely devoid of every element that enters into science, and this is admitted privately by the most gifted and broad minded men of the medical profession. If this is true, that the practice of medicine is nothing more than a jungle of fanciful assumption, based upon what may be termed scientific absurdity, and if the public have for centuries been inveigled into believing and put- ting their trust into this scholarly untruthfulness clothed with gentle- ness and broadcloth, is it not high time that some one has the courage to plainly and positively put before the people a means by which they can unlock themselves from these chains of bondage in which they are held so tightly but innocently by their honest belief and trust in what they have been taught for generations and centuries, so that it really has become a second nature to them to believe that the doctor is the greatest benefactor in their community ? I declare that the prevailing mode of practice, and my convictions are founded on long experience and observation, is productive of vastly more evil than good, and if it were absolutely abolished mankind would be infinitely better off; that if there was not a single physician, drug- gist or drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness than now exists, yes, a hundred fold less. Thousands are annually slaugh- tered in the quiet sick-room by the attending physician, and then it is usually attributed to divine Providence. Yes, the good Lord has to THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 13 shoulder the blame for most of our mistakes. Have we stated a funda- mental truth; have we stated what can be heard in most any com- munity every week in the year? If this is true, and no one who has paid any attention or observation to this subject will gainsay it, "then what is the remedy?" Knowledge-nothing else will do; then what is this knowledge? Simply to learn the causes and the preventions of disease. In other words, the laws that govern health and disease. These laws are what is commonly termed the natural laws or Nature's laws. These laws are the laws created by God Himself and are un- changeable as the Creator Himself. If, dear reader, you will agree with me upon this one point we will have clear sailing, not only that but easy sailing over what on the sur- face appears a hard and stormy sea. Then when these laws are once understood they are understood for all future time and can be handed down from generation to generation, each succeeding generation be- ing stronger, healthier and living longer by the obedience of them. If we had a perfect knowledge of these laws governing health, at the same time knowing the cause of disease so that we could prac- tically apply this knowledge, disease would be almost impossible. The gravity and necessity of the spreading of this knowledge seems to me one of the grandest services one can bestow upon mankind. The study of the cause of disease is claimed to be strictly a part of Physiology and it is also claimed that it can be carried out only by a practical physi- cian. I claim that there is nothing in this world that a person devotes any of his time to, but what is harder for him to learn or understand, than it would be for this person to understand the sim- plicity of the causes of disease and their prevention, and thereby retain perfect health, death being the result of old age only. The under- standing of these laws would also signify a perfect culture of the mind as well as of the body, in that it would be impossible to disconnect the two. The body is affected by either mind or moral actions, so also is the mind profoundly influenced by bodily actions and conditions. (i) In order to present a perfect system of education to develop these laws among the laity we must put it to them in the simplest man- ner; how to train the body, to regulate its functions, to train the intellect and the moral faculties in a perfect, balanced order. Can 14 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE there be such a system or art possible? I think there can and will be; its simplicity will surprise the most unbelieving, and we will show plainly that it is not one of those dreams which breathe a blind hope into us, to be born only of our longings and destined to die of our experience. It is indeed appalling when we look around us and con- sider the conditions of the world, the abundance of life, its appalling suffering and misery, and the apparent indifference with which they are trampled under foot through apparent indifference and perversion, and especially to note the condition of the human race and consider what it is and then what it so easily might be; consider its terrible suffering and again consider its capacity for happiness and glowing health and the thousands of diseases and painful, unnecessary deaths. He must indeed be gifted with powerful endurance or undying faith who can believe that part of this disorder, suffering, disease and death, as well as health, is not governed by absolute law. Knowledge will soon tell us in no undoubtful terms that the fate of each individual is in his own hands; and it can be positively shown that we can, with a very small effort and a little knowledge of our own about nature, liter- ally choose between health and disease. It is sometimes true that the sins of our fathers may be visited upon us, but the most of it is due to our lack of knowledge, or rather our knowing of too much false knowl- edge, and thereby developing wrong customs and teachings. To drop this chain of social customs may gall us, but mankind is not destined, and can easily choose between health and disease. In unfolding this scheme before the people of the world we hope that their choice will be for the better and thereby almost change the face of the world. To my mind the human race of to-day has the overweening idea of the importance of health. How to attain it and how to preserve it have been the subjects of enough theories to fill a train load of volumes. The strongest reason for this is that no educational institution upon the face of the earth has taught the public clearly and understandingly concerning nature's laws nor how simple a thing it is to know what causes disease and how simple the means to prevent it. Nor have there been books written, to place before the public, which contain full and practical information. While a few in a piecemeal way have spread and boomed theories, no matter how conflicting, which the public accept THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 15 only soon to be discarded and accept the absurdity of the next. It is in this way that even the intelligent, as well as the thoughtless and the frivolous, have been duped, while many others have some health creed of their own, and there certainly can not be any greater bigots or fanatics in the propagating of religious tenets than there exists in the imposition of the so-called "health notions" so long as no uniformity exists, and their opinions are as varied and numerous as there are enthusiasts. While it is a fact that the laws that produce disease to-day are the same that they were thousands of years ago, and will be the same for all time to come, the same cause always produces the same effect in every one. Nature's laws never vary one hair's breadth; to obey them means health, long life and death of old age. To disobey them means misery, suffering, unhappiness and premature death. To prevent the latter a knowledge of the very simple laws must be made the prime and main study of every child in the land. Our present imperfect knowledge, or rather our wrong knowledge, which in a large majority actually produces disease and suffering, is the result of each individual's training and reading, largely made up from tradition, hearsay, or what this, that or the other doctor has rightly or falsely inculcated; or the theories which have been taken from newspapers and periodicals that are usually adapted to cater to the whims and notions or desires of different communities, giving long accounts of how to prevent the one and treat the other; combined with these fads, fancies and fashions in regard to health, we have also our own superstitions; these,will vary with the community, the family, the individual; and probably there is no one but who could enumerate a variety of them. You may bundle up, or you do not bundle up in going out, accord- ing to your training. You will wear all wool or all cotton or silk under-garments, according to the way your mind has been acted upon; you are afraid of night air, therefore will not ventilate your bed-rooms. Again, according as you are trained you eat certain things and at cer- tain times, according to certain notions that you have inherited or acquired; one will be afraid that eggs will make them bilious, another that tomatoes will give them cancer, or that too much meat will clog the system; that butter will cause them to have pimples, and so on 16 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE through the whole list of eatables and drinkables. You have your notion about bathing, about walking, about exercise, about traveling, about riding, about bicycling; in fact, every act of your life is bound up with some health superstition that holds you in bondage and warps your physical well-being and your life, rather than from any real knowledge or every-day experience of these laws of nature. With this knowledge would it not be a fact that we would all agree as much as we now agree that twice two are four ? These false and conflicting notions of health are too apt to foster a habit of continually thinking of yourself and in regard to your health. Thus the mind gradually acquires the notion that you must be contin- ually watching yourself. This is very injurious to the mind as well as to the body. It is one of the clearest among logical conclusions that only sub- stances, in other words, substantial forces, can produce effects of any kind. Mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It guides the sculpture's chisel, the painter's pencil; it tunnels moun- tains, directs ocean steamers, counts the stars and describes the sea, lakes and canals upon the planet Mars, but all this is through the effect of some other natural force. From studying medical books and reading the advertising virtues of the thousands of nostrums, pills and powders, one would be inclined to think that the drug store was the only gateway to health; and from the amount that millions of our people are funneling down their throats, that they even think it is the road to immortality. Not seeking to give offense (unless the truth offends), I boldly affirm that drugs themselves never cured a disease. Presented in their best light there may be exceptional cases in which they help in the same manner and by the same physical law and the same process as a food when entering the stomach. Unskillfully administered they do much harm and have killed millions; even many of the medical profession admit this much. I treat scores of patients every year who at my first visit plainly manifest that they are simply drug sick, and yet this is what is called drugs scientifically and specifically administered; but a little medicine of the proper kind and given at the proper time will give assistance to the functions of the body and thus give an impetus for THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 17 restoring healthy conditions, but after all Nature is the only prince of physicians. It is scarcely necessary then to say that ointments and greasy salves are better adapted for boots than bodies. The surgeon's bandage applied to a broken limb only keeps the parts in place, while the over- ruling functions and forces of the system unite and heal the limb. I doubt if there is ten per cent of all ailing and suffering humanity .who have any idea of the powerful influence of this force called will power upon health or disease. This will power, by increasing the breathing capacity, stimulates nerve action and so charges the brain, which is the great living battery of the human body. The gray and white matter of the brain corresponds somewhat to the zinc and copper in an ordinary battery. The brain is then a living vitalizing battery, sending its telegraphic communications, its psychic impressions and its electric and magnetic currents over the nerves, directed by its constant brain action, to all parts of the body, and the will is an attribute of the human mind. A great author and journalist was attacked with typhoid fever from overwork; the case was a severe one and one of long duration; finally from what the doctors called nerve exhaustion and anaemia he lay at death's door. A consultation of physicians gave him up; the family physician, at the request of friends, informed him that medical skill had been exhausted and that he must die. "What!" he exclaimed; "die! and leave my wife and children to the mercy of a world's cold charity! By the Gods, I will not die," and he did not die. From that very moment he began to rally and in a few months was restored to health. Very fortunate that medical skill had been exhausted before life was extinct, for the restoration principle was in the man himself! he doubtless demonstrated that drugs or physical remedies can receive no honor of curing him, but medicines likely were the true cause of his disease becoming so serious and critical. When public opinion and sentiment once arouses itself to the occasion, yea, the necessity of education, at least up to a degree which would enable the public to judge between right and wrong treatment of disease, which is not as difficult as is supposed, then we can look for every honest endeavor to alleviate human suffering which should add comfort to the days and length to the period of human life; then a respectful hearing will be 18 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE accorded physicians and their work will be judged on its absolute mer- its. But so far they have failed in their unremitting search for the key to the true nature of disease and for remedies which will do no violence to natural functions, but have generally substituted one con- dition for another, and assuming that because it is a change it is a cure. This imminent and inexpressible conflict in the medical field lies between nature as opposed to our present methods of giving and applying medicines. Growth and development is but the impress as enstamped upon the human and divine; even the mountain peaks that lift their giant heads far above the lowly valley, rooted and grounded deep in the earth and built of living rock, conform to this law. But this idea of advance- ment cannot, it seems, be indulged in medicine but what it must be faced by the most bitter opposition, while some mysterious, incompre- hensible and assumptuous fad is always a winner, because most people, even at the expense of health, and even sometimes death, are bound to satisfy their credulity and imagination. What may be termed the "practice of medicine" in ancient times began among the Egyptian priests, who trusted to a few external remedies and relied mainly on incantations and ceremonies to affect the imagination. Hippocrates first gathered the fragments into a book and Aesculapius first gave medicine an exclusive study. Three hun- dred years before Christ, Ptolemy founded a medical school in Alex- andria. It was here that the first dissections were made and the action of the heart and variations of the pulse were first studied. But the medical profession, like the moral universe, had always had its God and its devil, even to this day, and these are constantly at war with each other. Ever since the snake thawed out in the medical Eden there has been two principles at work. The god of medicine designed that the practice of the healing art should be gradual and progressive, but the devil had his schemes of,antagonisms. At an early day it was moved that the temple be closed and medicine be declared a finished science, that progress be made impossible and that none be allowed to add to or take from. This motion was carried by a large majority and old theories were stereotyped; bulwarks of defense were set up and the old iron bedstead of Procrustus was invented for the THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 19 purpose of measuring every man. If he was too short, he was stretched up to the measure; and if found too long, his legs were cut off. Sometimes they turned him head to and off went his head, thus depriving him of reason, liberty and life. Now this is no imaginary picture, as history will show. There was a theory that the arteries of the human body were simply filled with air, but Harvey declared, about the year 1626, that he could demonstrate the fact that the blood circu- lated through the arteries. He was laughed at, derided, deprived of regular practice, expelled from his society and finally driven from his home; he was also called a crack-brained fellow. To any of us to-day it would seem impossible to think that the rank and file of the medical profession would oppose and prosecute a doctrine and physiological fact, such as the circulation of the blood, that was so easily to be demonstrated. But the opposition to true med- ical progress is no less at the present day, as I myself just now am receiving a similar maligning as Harvey did three hundred years ago. He (Harvey) demonstrated that the blood circulated in the arteries, but the theory has always been held that the heart pumped the blood throughout the system, and this theory I have overthrown by actual demonstration upon the living subject and proved it as plainly as Har- vey demonstrated that the blood does circulate. That the power that propels the blood is received through the lungs from the air breathed, that is, that the oxygen in the air is taken up by the blood and thereby charges the blood cells giving it the power within itself to travel after it leaves the heart I have demonstrated most conclusively. Any one, by putting a little thought to the subject, can readily see that a half- pound heart could not possibly send fifteen to twenty pounds of blood through the millions of blood vessels every twenty seconds during a lifetime, under all the various and trying conditions, obstructions, ex- citements and emotions. It is by no means a pleasant task to withstand the abuse and opposi- tion which every one who attempts to move forward in the work of medical progress must meet, especially when this progress favors the increased health of the public, and hence must be to the detriment of the doctor's pocket-book. While we to-day live in a period of intellectual life and freedom 20 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE in thinking for ourselves, there still remain many vestiges of oppres- sion regarding the public health that are fearful to contemplate. In the sixteenth century Galileo challenged public sentiment by declaring that the globe on which we live moves. This doctrine was in direct contradiction to what was then known as "good common sense." Phys- ical science threw down her wand at the Italian philosopher, but it is not pleasing to contemplate the fearful combat. Galileo was confined in a dungeon, compelled to kneel before his inquisitor and sign a re- cantation, but still he whispered through the key-hole that "the world does, move." The human mind needs the incessant stimulus of new ideas to raise it above the ordinary level of animal enjoyment. We are just now in the midst of the greatest Olerian strides. Old dogmas are being over- hauled and unsound principles are being tried. Individual success is based upon the "survival of the fittest." Education is of the greatest importance, as premiums are offered for ignorance and falsehood. There was a time when men might be dubbed doctors who had not the rudiments of a common education. The greater the ignorance the greater the power of healing. Vestiges of these foolish notions, com- bined with false theories in regard to the curing of disease, are now more dangerous to the life of the patient than in ancient times. Health, indeed, is the greatest of all blessings; it is the essential of every form of usefulness. Even a preacher that is bilious is not worth hearing. Health is the rich man's friend and the poor man's only capital. Strike it from the list of regal prerogatives and the imperial diadem is fallen. Without health riches cannot give ease. Can fame arrest the tortures of pain? Can flattery soothe the stings of sickness? Can power neutralize the pangs of death? No! One motion of that magic wand can send a thousand pangs of sorrow and death, but its diadems cannot lull the aching head or cool the fevered brow. Again, in many cases the employer of labor finds that by proper sanitary care of his men he reaps at once an advantage in better and more zealous work; in fewer interruptions from ill-health, etc., so that his apparent outlay is more than compensated. It has been proven over and over again that nothing is so costly THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 21 in all ways as disease, and that nothing is so remunerative as the out- lay which improves health and in doing so improves the amount and value of the work done. Modern education is too empirical. What is now called education is a misnomer because wholly devoid of the right educational basis. Without the study of the natural laws and their relation to each other, education will have no correct first principles to guide it To educate is to bring out the primal faculties of the human mind. Education creates no powers; it only gives action to those already created. To give this action it must adapt itself to a correct analysis which must grow out of right fundamental principles; this is precisely what mod- ern education lacks, and must remain so until a correct analysis of the different physical powers and their relation to each other is obtained, and then adapt itself to them so that both can be brought into har- monious action, each being an assistant and thereby beneficial to each other. For parents to have a right educational method is immeasurably important; they spend millions of money every year, and often with great anxieties, because they have no guiding principle, often even killing their darlings by a well-meant but ill-directed education, and actually making them worse; forcing them in the very ditch of disease while in their well-meaning attempt to make them better. All par- ents need some text book to teach them how to eradicate the deep- rooted and false theories handed down from past ages and to know how to develop their physical and mental virtues and to suppress their tendency to physical and moral evils, and thus make them the best possible. I believe that self-education, as well as general education, in order to attain the physical and moral perfection of perfect health, will become an all-absorbing topic and human interest will become centered upon that as it now is upon fashion and money making. Neither work- men, tradesmen nor the fashionables will retain what they now regard as the laws of health, the causes of disease or the modes of prevention, which have been acquired by false training and education. The present movement of workingmen for eight hours of work in order to give them some leisure will finally stimulate them to mental 22 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE culture. Merchants instead of spending all their time and energies in rolling up wealth to make themselves and family safe against want will devote a little time each day to keep themselves in health. The fashionables will then stop wasting their life-force on dress, novel reading, giggling and sniffling about their last love story, and will educate their minds and will consider it more fashionable to have nature give«beauty and expression to body and face instead of by artificial con- tortion and daubings to make a patent complexion. This intellectual and physical culture must be based upon absolute laws of cause and effect, and will promote perfect physical and mental health, which assures long life and a death by nature's process. This will become the pursuit of mankind in the future, because human un- derstanding ranks and controls all else human. To inspire more of the public to spend more of their precious time, money and life-force in their personal education, and to show them how they can thus educate themselves, and to unfold nature's true laws and principles and really go to the bottom of this whole subject, is my pur- pose, and those who will follow it will find their minds and body improved every year. Human institutions have grown up, like "Topsy," without father, mother or teacher, and this old fogy element (errors included) that has been perpetuated from time immemorial, that disease was not our own fault, must now be laid out on the square. We must truly represent the nature of disease and show what is wrong and why, and so correct it in accordance with correct principles, for life is its science and is per- fect in its details, for the infinite Creator, He that is, is under the domain of his natural laws. What is right and what is wrong? And why is right right, and wrong wrong ? And what rewards and penalties are attached to each ? Is there not a duty we owe to our fellow-men? These questions and a thousand like them are among the most important which can ever occupy human attention, because they hit strongly certain consequences, far-reaching and more powerful, upon human weal and woe than upon all other issues whatever. These problems as to health, the causes and prevention of disease, concern us all more than current prices, the rise and fall of stock; so THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 23 much more so that it becomes us to ascertain on what principles they are based; what royalty is paid on them, and what tariff rates are established between health and disease. It should concern us to seri- ously study out their laws and consequences, for the importance of the ultimate consequences are so great that we cannot afford to mislead or be misled or mistaken. We want no trump or uncertain sound; we require absolutely certain knowledge by which we can both live to the fullest extent that nature grants us and die nature's death. We want answers to these momentous questions that will satisfy the true man of science as well as the whole world; we want the naked truth. Yet as it is to-day all is uncertainty throughout this whole field of medical dogmatism. This uncertainty, and we say corruptness, keeps people rushing to and fro even to madness, crying, What shall I do, and What can I do? Is it possible then that man is doomed to this uncertainty? By no means, because there exists a natural and moral law of funda- mental principles by which all can be made a certainty. Then we will not, like all our predecessors, grope in the dark ourselves and mislead all to follow us. But where can we find answers to these great prob- lems; what department of nature will be likely to furnish and dem- onstrate a solution of these questions? By the understanding and obeying nature's laws, not pertaining to man alone but to the whole universe, for man is the highest and noblest creation of this entire uni- verse. His body and constitution are expressly adapted to every single law and fact of the physical universe. We find that the laws of gravity, light, heat, electricity, mechanics, etc., govern man's physical organization in common with universal nature. He is specifically adapted to each and each to him, just as each bone, muscle or any part of the body of every animal, fowl or fish is expressly fitted to all its other parts, so that when any one part is adapted to walk, swim or fly, all co-relative parts are exactly adapted to that same end, showing that nature is one great whole and not piece- meal. Each and all her parts are expressly adapted to all other parts, as air, earth, water, etc., are specifically adapted both to each other and each to man. So is every single thing in nature dovetailed in with every other; everything in man finds its counterpart in nature and everything in nature has its counterpart in man, and therefore his 24 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE bodily and mental constitution must of necessity be in as perfect rapport with universal truth as his physical is with nature. Man is created then to agree with all that is; those can have no sense who do not see and admit these fundamental principles, for they will stand the test of ages; in fact, all time to come. All science and truth must be founded on and grow out of it, and some day men will build on no other. This volume will be the first to attempt such a philosophical architecture. Since man, then, is the principal and grand summary of the uni- verse and the human mind or soul the ultimate end of all things and adapted to everything else in nature, then there must be a God and man must be immortal and the mind of man adapted to both, and if thus adapted they of course must exist. Then it must be clear to every one that the teaching and understanding of these truths are infinitely obligatory on all because it thus becomes a fundamental part of our very being. This will demonstrate that all other teachings are strongly tinctured with the errors and prejudices of their authors, so much so as to be unreliable. Where can we find, then, any reliable exponent as to what is the real cause of so many and varied diseases and the method for their prevention, for at present at least we are nearly in total darkness. Realizing this, would it not be far more profitable for the masses of the people, if they could be instructed how to so live as to avoid disease and how to perpetuate the race without the attend- ant ills that afflict humanity? Such it should be, and this is the object, and our conscientious desire, to teach and stimulate organization for the spreading of this knowledge. They should teach man the anatomy and physiology of his being; how to replace the worn-out tissues of his system with exactitude and the simplicity that nature demands, and how to so surround and fortify himself as to become one and all the embodiments of health. In short, they will teach man to know of him- self all that the world then knows. It is not through the knowledge of the few that the race advances, but by the general progression of every individual. The physical perfection of the race can only be approximated until such time as the knowledge of the people regarding health becomes universally diffused among all classes and conditions and applied by them. The science of THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 25 health must be taught in the classes of all schools, public and private, to young and old and rich and poor alike. The observation of nature's laws must be rigidly taught and en- forced without partiality by the civil authorities, the importance of which the people should be educated to understand. The doctor then will not be known as the alleviator of pain, but as the professor of health in some educational institution or as an official of the govern- ment in the sanitary department. When that time arrives the great fact will be recognized that a man's mental condition and moral life largely influence his health, and that of those with whom he comes in contact; this is true to such an extent that all classes of criminals and those who exhibit a state of moral obliquity or mental weakness, as well as the physically unsound, will not be permitted to mingle in the presence of social and moral influences, or, perhaps, even to reproduce their kind as they now do, to the detriment of the community in which they live and the future generations that succeed them. Then will the people be reared on nature's principles and laws, the only object in view being the greatest good to all, and we will live for the good that we may do rather than for the sensuous enjoyments of a gross physical life attended by its ever-ensuing penalties. To the realization of these ends many things are essential, but one of the most important of all is the necessity of learning how to maintain an equality between the forces within our bodies and those outside of the body throughout the span of life. In order to do this we must be able to calculate the amount of substance of every kind in our organism that is used or consumed by any and all of the various acts, mental and physical, that may be compatible with a healthy state of life; to estimate the necessary quantity of all the material found in external nature needed to replace the said waste without any surplus which would cause extra work on the system in expelling it, thereby lowering the vital force in the performance of unnecessary and unremunerated labor, and in time producing disease. We must learn that the continuance of mental balance is as neces- sary a factor to our physical health as the maintenance of the physical standard, for the nervous disturbances caused by an excited and there- fore unbalanced mind are a frequent factor in the cause of disease. 26 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Our moral life is of the utmost importance. Our young men must learn that nothing on earth is productive of greater disaster to their physical health, their intellectual growth, or their ethical stability, than the unchecked, sensuous and beastly life of dissipation and self- indulgence pursued at the present time by many who have the means and opportunity, and desired by the majority who have not. Any person who attempts to justify such conduct on the part of those who are beginning to form habits that will last them throughout life exhibits a degree of mental aberration that makes them an enemy to our civil- ization. The life of sensation in which such a large majority of men and women of all classes of society live and appear to enjoy, utterly oblivious of any higher object of existence (evidence of which sur- round us on every side), left to their own destruction and without the knowledge of the result, bringing them to premature graves, leaving naught of value behind them that may be of lasting benefit to their posterity, is telling against our moral progress. In view of the preceding considerations, ministers and teachers should be the first to announce the emancipation of humanity from the thraldom of disease and to hail with delight the dawn of a day when it may be truly said that health begins its reign on earth. Friends, let us for a while step out of our well-worn ruts and venture into the regions of the dark unknown; let us investigate the laws and chemical operations governing the supply and demand of the human organism; let us lend a helping hand that will aid in universally assisting man to that state of physical perfection, of moral stamina and mental equilib- rium whereby he may learn to know himself, to conquer himself, and finally to control himself. In the age when this may be accomplished the possibilities of life or the achievements of man transcend our capacity for conception, and in the scale of advancement will as far exceed our boasted civilization of the glorious nineteenth century as the wonders of today surpass in utility, magnitude, and grandeur the works of our primeval ancestors. Knowing and understanding these natural laws in youth is the first step toward their obedience. True, our various instincts prompt and aid us in this obedience, yet besides this we require the guidance and assistance of the knowledge of these laws. THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 27 A law of mind causes intellect intuitively to take the helm of action and guide them at its will, although instincts sometimes mislead because perverted by previous wrong habits, wrong teaching, and the force of surrounding circumstances. Wild animals very rarely take disease, because there is no falsely trained intellect to pervert their instincts endowed them by nature, while tame animals are sometimes huddled together or given improper food or shelter, by and from excreta or otherwise forming material followed by decomposition, which is eaten, inhaled or drunk, and developing disease. This universal fact alone ought beyond all question to be sufficient to show that all instincts are constituted to work in harmony with these natural laws and impel and guide us in their observance, besides being infallible, so that all should be careful to nurture and not to pervert them, yet we violate them so continually from the cradle onward that we need intellect and education to bring us back to them. God publishes these laws throughout all his domain, thereby vir- tually commanding all his creatures to learn them. They are not occult or hidden in labyrinthian mazes, ready to spring on us by stealth, but are like a city set upon a hill-discernable far and near. No mist, no uncertainty beclouds any of them; they are open, palpable and lighted up by the full blaze of both philosophy and perpetual experience. Those who cannot discern them clearly and fully as in the noonday sun are either stupid or blind. Such cognizance is even thrust con- tinually upon us. Ignorance is no excuse; none has any right to be ignorant. God himself is their preceptor. All are sacredly bound to heed these lessons of experience He is constantly inculcating. To expound these natural laws and enforce their obedience should there- fore be the one distinctive drift and end of all education, domestic, common, and classical, especially the latter, because people are later in life governed mostly by their early training and habits instead of reason; therefore it is a hard matter to change their present false ideas in regard to the laws governing their health, any more than you can change their religion or politics, even among the profession. Man, know thyself, is the motto for the race. The science of man, considered in his entire nature, especially the causes and prevention of disease, far surpass all other studies and eclipse all else upon the earth. 28 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE In practical value and inherent interest it has no equal, because all human interests converge in this their focal center; and of all things in this world, this science constitutes the embodied summary of all science. To study the laws conducive to health is to study all things, besides being our only way to learn how to.live aright. Health is a most desirable endowment. Indeed, it is the greatest blessing we have, when we do have it, and when not possessed it is sought for by all diligently, though mostly, as I will show throughout this whole work most positively and absolutely, it is generally looked for in such directions and by such methods as must necessarily fail' to be successful. Well directed and persistent effort does not admit of failure, but what is the usual result? In our ignorance we grope in the dark, sometimes without a star of hope to light our weary way; and so we go forward struggling and stumbling, making many a misstep that proves well nigh fatal, until we are ready to exclaim with the poet, "Oh, half mankind are murderers of themselves or souls." Yea. what is life but lingering suicide. Health is man's highest good-disease his greatest curse. In sick- ness what can we accomplish or enjoy? Yet what palsy and agony do we suffer! Those who pray, work or study should study to pre- serve health. This should be the first distinctive end of all education- domestic, common, and classical; of all workmen, money-makers, schol- ars, Christians, philanthropists, and, in other words, of all men in all conditions of life. All scientific explanations of life must begin where this work begins, with the ways and means of obtaining and maintaining perfect health, including man's organic relations generally, because physical vigor is to all his powers and functions what motive power is to machinery, so that impairing or improving it impedes or promotes every single end and pleasure of life. Science, therefore, certainly governs health equally with all other material things, so that all who fulfill its laws will enjoy health in proportion, and are thereby guaranteed perfect health down to a green old age, while breaking them impairs it. This work unfolds these laws, hence those who follow its directions will keep what con- stitutional vigor they possess and continually increase it. Keeping THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 29 well, which I think the great art of life, is here expounded, not because I have any pet theory to exploit, anything sensational to defend, any- thing to uphold that is inconsistent with the strictest laws of the uni- verse ; but because my purpose and aim in writing has been, we repeat it, to remove misconception, to dispel confusion, to* explain difficulties, to expose error, to eliminate false interpretations, to allay doubt, to quiet conscience, and to benefit mankind in the future. Universal nature is thus governed even down to every mote of matter throughout all its changes and alterations forever. Heretofore man has been studied only by piecemeal; the medical colleges study his anatomy and physiology; the metaphysician, phsycologically; the*theologian, solely ethically. This existing mode of studying man deserves the most severe rebuke, while the method it is proposed here to present is in a united chain, each link being welded together by nature's unchangeable laws, should merit public attention. All past and present of this piecemeal attempt has entirely failed to give the public any certainty, or even a fair idea, regarding the causes and the prevention of disease. In fact, we will show you to an abso- lute certainty, each under its separate chapter, that many of the doc- trines and theories spread and even taught, actually increase and often doubles and trebles the cause and spread of disease. It has been pre- sented to the public the same as if a fly in a little corner of this great temple of life and universe were discussing its narrow corner among all of the thousands and millions of the apartments which this magnifi- cent structure of humanity and world is composed of, attempting to present its outlines as one great totality. A Unitarian aspect of man and all nature alone deserves much study; all fragments are nearly useless. Completeness is an ordinance of nature with reference to all her laws, and should be of all her investigations; all isolated views pre- sented independently of co-working parts are of little practical account, because all parts of nature are interwoven and co-operate with all in manifesting life. Mind can be studied only through its organs, as man is composed of both mind and body, each acting only in and by means of the other. Beyond all question, organism is nature's sole medium for both exer- cising the mind and manifesting that action, and its organic relations 30 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE constitute the controlling conditions of its action as well as the only- means of life. The physical man is the natural starting point of this undertaking? The exposition of life should then begin where life begins, with its material organs, with the science of physical life. Life con- sists in a great variety of faculties, functions and organs, all inter- woven together, and each, as in a complicated machine, dependent upon all the others; therefore studying its separate departments would only furnish but partial and so often foolish and erroneous views of it as a whole. It is this piecemeal study that has created so many and varied ideas and opinions as to what produces disease and how to treat disease. It is this piecemeal study that has created so many schools of medicine- as the Allopathic, Homeopathic and Eclectic schools. Then we have the Faith cure, Christian science cure, water cure, electric cure, and what not, each claiming they are right and the others wrong; each having a pet theory to'exploit to show why they are right. To illustrate their position more plainly we will suppose you have a machine composed of ten thousand pieces; give one'thousand of these pieces to a man with some knowledge of machinery and have him figure out what the original machine is; with his knowledge of machinery he begins to theorize and thus forms in his mind what he thinks was the original machine; he shows by theory how it w'orks, and prides him- self on his skill and knowledge. Give those same thousand pieces to another and still another, and each with his peculiar theory works out altogether a different machine. So I say, it is this piecemeal study that really makes physicians, except in minor points, disagree and causes so many conflicting opinions, because of their piecemeal knowl- edge. Then to obtain anything like a complete knowledge of man it becomes indispensable that he be studied in its collective capacity; he must not be known by sections, but as a unit. This reminds me of an incident that occurred to me while attending college. As a student I opened my mouth seemingly too wide in stating that the two main studies necessary to make a thorough physi- cian were not taught in any college in the world, and that these were a study of natural laws and human nature and their relation to each other, when I was quietly told that I was there to attend college and not to run it. THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 31 If it is a fact that no educational institution in existence today, not even among medical colleges, teaches these natural laws and their rela- tion to each other, is it any wonder that medical men among themselves, as well as the public, hold so many conflicting opinions from this piece- meal knowledge ? Each draws his own conclusion in accordance with that portion and amount he has studied, combined with the reason and common sense the individual can apply. There is no need of being sick. It is even a positive disgrace, to say nothing of its self-denial, expense, pain, and so on, and this work teaches all how to avoid it. Restoring invalids is very important, but difficult, yet always pos- sible wherever the organism has not been fundamentally impaired, for nature's recuperative powers are indeed most marvelous when treat- ment becomes necessary and properly understood and directed, which up to the present day is so seldom done. All should be trained and educated in early life to become acquainted with the right way of managing the sick beforehand, while every mother should become her own family physician-that is, to be a physician whose purpose is to preserve health, and whose chief skill should center in keeping herself and darlings well, on the principle that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; but when this has been neglected and treatment becomes necessary, it should begin with the first symptoms of disease, before the patient takes to bed, and long before a doctor is thought at all to be necessary. The chief object of every person in all kinds of general conditions should be to keep them- selves well. Medicines, however, do not constitute the chief element in curing disease, and when given on any other principle than as food and drink, they are absolutely injurious. Remember this one sen- tence. It contains food for thought. Thousands of people, yes, millions, are actually injured and scientifically murdered, and the crime covered up by "It was the Lord's will," or "His time had come," while a little knowledge of the simple rules and laws laid down further on would have prolonged the life of these patients, if they had not been treated by scientific absurdity, perhaps ten, twenty or fifty years. Reader, are we not stating what many of you have witnessed time and again? Nature is the great physician; she is the best healing 32 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE medium; give her every facility, and in most cases with what is called nursing she will restore those who are restorable. How to give nature this every facility should be taught in every school and family in the country. Most of the cures attributed to medicine are in reality effected by nature in spite of medicines, and her cures strengthen instead of undermining the constitution. All take too much doctor's stuff, while many are literally medicine crazy; after outraging every health law, till nature brings them to account by sickness, they pour down medi- cines literally by the gallon, often making a drug store out of their stomachs, whereas a little timely precaution would have kept them well. Many over anxious mothers summon theidoctor for every trifling ailment, or often fearful that they or theirs Imight be sick, swallow or almost eat his nauseating and often poisonous doses, frequently ruining their own and children's naturally excellent constitutions by calomel, quinine, morphine, arsenic opiates, worm medicines, soothing syrups, and all such concoctions. How many invalids keep growing worse the more they doctor, till from sheer despair or poverty, or sometimes by happening to strike an honest physician to tell them they are killing themselves with medicine, to stop it and giving him the reasons of his suffering and the proper advice needed, he slowly but surely recovers and lives on many years, and many times curses the doctor who gave him the advice to the road to health. Mr. B. came to my office in July, 1895, saying, "Doctor, I have been told you were good in treating diseases of the stomach; I have paid out to four physicians four hundred and five dollars, and I am worse than when I started, and am sick and tired of doctoring and do not want to take any more medicine unless I can be cured; I would just as soon die as to live in the misery that I have been in for five or six years." I looked the man over, that is, what is generally termed "sizing a man up;" he was a hard worker and very energetic, and this was the cause of his great suffering; he would sit down to the table, swallow his meals in a hurry, without much chewing, eating very heartily, and the strong effort made by the stomach to digest the large pieces of food was the cause of the distressed feeling and pain he complained of after eating. I explained all these points to him, telling him to eat slowly, THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 33 chew his food finely as possible and keep quiet and rest fifteen or twenty minutes after eating, and he would get well in a short time. "Well, doctor, don't I need any medicine ?" I said no, that he ought to thank God that he had such an excellent stomach, one that could stand the abuse he had given it, besides five or six doses of poison from doctors every day for a number of years and yet have no disease. This made him feel a little shakey as to my abilities, and he so intimated. I said to him: "If you follow my advice and you do not get well I will agree to leave the city and would be willing to bind myself to the contract." "Well, all right, doctor, I will do as you say; it certainly can't do any harm. How much do I owe you?" "Five dollars," I replied. I thought the man would sink to the floor, and when he recovered himself he said : "Doctor, I never paid over fifty cents to a dollar to any doctor when they gave me several prescriptions; you charge me five dollars and didn't give me anything." But he slowly and reluctantly pulled out his pocketbook to pay, when I told him to put it back, that I didn't want his money; that I only said it to show him the kind of a man he was. and asked him if he could blame any doctor for not curing him, and that he ought to be killed; that the only reason, perhaps, he wasn't was because there was no money in him for a doctor after he was dead. "You said on the start that you had paid out four hundred and five dollars and getting worse all the time, but you are not even willing to pay five dollars for advice that is guaranteed to cure you." He began to see the point made. I told him to go home, follow my advice, and when he thought he was entirely cured he could pay me the five dollars, which he did in six weeks, with the remark that "If you had seen the sauerkraut and pork I ate for dinner, you would be surprised." He felt as fine as a spring chicken and was certain he would continue to feel so if he used a little common sense, saying the lesson he learned was worth all it cost him to know his mistake and to learn what the doctor business is. This illustration, we think, needs no comment, for it shows up both sides of the relation between doctor and patient, and it demonstrates clearly that a large share of the public force a doctor to do what he knows is not right or else starve to death. Americans spend annually about seven millions of dollars on doc- THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 34 tors, and about as much more for medicines and nurses, only to break down millions of constitutions, besides causing millions of premature deaths, whereas most of both this money and life might be saved by right education from childhood regarding the laws conducive to health and the causes that produce and the methods which prevent disease. All writings on health omit the principles and chief means of both preserving and regaining health, which this work points out. Fol- lowing its simple directions will banish sickness, medicines and doctors from all families (special occasions excepted) and will immeasurably benefit the human family, more than anything ever written. Knowl- edge is power, but no other knowledge gives equal power to increase our moral virtues and intellectual capabilities, as well as to avoid tempta- tions to sin. No driver can manage his well trained horse so easily as a full knowledge of these body and mind relations will enable us to control, restrain and direct our state of mind and feeling. By its appli- cation we can increase our mental power a hundred per cent, and in proportion any single organ of the brain, and therefore increase any particular talent or virtue. Yet who understands this subject? What writers on physiology, to whom it rightly belongs, even attempt to explain it? All overlook or ignore the influence wielded by the bodily conditions over the mental and the mental over the physical. They write and lecture as if no such natural laws existed; the mind has been elaborately discussed, as if it were some detached entity, and not treated as if it were affected by every organic condition whatever, while physi- cians have constantly studied bodily ailments as if unaffected by the state of the mind. Does any physiological author or lecturer tell us what bodily condi- tions induce given mental action, or how to produce desirable intel- lectual or moral states by superinducing their corresponding organic conditions? Yet to teach and enforce this subject should be the main object of all physiological works, because this embodies their greatest benefit. A knowledge of this reciprocal action is about the only prac- tical advantage to be derived from this class of studies. Thus breath- ing, exercise, diet, temperaments, health, disease and all other physical conditions are perhaps no less important in themselves than in their effect on our virtues, vices, talents and morals. Its comparative neg- THE TRUE AND FALSE POSITION 35 lect thus far is amazing; every human motive points to it as the one great, practical question of life. Other kinds of learning, compared with this, are almost useless. Astronomers spend much time and intellect in scanning the transit of Venus, yet as a practical lesson for improving health it bears no more comparison to this than a drop of water is to Lake Michigan. Many intelligent men spend much time, breath and labor in convincing mankind that baptism by immersion is better than by sprinkling, etc. Yet a knowledge of what mental states produce cer- tain bodily conditions has a million times more to do with human sick- ness and health, virtues and vices, talents and capacities, enjoyments and suffering, and all there is of existence, than either or both. Mind and body can never be treated separately, as has been at- tempted in all other works, but only together. This fatal omission of all other works on disease, of the explanation and application of a prin- ciple thus vast in its range and vital in its character, is simply astonish- ing. What physical conditions produce given mental manifestations is a momentous question. Into what state shall we throw the body in order thereby to promote particular moral emotions and tendencies or increase special intellectual powers and manifestations ? It answers and thereby puts readers in possession of the keys of personal happiness and health and the lever for moving and improving the mind, as well as those of health, gives a full conception and faithful delineation of these practical truths unfolded by this principle to the reader so that he can understand them together with the varied and peculiar health experi- ences of the author and their lessons carefully studied, and all he knows about health from experience and professional observation, he here tells not in Greek, but in plain understandable English, not from egotism, but partly as a guide and a warning to others. THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD. To say that the practice of medicine in the closing year of the nineteenth century is nothing but a murderous fad, will to most readers at first appear as though a whirlwind had curdled the brain of the writer, or that he is possessed $f unadulterated impudence, or born in irremediable idiocy. This so-called marvelous, most pro- gressive, most charitable, intelligent, and especially dignified pro- fession, is a conglomeration of fads. Dignity is its great staff upon which it hurls .its stock in trade. We do not see how, if the Lord ever put up great diginity and superior intellect in the same skull, they could live together long without a divorce, as they are as antag- onistic as divine love and the devil himself. When the vision of these medical savants broadens enough to see that the Almighty power that created this universe was benevolent and wise enough to graft upon all the elements of all that exists, including man, a definite and absolute law, which no man can ever change; when the'medical profession comprehends that all visible manifestations in nature are only the expression of the actions of these invisible forces or elements from which everything is evolved, then our dignity (the medical profession) will drain off and make us feel like asking to be recognized just long enough to apologize that we ever existed. These lean and hungry nonentities reach out with their greedy fingers for the few paltry dollars that every poor man needs to fill the necessaries of his pantry shelves. He will pose as the avator of honesty, though without the approval of his conscience, yet makes no protest against all this medical trickery and deceit that enables him to triumph over a confiding public. We are wont to boast of our superior intelligence, yet the fact must be apparent to every man who has eyes to see and a headpiece to understand the simplest natural phenomena, that very much more than a moiety of these so- called enlightened medical wonders are but random shots into the 36 THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 37 darkness; in fact it can be easily demonstrated that they have no more of an idea of what they are doing, nine times out of ten, than do the automatons at a Punch and Judy show. Yet so many physi- cians will parade themselves at every opportunity and fracture their lungs about what ignoramuses and quacks every one is who don't belong to their medical church. They imagine they are full to the neck with medical prescience, when really they are only charged to the bursting point with prejudice and ridiculous egotism. I have frequently been called a chronic "kicker," but I do not object to the epithet. There is need of more good, husky kickers and they need to wear good number of fourteens, with copper toes, to kick out all the devilish things that have besmeared what might be noble and grand in the work of the medical man. Some have told me I should use more sweet oil and not rip and tear down.. The complaint is well founded, if it is wrong to attack falsehoods and murderous methods and try to exterminate this scientific rottenness, but I think all will concede that what is notoriously untrue should be attacked and that we should wage uncompromising war on whatever maketh or loveth these falsehoods. No doubt that he is a good-intentioned man who confidently believes that he can work miracles upon a suffering humanity by trying to reverse the laws of nature by injecting scientific horse juice into an already poisoned system, then ask for divine honors because the child got well in spite of the two poisons. But remember, my medical brethren, I do not mean to take refuge in any discourtesy whatever, because God knows, if the people don't, that all breeches-wearing biped doctors are courteous and cultured gentlemen; that is their stock in trade, but is this one iota of evidence that they have the knowledge requisite for curing the sick ? The public say, and justly so, that they have no other alternative but to believe what the so-called leading men in the profession say, and they (the profession) only too well know that to be a fact, and with their unconscious gall these parrots outline and macadamize a little highway and sect of their own and tell you by this road or creed you must travel, or else the recording angel will put a black mark against you on his ledger, and the world applauds them while they 38 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE are trampling the health and constitutions of a nation under their brutal feet. But we may submit in all seriousness that they may be physically incapacitated to tell the truth or work in harmony with nature, or have a specific attack upon their veracity, due to the microbe of falsehood. At the present rate of advance in microbe science, humbuggery will soon be pronounced a disease caused by a germ which puts his hair in tins, wears a yellow diamond, has a temper like aquafortis, a voice that whoops and howls, and the claim made that the Creator made a mistake in not consulting with him when he made the world. This will, no doubt, scare the cholera microbe and itch bacilli into having hayfever or epilepsy and stimulate them to leave the country and look for an orthodox heaven. The question has often been asked by physicians, and laymen as well, how I could or even dared to contradict so able authority as we have in medical science and attack the very foundation upon which medical science is built? My answer has been that my opposi- tion dates back from my first year that I attended a medical college. I was then nearly thirty years old, old enough surely to exercise my reasoning powers if I had any. A very few months in the school con- vinced me that nearly all the lectures were contradictory, assump- tive and superficial, and I often felt mad at myself when reading text-books that I was supposed to believe such misleading stuff. Take a whole pile of them that I could name, and you find uncertainty; not only that, but actual imposition in what they state as scientific truth. They put down experiments that are curious and out of the way, but which they actually never did, and upon these scientific medicine is founded. Some one said that there are more frauds in science than anywhere else; whoever said it had a level head. The young practitioner sees someone's name lauded by nearly all the col- lege frauds and believes in him, but when trying the lauded experi- ments he fails, and when he calls attention to this fact and makes some convincing explanations he gets a shrug of the shoulders for an answer. I tell you I would rather not know anything about the science of medicine ninety-nine times out of a hundred than to do what the books tell me, and apply good horse sense and my patient is infinitely better off. My experience, as well as that of many others, THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 39 proves that for the practical purposes for applying the art of medi- cine today I would rather take the thing up and go through with it myself, and with better practical usefulness to my patients, and in this way I could be sure of what I know. But this or that authority will controvert you out of the books and prove out of the books that it can't be so, although you hold it in the hollow of your hand and could knock out his wise-looking eye with it. If I had accepted, like the great majority, the statements of these alleged authorities, instead of casting them aside and working out these simple problems of nature that are visible to the eye, hundreds of my patients would be in eternal rest instead of among the living, enjoying life's pleasures and miseries. But anything that is presented to these arrogant dictators and owners of the diploma mills for examinations, is judged by their self-assumed standards, if the thing offered for investigation does not adjust itself easily to their rules and laws that they have themselves formulated, it is rejected without further ceremony, and even treated with ridicule and contempt. Despite the overwhelming evidence we have presented the past ten years, evidence no less than reality, it has simply been ignored. Now, my medical friends, I am willing to be whipped, and whipped to a finish and gladly shake the hand of the winner, but I will not be bluffed by a lot of frauds and deceivers and see the whole nation suffering and its constitutions ruined, because these innocent people are believing the falsehood presented, taught and spread by these rascals without putting in a kick as hard as I can. An honest investigator of any branch of science always receives with pleasure and welcomes any advance along his line of thought. But these bom- bastic owners of diploma mills will not yield and give up these mur- derous fads that are making fortunes until compelled to do so by the public, any more than a patent medicine fraud will give up his lucrative business, no matter how many are injured, unless public opinion forces it. Will the reader reflect for a moment and think back, and see what a difference there would be from the present if there had not been a few who had the courage to not surrender the right to do their own thinking and had permitted themselves to be usurped and dictated to what they must think and do. In the prac- tice of medicine, by far more than in any other profession, he who 40 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE has the courage to step out of the beaten track has been ostracised, denounced by these orthodox deceivers which might be termed the trinity of medical schools comprising the regular and so-called irreg- ular medical trusts. Such a one is dubbed a quack, humbug, fraud, charlatan, and every sort of combination is made to defeat such a man in business, as well as to keep the public from learning and to keep them in as dense ignorance as possible, which is their chief weapon of being duly honored by the public, which they in turn dishonor, murder and constitutionally ruin. Is not this worse than negro slavery? For this you fought and risked your life, but will not devote a little thought and time to ascertain that your mind and body is enslaved by shackles that are a thousand times worse and more injurious to your nation and especially to your life and health, as well as those of your family. Are not these thongs and whip lashes more lacerating to our nation than human slavery ever was? Just make an unbiased examination of yourself and then judge how far your individual liberty extends. Does it not seem clear that as long as you are dependent upon these medical frauds for knowledge which they pretend to know but do not, but should assuredly be known by yourself, you are certainly as effectively fettered as any slave that ever picked cotton under the lash ? There may be some honest mean- ing men, and there undoubtedly are some, connected with the medical profession, and if so they should get their heads trepanned in order to give their brains a chance to grow so they could think for them- selves instead of in their ignorant honesty accepting the dictates of self-made authorities who are either doleful ignoramuses or are as unable to comprehend the meaning of the visible manifestations of nature as a mule-eared rabbit is unable to comprehend the principles of this government. Those who are carrying out this iniquity upon the public through ignorance are perhaps not all to blame, for those we should humbly pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." When these miserable nonentities have striven for years to seal my lips for questioning their murderous infallibility, how can I look upon them for the preservation of my American prerogatives and turn down an honest public who would knowingly plan me un- THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 41 deserved harm? Is it not my duty to make war to the death upon these scientific murderers? To denounce its every advocate of these medical Judas Iscariots? And must I be careful not to wound the sensibilities of these teachers of medical fads and frauds, even though some of their grandsires signed the declaration of independence or helped frame the constitution? Every man should, at least in this so-called enlightened country, be privileged to exercise his brains, especially for the health of a community, without being placed under a ban for speaking the honest truth. The trouble is that too often the intellectual American people will starve such a man to death, then subscribe liberally to build him a monument. The trouble nowadays is that a professional man, like the milliner, must be in the fashion or swim or he'll have deuced hard sledding, whatever may be his merits or skill. If a physician can get a few ultra fashion- ables to call him in, his business is most always assured, although he couldn't distinguish between physianthrophy and physics, or the ma- teria medica and Dr. Ayer's Almanac. Without such an introduction, be he as wise as Socrates he will be confined to a pauper's practice. Is it any wonder that medical colleges teach the students, practically if not in so many words, "Learn how to treat the well ones in the neighbor- hood and get their confidence and if your patient dies from the effects of your ignorance, you are a good man and tried very hard to save it, but it was the Lord's will"? Would not this even give a whole joblot of whining pietists a pain? I conclude that if the Lord is mixing himself with such bigotry he is in poor business. Under these conditions is it any wonder that so many whose contracted brains are too slim to be a farmer concludes to become a doctor ? All he needs is the cunning and tact of a rat terrier, for there are so few who know the difference between "it" and real medical skill. We have modestly intimated that the practice of medicine is a mur- derous fad, but it is worse than that; it is the most aggressive, the most damaging fraud that infests the earth for the deterioration and destruc- tion of the constitutions of our race. The greater a humbug the greater is the pretended dignity and charity kept on the surface and in front to cover up the monstrous rascality back of it. Is it not the cry of every fraud that he is devoting his time to your 42 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE interest and benefit ? Does he not often give away his time for apparent charity sake, even scattering little fish among them in order to catch the large ones? This is kept up until he is accidentally caught at his game, or effective opposition turns up in his particular line, and even then it is often hard to change the general existing conditions, customs and fashions, if public sentiment is leaning strongly towards or ap- proves and applauds the gigantic fraud. But our other fads, humbugs and frauds are usually only effective in cheating us out of dollars and cents; some of them break up our social, domestic and political happi- ness, but the "Prince" of humbugs and the very incarnation of frauds, the apotheosis of audacity, is the practice of medicine as it is practiced and taught today. It not only robs the public of their dollars, which is its object, but murders our beloved ones or cripples and ruins their constitutions so that they are under our care the balance of their miser- able existence, trying one doctor then another, each promising to cure, but never get well. We admit that many patients treated by doctors get well, but we will show that most of these same patients would get well in much less time without their medicine. Right here we want to say that we do not want to be understood as inferring that medicine is of no value. On the contrary, medicine used and given only when needed, the right remedy and advice for the case are often life savers, but as used and given today is nearly always injurious and murderous. But these same great little doctors will presume and speak with the author- itative assurance of a Lord Chief Justice. They invariably know it all. From their pretended bombasity anyone would think they could teach Solomon and the Seven Wise Men wisdom, and many of us doctors, with our unadulterated gall, had we lived at the time that Josue com- manded the Rubenites and the Gadites to cross the Jordan, would have advised him to strengthen his nerves first, by taking for six months at least, three times daily, a quinine pill alternated with a good physic, even if we did not know enough to tell the difference between vermicelli soup and a bundle of fiddle strings. It may occur to you that I am running down the medical profession. Far from it. It is not possible for me to do so, for language has its limits. As Christ was the purest of men on earth and the Christian re- ligion as He taught it, the purest remedy for our spiritual welfare, so is THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 43 the practice of medicine, when practiced in harmony with nature, the purest and noblest work of man for the physical welfare of humanity, provided it is understood and practiced in accordance with these physi- cal laws commonly called nature's laws. When this is done we will not have use for one doctor where there are ten or more today, but this will never be done by the doctors-public sentiment and education must do it. Public sentiment, combined with education, is the strongest existing force for changing a right or a wrong. Even the leaders of the Christian faith, after its birth in purity gradually, and no doubt many times unintentionally, through its in- vented dogmas, in order to control everything temporal as well as spiritual, at times fell into the most corrupt practices on the face of the earth. They would even murder, burn at the stake or throw into prison anyone who had the courage to show and demonstrate by natural laws the fallacy of their invented teachings and superstitions. Instances are numbered by the hundreds of thousands, and no doubt largely with sincerity and often for the love of God. All this because these organi- zations had no effective opposition, but when knowledge and public sentiment brought this desired opposition, light began to dawn out of darkness. At the present time the medical profession is the only organization in existence that does not have any effective opposition from the public. The world's history will show that every organization that ever ex- isted under these circumstances, whether political, religious or scientific, has become the most corrupt. In this the practice of medicine today stands alone, without this effective opposition, and is the most corrupt, murderous and damnable organization on the face of the earth, and by its self-invented dogmas holds its powerful sway over the public with their confidence, and will continue to do so until the public as a whole begins to oppose what thinking individuals among them now know to be true. The Medical Friars have made the world believe that no branch of science was ever hidden in such darkness and superstition as medicine, and that they have advanced it so rapidly during the past two hundred years. My medical friends, you have misplaced the word advanced for the word changed; yes, it has changed wonderfully and very often, but has 44 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE not advanced very much. Sometimes it has changed as often in a year as the style of women's gowns, but not advanced; neither have the gowns advanced in usefulness, except sometimes in price. Surgery is one of the branches of the so-called science of medicine that has made wonderful strides the past fifty years, but where its beneficial results can be shown once, perhaps, in any community, its abuse and injury to man can be shown up at least twenty times. And under our American principle-the greatest good to the greatest number-it would be bet- ter if a knife was never allowed to be used. If President Garfield had been left to an intelligent nurse and no doctor allowed near him he would no doubt be alive today; this is an acknowledged fact by the profession. The practice of medicine has made in some directions, great advances. What are they? First, they have stopped the errone- ous dosing of strong medicine, therefore do not kill as many as fifty years ago, but still kill about twenty per cent more than if no medicines were given under any circumstances. But by giving smaller doses thousands of these patients become chronic invalids, live a long time in this misery and are worth just so many dollars more to the doctors, to say nothing of the ruining of the constitutions of the children born to such a mother-making another increased job for this murderous pro- fession, so then where there are not so many killed as formerly, con- stitutions are ruined by the millions; this is what is called scientific ad- vance in medicine. How can such an organization as the medical pro- fession, which is essentially false, foster anything that is literally true? Are you aware, my dear reader, that this wonderful and handsome medical structure, which is painted before your eyes by the medical profession, stands upon nothing but pillars of wind? Just think of this statement, that every one of the main pillars upon which this massive structure has been built during the past two hundred years, stands upon nothing but pillars of wind! Just punch a hole into these pillars and the whole medical goddess falls crumbling to the ground. To prove the above statements as fully and as plainly as the noon- day sunshine is the object of this volume. If we accomplish this, is there anything that can be of more value to mankind ? But in order to benefit mankind and in order to rout such a gang of malefactors it is only with the assistance of the public that it can be accomplished, and THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 45 only should we ask their support when it can be demonstrated to a certainty that we are right. Is this not a fair proposition ? What are these pillars of wind and murderous frauds upon which this great science of medicine stands today ? The four main pillars of wind are as follows: First pillar-That germs or their natural excretions are the cause of disease. Second pillar-That diseases can be produced by contagion. Third pillar-That quarantine will prevent the spread of disease. Fourth pillar-That vaccination will prevent smallpox. To these four pillars have been added many other injurious and murderous fads. First-That to inject the poison of a disease is to cure and prevent the same-such as antitoxine, vaccine virus, animal extracts, etc. Second-Another fad and delusion is the touch-me-not and anti- septic fad, which is deemed so necessary in treating wounds or disease, and many times cause the death of the patient. Third-The surgical fad of the vast amount of the unnecessary butchering of the healthy female organs. Fourth-The general necessity, which really exists in the mind of the doctor, of the removal of the appendix in real or imaginary appendi- citis, just for the almighty dollar. Fifth-That the laws brought forth and enacted to enforce upon an innocent public to have their constitutions ruined by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and thousands upon thousands murdered by the injections of the worst kinds of poisons under the pretense of curing and preventing disease. We said pretense, for we have never found a doctor yet, when he expressed his honest opinion, but what admitted he believed it was all humbug, "but there is money in it and if I don't do it some one else will," and that life is too short to try and change what the public have been made to believe by these self- constituted authorities, or have honestly but foolishly believed for gen- erations or centuries. All the laws relating to contagion and quaran- tine on the statute books in every state in the union, if strictly enforced, would produce more disease and kill more people than all the wars of the world. 46 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Sixth-To be added to the above are many pillars and braces that will come up in their respective places, during the discussion of these great wind bags, or the great pillars upon which this polished humbug stands. Continual change is the order of nature in the whole universe, in that birth, growth and death are continually going on about us. From this process of death, decomposition and disorganization of the animal and vegetable kingdom around us certain impurities such as gases, etc. are continually thrown into the air and water, which are purified by the sun's rays and other electrical conditions which fit them for man to inhale, eat or breathe. This same identical process of death, disorganization, and the pro- ducing of impure gases are evolved within the body and are of the same nature and kind as those arising all around us, and these must be puri- fied after leaving the body by the winds and the same rays of the sun. The functions of the body are assisted by the sun's rays, as well as by the taking into the lungs pure air by breathing. In other words, the poisonous elements eliminated from the living human body are of the same nature and are really composed of the same elements as those given off from the dead decomposing bodies. In the one, all of the cells of the body being dead or lifeless, while in the other it is a portion of the cells of the body used up and replaced by the new ones, this dif- ference being the only elemental distinction between a living and a dead body. Superstition and ignorance have always been in the past the power- ful forces that worked in opposition to any real advance in science, religious superstitions being the most effective and acting with the greatest power. When as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a few thinking and observing men attempted to show that these ravaging diseases, such as the plague, smallpox and many others, were due to filthiness and plainly showed that where these conditions existed these diseases were more prevalent, and where attention was given and these conditions removed improvement followed, but not entirely re- moved, because the system itself can produce the same results as the ex- ternal surroundings. This important fact has not been properly taken into consideration of the blood diseases, from smallpox down to measles. THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 47 History tells us that down to the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies the general filthiness in the ordinary mode of living in England was such that we in our day would be hardly able to describe or con- ceive it. Decomposing animal material was allowed to accumulate and become a part of the floors of dwellings, and they wondered why the Lord would let the devil surrender their community to all kinds of diseases and epidemics. When we look back only two or three hundred years and see that superstition and ignorance was so rampant, it should make one at least feel charitable towards the ignorance and superstition existing at the present time, which now is largely due to false teachings, and often pur- posely presented to the public in a false light, but is necessarily injuri- ous to the welfare and health of the public. But the first fifteen cen- turies of superstition and ignorance was largely kept up through the false teachings of the then Christian leaders. Every tendency of the teachings of those leaders to prevent disease and epidemics was to effect the wrath of the heavenly powers; on the other hand, to thwart the malice of the devil. Hon. A. D. White, in his ''History of Warfare of Science With Theology," says that "Perhaps the most astounding among Christian survivals of this theory, and its resultant practices was seen during the plague at Rome in 1532. In that year, at that center of Divine illumi- nation, certain people, having reasoned upon the matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the result of satanic malice; and in view of St. Paul's declaration that the gods of antiquity were dev- ils, and of the theory that the ancient Gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to-punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed. Even this proved vain and the church authorities then ordered expiatory pro- cession and crowns to propitiate the Almighty, the Virgin and the Saints, who had been offended by this temporary effort to bribe their enemies." Again he says, "But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pesti- 48 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE lences, used as his emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of this belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that they es- caped with a far less percentage of disease than did the Christians in the great plague periods. This was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had probably originated thous- ands of years before in Egypt, and had been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen. Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and more constant abstinence of dangerous foods than was usual among Christians, but the public at large could not under- stand that these terrible epidemics were due to so simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted from protection by Satan, and that this protection was repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of Christians. As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts of Europe to propi- tiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. Throughout Europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of these devoted people. In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death, it is computed that 12,000 Jews thus per- ished." "In Strasburg the Rhue Brulee remains as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there, because they thought they had thrown poison in the wells and caused the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned. Everywhere in continental Europe this mad persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason, and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the maddened populace, exercised it in favor of mercy to these supposed enemies of the Almighty." Today we burn and torture the little microbes as the cause of disease, when in reality they are no more the cause of these epidemics at the present time than the Jews and witches and the Devil were the cause of disease three or four centuries ago. We are today in reality as far if not farther away from knowing what the real causes of disease are, than they were in those early days of superstition. We now have an antitoxin serum, taken from a horse THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 49 after his blood had been injected with poison, to prevent and cure diph- theria; a vaccine virus, a most damnable poison, to be injected into our bodies to prevent smallpox; a murderous quarantine law to prevent dis- ease from spreading from those who already have it; an erroneous con- tagious theory to not have any of those friends of the sick ones to look at you or pass you on the street, for by doing so he would give you the disease that exists at the house of the family. The Lord knowing this would be the case, has exempted doctors and nurses from taking the disease or spreading it by passing their friends on the street or by going home to their family, dining and sleeping with them; but to make this more certain they have discovered microbe killers and anti- septic solutions to make up for any defect that the Lord might have overlooked in His original plans to protect His chosen people. Three hundred years ago, and as late as the eighteenth century, when great epidemics made havoc in Austria, the main protection used against them seemed to have been to huddle around the images of Saints, calling in special witch doctors, among whom were some of the monks, to cast out the devils, and to seek the aid of a physician was considered impious, and the enormous death rate of two centuries ago was only diminished in the present century when common sense and cleanliness began to make its way, except smallpox, which, of course, was due to vaccination. "Nit." Satan and his imps were among the principal and most popular personages as the cause of pestilences, or it was laid as a punishment to atone for their sins. So strongly was the popular sentiment embod- ied in these ideas and superstitions that a stage scenery or opera that did not give a full display of this diabolic element would have stood a fair chance of being pelted from the stage. Towards the close of the sixteenth century more attempts were made towards sanitary measures, although the magistrates and ministers gave no heed. It happened later on that in a great calamity, the burning of the city of Edin- burgh, although the council of the city thought this noted fire was a rebuke from God, it was plainly observed that after the fire had done'its work that these epidemics of disease and death were greatly diminished. But as time went on a few thinking men had observed, through the discoveries in other fields which had swept away some of their old su- 50 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE perstitious ideas, that they could no longer resist the conviction that some epidemics, at least, were due to natural causes; but even these men at first argued that some of these may have been the result of divine intervention provoked by the sins of humanity. But great dif- ficulties began to show themselves in accepting the above conclusions, for it became hard for them to explain how it was that so many or- thodox cities, whether Catholic or Protestant, that were so firm and sincere in their faith, were punished so severely through the ravages of epidemic diseases and so many so-called heretical cities were spared, and everywhere in regions where the poorer people, who were de- voted to the church and followed this old superstition regarding dis- ease, died in time of pestilence like flies; while skeptics and non-be- lievers so frequently escaped. But it gradually began to dawn both upon Catholic and Protestant countries that if they were punished for their sin, that it was the sin of filth, and more and more it began to be seen that cleanliness was next to godliness, and to keep off these pestil- ent diseases, cleanliness was far superior than groveling on their knees before Saints. All experience and observation in the past century in all civilized countries has triumphantly shown the truth of the foregoing state- ment. Everywhere it has been attempted cleanliness, so far as under- stood, has done much good, but the real and main kind of cleanliness to prevent disease, especially epidemics, is as yet very little understood. Much has been done in cleaning streets and other public places; these improvements and the advancement made in public opinion has to a certain degree been great. Again many try to follow every means possible to prevent disease, but their wrong conception or education of what constitutes cleanliness makes them do just the opposite, and thus often this class of diseases develop in the so-called fine kept mansions, and people often wonder why and how the disease was brought to the house, when the cause lies right at home. What are called clean homes are too often dirty ones-what are called dirty homes are really not dangerous to health; a dirty floor, dirty clothes, dirty walls and even dirty food is not necessarily injurious to health. You may have all these things perfect, but still shut out the one element from circulating through every nook and corner, and all your other so-called cleanli- THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 51 ness is of very little use. It is this force, whatever name it may be called by-electric vibrating, purifying force that can only be re- ceived from the sun's rays and circulating pure air. Not only will it do to have it about you, around you, but it must go all through you. In other words, not only must the residence and (see circulation and breathing) surroundings be kept pure, but the system must be kept the same and you must learn how this is done; we devote this volume to explain this one paragraph. We will clear up the mystery that physi- cians, and especially the public, have been looking for for two hundred years; we will make it clear to every one so that there will be no cause to complain as to what are the causes of diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, yellow fever, etc. The medical profession began investigation along this line about one hundred years ago, and it seemed so easy and so much good was accomplished and the public could grasp it so easily, that it seemed almost as if designed that they (medical profes- sion) began to divert their attention to something that was not so simple for the public to comprehend. They began to seek the cause of disease in a more mysterious, more marvelous, more scientific way, you know, perhaps to keep the people in doubt, and to keep up some display of the old methods, combined with a lot of murderous fads, more injurious for the wrecking of the constitutions of our nation, and by its dissemination spread disaster to the whole world. We think that at least nine-tenths of the public at the present time and in the light of their present understanding of things, will oppose many, if not all, of our views, especially those which have been cher- ished, and sometimes even worshiped, and have become, so to speak, a part of themselves by inheritance, and the influence of the moral, social and legal customs, although many will agree with us that the practice of medicine as it exists and is practiced at the present day is a murderous farce; nearly all of it is a humbug, a purposely*designed deception upon a believing, a sincere and confiding public. While we expect that many of the unthinking, at first sight, will perhaps claim that we are the fad instead of the profession, but we propose to not only show that we are right, and that we can demonstrate it through and by nature's laws-they never lie. All progress along these lines of work, especially those which have 52 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE been of the greatest benefit to humanity, has been opposed and criti- cised in the severest manner, and we hope that every inch of our ground will be contested so as to leave for all future time no doubt of where the truth and accuracy of its subject matter lies. Real progress of any experience or observation in nature which can be demonstrated to be true are the ones which usually meet with the strongest opposition, for as a rule such discoveries have been op- posed strongly; this is usually due to some cherished belief or supersti- tion handed down from generation to generation, but nowadays very often on account of interfering with invested money and its earnings. People will sometimes change easily from one custom to another, from one fashion to another, or from one place to another, but millions of people have laid down their lives rather than change from a cherished belief. The average human being is like an onion-by absorbing the flavor of its surroundings, which include their education and also public sentiment; in other words, governed by those in whom they place their confidence. It is chiefly a question of surroundings whether we be- lieve in an allopathic, an eclectic or a homeopathic murderer, let them die a natural death, or at the hands of a Christian Scientist by believing that a reality does not exist. Our political and religious views are governed largely by the same principle, that is by our surroundings. On top of this we adhere to inherited opinions with the tenacity of a dog to a bone, or a miser to a twenty-dollar bill. We are the prolific mother of dogmatism, of beliefs and superstitions, and this is the shackle on the human mind which prevents the turning of the golden wheel of progress in the science of medicine and the improvement in our constitutions, health and longevity. Anything, let it be medicine or any other science, if tied up by some tenet of beliefs is usually con- sciously or unconsciously a humbug. Thus we succeed in humbugging ourselves into the belief that we are "it!" and with "it" all wisdom dies, when the fact is we have simply been blinded in being loaded up with out-of-date lumber, and troubling ourselves with morbid little ideas that were sired by our surroundings, education and circum- stances, and damned by folly. We have not learned that everything is governed by law, but when we do learn that health, life and disease and THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 53 even death, is governed by absolute laws that are as simple to learn as the A, B, C, then we will stop having dozens of sects and schools of medicine, besides the thousands of different notions of individuals. Then we will do exactly what the electricians do who all agree that Franklin, Edison, Faraday and others discovered a law, an absolute law, and they all bow to that law; they must do so, and therefore all agree upon this law, but each in different directions have applied this law to benefit mankind. The telephone, the telegraph, electric light, electric cars, all kinds of batteries, etc., are examples; but if any vari- ations are made from this natural law the effect of this power or force is lost. The same regularity of law holds good in the action of our earth and other planets; this is now conceded by the whole intelligent world. No one now disputes the laws discovered by Copernicus, Kep- ler, Newton and others. In those early days it was almost sure death for a man to proclaim that anything was governed by a natural law and not by divine interference. To say in those days that disease, death, or even health, was not due to the invention of some angel or devil would be a transgression met with a severe penalty. From angels and devils the cause of disease was traced to witches and the Jews; now it is traced to microbes, a little natural devil so small that it is claimed by our scientific devils that thousands can sit on the end of a needle. One thing is certain-that the medical profession is be- ginning to realize that they are about as hard to kill as the spirit devil of olden times. All things being equal we are in more darkness, have more dangerous beliefs and superstitions today regarding disease, but only in another form, than in the dark ages. There are few people who do not believe in some degree, some a little, some much, some almost entirely, that the human brain cannot solve the mystery of disease; that that belongs to the power of Almighty God; that disease and death is the will of divine interference; that it is not governed by the same and absolute laws that govern the earth, planets and vegetable life. This belief is held by the majority of mankind today, and much of it exists among the highly educated as well as among any other class. It is even shocking to many people to even intimate to them that God cannot be swayed one way or the other by their simple say so, and they even think that a Lord that would not listen to them was a cold and passionless divinity. 54 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE From this general belief we respectfully but firmly dissent; our po- sition as to the cause of disease is based upon the same certain and abso- lute laws as Newton's law of gravitation, Edison's law of electricity or any other physical law; that there is absolutely no divine interven- tion in anything pertaining to health, life, disease and death than there is in any other natural law in existence; in fact all are related to each other, human, vegetable, animal, earth, sun, moon and stars, all are alike correlative to each other, just as much as all the parts of a complicated machine are correlated to each other. When we realize and once conceive and understand that this is a fact indisputable, then we will at once realize the supreme justice of the Creator in thus endowing everything, including the human being, with absolute laws, and without any interference or intervention by Him. We maintain that health and disease, life and death are governed by these natural laws abso- lutely, and that we can demonstrate this to be true, that wte have demonstrated it thousands of times without a single failure; we main- tain further that the present ideas about the cause of disease are mur- derous fads and more dangerous to mankind as applied in prevention and treatment than have existed during the Christian era for the weak- ening and ruining of the constitutions of mankind. We may have an epidemic produced by local conditions, or partially by local and general existing conditions, or by our own created conditions, and sweep lives off the earth by the hundreds and even hundreds of thousands, and hence are capable of propagating poor constitutions upon our offspring, but our object should be to replace our race back to those good constitu- tions from which most of us sprung, and which we have gradually lowered from generation to generation by following the dictates of false authorities, and often by unfavorable surroundings forced upon us by others who knew better; again by funneling down drugs under the advice of doctors, and worse still by the injections of animal poi- sons under the pretense of preventing the disease, and under our splen- did surroundings and care, which no nation on the earth before has enjoyed, we live as long, some claim a few years longer on the average, than in the dark ages, when the majority of people were killed by wars, plagues or otherwise, with a perfect constitution before they had lived out half of their natural existence. If we had their constitution with THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 55 our surroundings we could, with little trouble, live double the time that we do, but most of us find our constitutions a wreck before puberty, or even before we are born. With the present increase of our constitutional diseases such as consumption, cancer, tumors of various kinds, etc., will find us in a few more generations such physical wrecks that to find a constitution that will reach above the age of forty or fifty years will be a novelty. How many are there of us who can meet our own children on the streets and not see the imprint of our ignorance and vices upon their constitutions ? One of the most pitiful humbugs beneath high heaven to ruin constitutions is the sentiment created by Dame Fashion. Deliver me from those intellectual "doo- dlebugs" who devote all their little brains to the great science of fash- ion and dress, which is ruinous to the health of the present and deter- iorating to the constitutions of future generations. This same Dame Fashion will look down upon any other woman as a disgrace to be a mother, at least not more than once or twice, and then only because they could not get out of it to save their life. To cap the climax some of these mothers will leave their children to the care of a maid, put their child on a bottle, while they swing around to receptions and the social circle. Brought up under such circumstances and reared before birth under worse, is it any wonder that their sons grow up sap heads with no more backbone than a bicycle tire with the air let out, not more social force than a wilted rose, and die of consumption or some other constitutional disease before the age of thirty, then lay it to the Lord's will. Think of bringing up men with the constitutions of Washington, Lincoln and thousands of others, by the present abuse of the sexual laws, and after they are born bring them up on a rubber nozzle and some patent baby food. What will this class of people say to themselves or to their conscience when the world once recognizes that so much misery exists, due to the abuses and even to the destroying of their God-given functions-motherhood ? What will our dear doctors do when the public learns that they have been praising their family physician sky high for saving the life of their child from a severe attack of scarlet fever in from three to ten weeks, but leaving as a sequel a running ear, or sore eyes, or some other defect, when this same child would get well by its own natural 56 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE power and proper nursing without a drop of medicine in from three to ten days. This shows that you have praised the doctor sky high for keeping the child from getting well in from two to eight weeks less time than if left to nature and a sensible nurse, besides ruining perhaps the ears or eyes, if not the whole constitution. If this child would have died the physician would be praised for the close attention and care he took in helping it to go to the angels, but all will be laid to the Lord's will, and the doctor's bill (better called a lawful murderer's bill) is paid in full without a murmur. What will the doctors do when the people learn that more than 90 per cent of their work is unnecessary, and only necessary because they make you think it is? What will you think of them when you find out that they make very little money out of really needed service, but that they make most of it where you imagine you need it and then by making you believe you need twice as much as you imagine, and when your imagined sickness is gone the medicines have produced the sickness you imagined, or perhaps worse? What will the doctors do when all the poor innocent mothers learn that more than three-fourths of the operations and diseases they are butchered and treated for are the foulest frauds in all this land of fakirs-the most hideous fad and humbug in all Hell's unclean dominion? What will the poor doc- tors do when the public rise up in revolt and say we have learned that it is not necessary to remove the ovaries, womb, etc., for every trifling ailment? or it is too often done for no ailment-the same can be said of the removal of the appendix in appendicitis; these operations are not needed perhaps more than a few times where it is now done a hundred times. Also that we, the public, have learned that it is an operation performed when really no disease exists, where only a func- tional disturbance causing a little pain in that region existed, but the patients are made to believe they have appendicitis and under this be- lief allow themselves to be operated upon. You have fooled us long enough; why must you remove this little appendix, no larger than a little finger, when it becomes inflamed, but when the bowels of many yards become inflamed you do not remove them. When the lungs become inflamed, with a hundred times more surface and more delicate tissue, they are not removed; when the kid- THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 57 neys become inflamed you do not remove them, and so through the list of inflammations. In fact doctors ought to know that it is danger- ous to cut into an inflamed part-it is a most dangerous thing to cut even a common boil during the process of inflammation. But this is not heeded by most physicians. We know of two physicians at least who lost their own lives by having a boil lanced during the inflammation stage. It at least shows that through ignorance even doctors sometimes take their own medicine and die from it. What will the poor doctors do when the public learns that all dis- eases like smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, typhoid fever, yellow fever, etc., are easier to prevent than it is to prevent a common cold? What will the poor doctors do when the public learns that one of the rarest things to find among the people is a diseased stomach, but that one-third of the population are swilling down drugs because these smarties have made you believe that certain symptoms mean stomach trouble, when the fact is that you have simply bit of our bait, that is, believed the lie told you, and take our medicine until your stom- ach becomes really injured or diseased. What will the poor doctors do when the people find out that this eruption or breaking out on the body in cases of smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., is not a disease? What! The eruption of smallpox no disease? The eruption of scarlet fever no disease? That is just what we said and it is just what we mean, and it is just what we can demonstrate. Then if this eruption is no disease, what is it? It is simply this-this eruption of the body is only nature's natural effort to cure herself by throwing the accumulated poison within the system out on the surface; it is an extraordinary effort of nature to rid herself of a clogged-up system or rather, clogged-up glands of accumulated poisons. These poisons are actually the same kind of poisons that these glandular systems and blood are eliminating every moment of our lives; nothing more and nothing less; simply their proportion and combinations differ somewhat. Reader, do not drop the above state- ments lightly-no statements in the past two hundred years have been made regarding disease that mean a thousandth part as much. They are as easily demonstrated as it can be demonstrated that water runs 58 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE down hill. We drop the subject here as it will come up in other chap- ters with a detailed explanation. If any one will take the pains to study out or even comprehend the magnitude of the vast amount of humbug, ignorance and scientific murder that the foregoing will disclose, by its comprehension, millions of lives will be saved in the future, humanity will be spared a vast amount of suffering and misery, and the doctors will be deprived of a great amount of pleasure and money. But to us, at least, even in a land where truth feeds on crumbs and crusts, while falsehoods are fattening upon the credulity and wealth of mankind, we prefer to beg rather than murder under the disguise of a professional garb, even if it took more moral stamina than to follow a flag into the very jaws of hell. But, thanks, there are some people who will listen to reason and discard an old belief and superstition when it will give them health, pleasure and long life, but we have the first physician to meet who would give up an old murderous fad for a truth that would rob him of his income, unless forced to do so by public sentiment, and so the honest meaning public have accepted it that the bulk at least of the pro- fession were continuously racking their brains to assist humanity, and no one can deny that these delusions are put before them many times every year; this on the surface hides the deviltry, below which exists a fraud and deception a hundredfold greater. Just as we now see every- where a great effort made to wipe out this greatest destroyer of life, consumption, by the efforts made to build sanitariums all over the country. No one who has any knowledge of consumption must believe that the schemers back of this plot to create a public sentiment in that direction do not know that the plan is worthless except for the money there is in it-it would increase the income of the profession at least tenfold from these consumptives to what it now does, and never can they save a single life that once has consumption of the lungs proper. Too many are made to believe they have consumption who do not have it, and many that really have it are made to believe they have not. Consumption can be eradicated and can be prevented even where there is a tendency to the disease, and to accomplish this we must simply know the real cause of the disease and how to eliminate this cause by prevention. Prevention is the only remedy, prevention not by medi- cine, but by understanding a natural law. THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 59 We have been asking what the doctors would do when the public once learn the truth, but we must also ask what the public will do when they learn that they themselves are at the present time largely at fault for the vast amount of fraud committed by the doctors. There are two sides to this question, and we will state that we know by experience that with the present general state of mind of the public regarding the way and the different methods that a disease should be treated is such that in the general practice it is impossible to treat diseases in accordance with nature, even if the physician wished and knew the right thing to do; in most instances if the doctor does not treat the case according to what is now deemed orthodox or scientific, he is simply dropped and the next one called will treat it with the microbe killer and if it kills the patient it is all right-he was treated by a scientific doctor. Many times people discharge the physician who is doing the right thing and call in another or take in the Christian Science humbug, or some other fraud. Many conscientious physicians, after practicing a few years, learn by observation and experience the truth of the foregoing, and either drop out of the profession, rather than murder scientifically, or gradu- ally harden their conscience to their work, as practice often makes per- fect. It is a well known fact among his acquaintances that the author dropped the general practice for a specialty for no other reason. Many physicians have told me that I should stretch my'conscience more and then I could make money. Our object is to give information and not to please the whims or notions of any individual or sect, and perhaps some will even go so far as to say that there are no sweet words in our vocabulary. If this is true, the sweet ones were crowded out by the crowding in of an extra supply of sympathy and feeling for those millions who are made miserable by the murderous, careless and ignorant acts of the medi- cal profession by their present methods of using medicines and the knife. This century, which so proudly boasts, and in many ways rightly so, stands as the leader of all ages, but in the practice of medicine it has burnt its sweetest incense on the unhallowed shrine of pompous humbuggery, while we will admit that a small percentage perhaps with merit and moral honesty existed, but had no more show under the 60 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE present pitiable predicament to get to the front than has an old rat in a hard wood cage without any teeth or toe nails. A family today has just about as much show for any of them escap- ing from coming down with smallpox or diphtheria if the quarantine laws are strictly enforced, as the old rat has of getting out of the box. About forty years ago people were about as afraid when an epidemic of measles existed in a neighborhood as they are today of an epidemic of smallpox. Measles were then considered the most contagious of all diseases because they spread so fast from one family to another, and rarely was it known that a case recovered where a doctor was called. We can remember of two and three deaths often occurring in a family in one day, and usually the child would die within twelve or twenty-four hours after taking treatment. Most people were so frightened that they were absolutely afraid to speak to their neighbors for fear that their breath might blow the measles to the next house. This has all changed-people nowadays are not as a general rule afraid of meas- les. But why were the measles such a terrible contagious and danger- ous disease forty years ago, and so little thought of now? Is it be- cause the measles of today are not the same kind of measles they were at that time? Not by any means-measles then and now are the same. At the present time a doctor is seldom called and seldom a patient dies, but two score years ago they nearly all died, and it is safe to state that ninety-nine out of every hundred were scientifically murdered, and in several instances to our knowledge some of our venerable white- haired brethren have not changed those old methods and occasionally have the honor of seeing their little patient carried to the everlasting resting place. But when you read medical literature you will find that the doctors take all the credit for stopping at least most of this scien- tific murder, such as occurred from measles. But who deserves the credit for stopping the medical profession from continuing these mur- derous acts? No one but the poor mothers, the old women as some would call them. But it took a good many years to convince even some of the doctors that these mothers were curing their own children by keeping them warm and especially the skin moist, with hot drinks to keep the measles out, and all would get well while the doctors were ducking them into tubs of cold water to drive them back, which they THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 61 usually accomplished at the expense of the patient's life. It goes with- out saying that when "We, Us & Co" had the measles we selected the old woman's treatment, and will take this opportunity of stating that the medical profession has since been forced in more than one way to admit that mother instinct has often been a thousand times better than scientific absurdity, but never have they given them any credit, but often even grumbled because it hurt the medical business. Being an eye-witness to many of the above dramas has perhaps more than anything else been the cause of our present position, which has been enforced and ripened by years of study, observation and ex- perience with this class of diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc. The strong impression left by the infamy witnessed in those early days, such as putting a child in cold water, closing up the pores of the skin, thereby retaining the poison in the system was sure to kill the patient, and by keeping the child's skin moist until the skin cleared up, the child would get well, was to me at that time, even without any medical knowledge, good evidence to satisfy me that measles was only nature's charitable method to rid the child of a poison that had ac- cumulated in the system. Not only that, but that these poisons are practicallythe same kind of poisons that the system is throwing off every day during our existence upon earth. And to prevent all these diseases (for the same general rule applies to all the eruptive diseases, let it be smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever or chickenpox) we must simply learn to know how these poisons are accumulated and retained in the system. Other chapters will make clear all that is necessary to show that they are the simplest diseases to prevent and the most harm- less class of diseases humanity has to deal with, instead as is now, and has been in the past, that they were the most dreaded pestilences. Ty- phoid fever and kindred diseases are governed by the same law. Suffice it here to state that we are sure of our ground, sure of the principles we advocate, and sure they will never fail. Nature never lies -her laws are as true as their Creator. We must stop tagging after and following the injurious advice of our gold-plated medical goslings who pad and swell themselves out so that it would seem as though they would amaze the very gods when impiously offering up their prayers, after injecting a deadly poison into the system of millions of patients -just for the filthy lucre there is in it. 62 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE It seems that a man with such unconscious gall would sneak into Heaven at the slightest opportunity and steal the Eternal Throne if it were not fastened down pretty tight. We are not as inconsistent as we may seem, for we only mean to club those who pose as a paragon of purity, but are knowingly and willfully an unclean humbug in which greed and gall are their recognized high priest. This class constitutes the majority and to the others we only mean to give a kindly warning that they are following the teachings that are opposed to natural law, therefore are opposed to the welfare of their patients. We have always felt rather sorry for a certain class of doctors who could not think for themselves, but had nothing to be proud of, except to refer you to the Granddaddy Doctor of fifty years ago, to show that he is right. Yet there is another class of putty-headed physicians of which the woods are full; take away their gall and the feather-headed fops could not cut a stick of cordwood with a first class bucksaw, but some way or another when this nothingness is clothed with fine broadcloth and a little oil put on the mainspring of their vocabulary, they make the poor inno- cent public believe that their medicine will cure anything from a tooth- ache to an epidemic of microbes. But perhaps one of the most aggressive fads both in medicine and surgery are the impositions, frauds, deceptions and murder committed upon the human female; our mothers and daughters are unsexed, tor- tured, cut, scraped and duped, so that this amorphous monster leaves wrecked constitutions and death in its wake. It wrecks the hopes, often ruins the homes, causes blood to flow and hearts to break; we lack the power to coin sentences strong enough to lash the rascals that are de- filing the very molds that shape the health, as well as the destiny of a nation, pure, healthy and strong motherhood. As soon as a girl approaches the age of womanhood, she must needs consult a physician for every little nervous ailment, for which she needs only some good sound advice and no medicine, but the physician's methods are to give medicine instead of the advice, and a stimulant to the reproductive organs is, perhaps, nine times out of ten, what she will get. Most any stimulant will do this. This medicine, which she does not need, keeps up an engorged blood supply to these organs so that in a few months or years, she really has the disease that the doctor THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 63 told her in the first place she had, but did not have, and was only pro- duced by his medicines. By this time other irregularities begin to man- ifest themselves; the doctor suggests to the mother that the daughter needs local treatment, perhaps an operation; another physician is asked in consultation, who clinches the matter, and says that it is a serious ailment and must not be neglected. The anxiety and mental anguish, combined with the treatment without any real physical ailment, are enough to fade away the handsomest woman on earth. To make this more clear we will give the experience of a lady who was a very con- scientious woman; seeing that her sex was a victim to so many ailments she thought that she could devote her life to no better purpose than to become a physician and benefit the many suffering women. With happy expectations did she look into the future; when she had finished the necessary medical education to give her a diploma which gave her the right to hang out her sign as an M. D., which she did in the year 1888, she rented an office in a large city where she was well and favor- ably known. Her friends knew that she did not have to practice medi- cine, or even work for a living, and that she only went into the business to do good to her sex. Naturally under such circumstances some business came; she was very successful, her patients improved rapidly with advice and a little medicine; this went on about three years when she became somewhat discouraged, thinking that woman had no confidence in woman, as she did not get any of those severe cases, such as other doctors had, that needed local treatment or an operation, she would like to demonstrate her skill. One day she attended a meet- ing of doctors where she read a paper which made her very popular, as it showed her to be an intelligent and honest physician. Some of the physicians would, as is customary, ask "How are you doing? you ought to do well." This was her answer: "I am getting along fairly well, making a living, but do not get any bad cases-most women that come to me say they have female weaknesses, and many say they have been treated for such; others would say that doctors said they needed an operation, but I generally find that it is only nervousness, overwork or something of that nature, which advice and a little medi- cine soon relieves; but it begins to look to me as though women pre- ferred men when anything serious is the matter." In answer to this 64 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE a certain specialist in female diseases with a very large practice said to her, "You will never be a success financially." "Well, why, doctor?" "I will tell you why-when these women come to you and think they have a womb trouble, you must find one, and have them come to your office as often as you can and charge them two to five dollars a treat- ment; pencil the womb with a little glycerine that won't hurt them; your other advice and medicine will cure them, but the local treatment will get the credit and you will get from fifty dollars and upwards for a case, instead of one or two dollars for advice. And if you can talk them into an operation, give them chloroform, do a little something and when they get well they will laud you as a wonderful surgeon; once in a while then you will get a genuine case that really needs the work and in this you will not be so successful perhaps, but it will not hurt you as you have operated on so many others that came out all right." Sur- roundings and associations will sometimes change even the mind of a woman, especially if she is ambitious. That is what it did in this case and in a few years she had one of the largest practices in the city, besides being a prominent physician. That is the only way you can be- come prominent under present methods. Our own record of several hundred cases shows that about one case in every eleven who had been told by other physicians that they either needed treatments or an opera- tion actually needed them; just think of it, one in eleven! Wonder what the record is of those who are following this line up as a spec- ialty? Not a week or a month passes but what we meet such cases, and many of them seem almost cured before leaving the office, after giving only the proper advice and explanation of their case. It is said that the American people like to be humbugged, and the proverb has been repeated so often that many actually believe it is true, but the statement is an insult to our intelligence; it is not true, but it is true that it occurs every day, but it is due to the fact that the people place their confidence in a man whom they believe to be as honest as he represents himself to be, but is really a general rascal. To show that this is true, the poor, credulous and confiding people in Europe catch it much worse than our people in this country, because the masses are more ignorant than they are here-authority is law with them. Humbuggery, as it is usually termed, is really falsehood, and may be called a national vice, 65 THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD our besetting sin; we are actually, in most instances, honoring those who dishonor us, worshiping our destroyers, canonizing the most gi- gantic liars and burying the greatest thieves in marble and gold. When we strip off the sugar coating by which the medical hum- bugs impose upon the public, we will find that they are nearly all simply professors of falsehoods. It is very likely due to some microbe or germ that has bored holes in their moral character and let the hon- esty leak out, and perhaps they ought to be treated with antitoxin or vaccine virus to prevent it from returning. The result would certainly be as effective as it is effective in preventing smallpox and diphtheria. People make slaves of themselves by allowing themselves to be kept in iron bondage by the leaders in medical and political dogmas or creeds, and blindly accepting everything from others as truth, instead of using their own wits or brains which God has given them. We depend too much upon others and too little upon ourselves. We read much but think too little. We believe it was Bacon who said "That reading mak- eth a full man"; this may be true, but in looking up and down the street it would appear as though it made some difference what a man is full of. According to the medical profession just now we are all full of dangerous microbes; well, it is a lucky thing for us M. D.'s that the Lord does not attempt to kill all these faddists by striking liars dead. When the public once wakes up to the truth that these medical the- ories are not worth a continental, when brought up against natural conditions, that natural conditions are only natural laws, that all the fundamental theories of the medical profession today are contrary to natural law, then it will necessarily be known that their treatment must be wrong. If the theory is held that germs are the cause of disease, the doctor's treatment must be with this theory. If a disease is contagious and infectious, treatment must be in accordance with this theory, but when we place nature's conditions against these theories, we will find that the same air that comes stealing through our windows and doors, as sweet as the perfume of a thousand flowers, is the same that sweeps towns and cities with their human lives into eternity. We will find that the sun, the king of all terrestrial bodies, without which all life would immediately perish, is the same sun which often in performing 66 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE his natural duty will slay those who do not harmonize with his man- dates. We will find that the same lightning and thunder, without which all life would soon be chaos, and with it often slashes everything that lies in the way of its electrical force, is one of nature's most valu - able elements for purifying the air. So we will find the very food that gave us health, life and happiness yesterday, gives us pain, misery and perhaps death today-all this vast difference by the same law, just because the same thing of today is placed in different conditions tomor- row. Is not this a great difference, without a distinction, under the same eternal law, stamped and sealed by the Almighty author of na- ture? We have achieved liberty in this country. On the 4th of July we all shout for the dear old flag, and all the rest of the year we bow our knee to the god of our idolatry, "the almighty dollar," and we doubt if not more than half the people who roll their eyes to Heaven, like a sheep with the colic, and wonder what this wicked world is coming to, forget all this seeming piety when they see a silver dollar, and swoop down upon it like a hungry hawk upon an unripe chick. But to spend a few minutes to find out that you are trusting a band of organized ig- noramuses, to keep your beloved ones from going to Heaven before their allotted time, but whose institutions (medical colleges) do not study the laws of nature, therefore not even to be trusted to wean a calf. Why is this true ? One reason is that when you call the Lord of High Execution, the Doctor, to treat your child who has smallpox, scar- let fever or like diseases, which you claim, and of course he will agree with you, that she caught it at school, and that a number of the other children in that school had the same disease, that the health officer or- dered the school closed because thirty children or thereabouts were sick. Your doctor and this same health officer says you must be quarantined -so also the rest of your children, in fact the whole household must be quarantined for weeks if not months, because your child caught the disease from these other children at school. These other children are not quarantined, except those that are down with the disease; the hun- dred or more children from the same school or the same room are al- lowed to run at large. Reader, did you ever stop to think over the above scientific farce ? If there is any truth in the theory of contagious disease, are not all those children in that school at least many times THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 67 more dangerous to the spreading of the disease than you are, who per- haps, have not even been near your child or in the same room with it ? but the law says you must be quarantined and all your innocent family with you. But the spread of the disease stops as soon as the school is closed. All things being equal, can the past age of brutish ignorance and tyranny be compared with ours regarding these so-called contagi- ous diseases ? Anyone with only the slightest power of reasoning must admit that there is something radically wrong or rotten in this per- formance. In this case when there are fifty or a hundred children at a school, where a large portion of them come down with the disease, if their theory of contagion is correct they have all been exposed more than has the family who mingle with only one child. If this family must be quarantined, all the children of the school should be, but they escape as soon as they are allowed their freedom out of doors. Why would it not have the same effect upon the rest of the families where one of the children going to school comes down with the disease to let the rest of the children in the family run out doors in the fresh air and let the father go to his business and the servant girl or the mother go to church or anywhere else, and without any danger to anyone any more than there is to the doctor, who does even worse than those would who are quarantined, if allowed their freedom? Nature and all her laws say absolutely yes, to this question, but the health officers and all orthodox doctors say no, and so do all our state and national laws emphatically say No. Who is right? We claim that every action in nature that is visible and invisible to the eye, and every law of Nature absolutely demonstrates that there is no such thing as a contagious disease; that quarantine is wrong and injurious, and that it actually produces what it tries to prevent. In what way can the public become convinced that our position is right? Just as you become acquainted with other things in nature for practical purposes; by observation, ex- perience, demonstration and correct reasoning about what you see, just as you know that by doing certain little practical things you can use a telephone and talk through it to some one a hundred miles away just as well as the scientific electrician, and even as good as the very man that invented the telephone. The farmer, without any scientific or literary education of any kind, can by observation and by using his 68 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE good natural reasoning faculties, plant his crops, and cultivate them; in fact in every way be as good if not a better farmer than the scien- tifically educated farmer. The reasons are as applicable to the farmer as they are in medical education; too many false theories are mixed up with a few facts which spoils and makes his scientific education more worthless and more injurious to the crops or his live stock than the uneducated who by observation and instinct follows the dictates of nature as she teaches it. Let us trace for a moment the natural relation of things as they exist to each other; the earth keeps up its functions, its rotation, actions and lives, so to speak, by certain fixed laws. It moves and lives with such regularity, by and through its very relation, we may say actual connection, with the other planets, that should any great change take place in these planets, which are also governed by this regular order of law, there would take place a great change in the earth's action. In other words, the earth and the planets are related and as strictly dependent upon one another as the organs of the body are dependent upon one another. Now, upon this earth are various kinds of plant life, such as trees, fruits, vegetables, etc.; they are de- pendent for their existence and nourishment upon the earth and upon the actions of the planets which give them the proper temperature or climate, rain; sunlight, etc. Here, again, we find everything related to each other-one depending upon the other for its very existence; any serious change in the actions of the sun, air, or any other climatic change would be likely to make a change in their condition, if not in their life. Plant life breathes and takes nourishment; it grows accord- ing to its breathing power. In the fall when the leaves drop off, breathing is suspended enough to check growing; in short, plant life will act and manifest itself according to its surroundings. Animal life in its wild state exists and is governed according to its surroundings; in fact the surrounding conditions dictate the kind of life. Any serious change of surroundings would mean a serious change among the exist- ing life-some would or even all might die, and if any would survive they would adapt themselves to their new conditions, or it would be more proper to say that the natural surroundings would change the animal to suit the existing conditions. If the ocean should be changed THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 69 from salt to fresh water, all the animal life it contains would change; many would change from life to death; others that had power sufficient to live through this great change would be changed to their new con- ditions. These changes of things that exist upon this earth are contin- ually going on everywhere, but not in the extreme manner we illus- trated ; we simply mean to define a law, an absolute law, a divine law, and no doubt an eternal law. This same law that we applied to the planets, the vegetable life, the animal life, applies to human life. To not be misunderstood we will emphasize that these laws apply to the human being in no particular manner, but absolutely in the same man- ner and by the same law, just as anything else that exists. We are as absolutely bound and related to everything around us as the earth is bound to the planets and as other animal life is related to nature, and by the same law that the earth is related to the heavens. If any great or serious change takes place in our surroundings, a great or serious change will take place with us-this change we call health, disease or death. As in everything else, we must adapt ourselves to these sur- roundings, that is, nature will make us adapt ourselves to her or kill us in the attempt. But as a rule these natural changes, when normal, are barely noticeable, any more than the slight changes in the earth's action are noticeable. This power the earth receives from her sur- roundings. The power, the motion, the very life of us only exists through and from our surroundings. All things being equal, as our surroundings are so are we in life, in health, in disease and in death. In order to live we must eat food and breathe air into our bodies, also have the surrounding influence of the air upon our bodies to keep us on the earth, or rather on our feet. The air pressure surrounding us, which keeps us from ascending to Heaven with our boots on, is about two thousand pounds to the square foot. The surrounding air has an influence upon us which the public generally and the profession do not take into consideration, or have at least underestimated its influence upon our welfare; it is one of the main factors in nearly all diseases. This brings us to the important statement that all we need to consider and all that anyone needs to know as to what constitutes health, what constitutes disease, is to understand how the food we eat, the air we breathe, and how the sun, air or atmospheric condition that surround 70 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE us act upon our bodies under different conditions and different circum- stances. But after all, this statement is something like saying that all you need to know to be a scholar is to know all the various methods and combinations of words and sentences that can be made from the twenty- six letters of the alphabet. Neither can be accomplished in a few hours. Both are governed by law-one by a human law, the other by a natural law. The one is changeable, the other unchangeable. The understanding of the natural law is to know how we can live long and in good health among our natural and unnatural conditions, or rather our self-created conditions. The understanding of the other comes handy also in many ways; it comes handy to make laws with, so that the smart rogue can be honest within statute law, but be morally rotten. It comes handy for the prohibition preacher to form a legal excuse to keep a case of Paine's Celery Compound or a dozen bottles of Hos- tetter's Bitters on hand and take a wineglassful every four hours, which contains about four to fifteen times as much alcohol as lager beer, then perhaps go staggering about with his load of dignity that would dis- locate the joints of an angel-then wonder what this wicked world is coming to . Why does a good meal in July or August produce infantile cholera or dysentery and the same meal to the same person under the same physical conditions in a cold December give nourishment and health? Or even take this same child from its hothouse to the lake breeze and it gets well ? Many physicians know this to be a fact, and in this way often cure their patients. They know this is so, but none of them have ever explained why it is so. It is for the same identical reason that a furnace will so often burn splendidly to-day, and to-morrow, with the same kind of fuel, will barely burn enough to keep the fire alive, to say nothing about producing heat enough to warm a house. All this just because the furnace did not have draught enough-not air enough; which means it did not have oxygen enough; without oxygen fuel will not burn, and in proportion to this supply of oxygen is the force of the fire. Mark you, this is the reason the good meal made the child sick on a hot July day; like the furnace, it did not have draught enough- did not have oxygen enough. The system lacked this element that THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 71 furnishes the power to grind up the contents of the stomach, hence it remained there and soured-so to speak, decomposed-and dysentery or the like was the result. Oxygen from the air is the element through and by which the energy and the very life force of the body is gen- erated; just in proportion as this force is supplied so is the force and power of the organs of the body to perform their functions. Just as steam is generated through and by this very same element, oxygen, from the air, just in proportion its supply from the normal amount needed will the fire to generate steam burn. Just so with the human system-in proportion as the body receives its required amount of oxygen and food, just in that proportion will be the fire of life. Let us suppose it takes two hundred pounds of steam to run a cer- tain engine and all the machinery attached to it, in order that all can perform the normal functions for which each is intended; under these circumstances if it should be necessary, or if it should happen by accident or design, that an extra amount of work should be placed upon one of these machines, would it not be apt to clog up this machine, partially or entirely, besides checking the speed and functions of the other machinery? Again, suppose that this same machinery, which requires two hundred pounds of steam to run it, something would occur that would bring the steam down to a hundred and fifty pounds; would not the machinery all perform poor work? The material would not be worked up well; the machinery slowly but grad- ually become clogged. Have we not given two causes with prac- tically the same result ? And a little reflection will suggest many ways in which this machinery may be disturbed, as running them at full speed or capacity, without care or with care, some one of the machines may have a weak part overlooked in its making. To make our meaning more clear no better illustration can be given than to apply this same principle or law to the well-known results of our brave soldiers who went from the North to Cuba and Porto Rico. When these soldiers returned home, where the weather is cold, and you should feed them with the same food they received down South, and let them live in the same tents, they would be healthy and fat. Why is this true? For the same reason and by the same law that poor fuel with a good air draught in a furnace will make a good fire and not leave one-half as 72 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE much ashes to clog up the.flumes and chimney; but use this same fuel and have a poor air draught and your fire smoulders, smokes, creates lots of waste and ashes, clogs up its functions and creates but little heat. In other words, the furnace did not get oxygen enough through the air box to burn up the poor fuel, and with good fuel the result would have been very nearly as bad. So it was with our soldiers-the poor food did not cut so much of a figure (provided it was not decomposed) as the air box that did not have draught enough; they did not have oxygen enough to gen- erate steam to run the human machinery, so it smouldered, did not digest properly-created, so to speak, lots of ashes and clinkers and clogged up the flumes and chimneys of their systems, producing dysentery, typhoid fever and kindred diseases, and merely for the lack of this element from the air, oxygen, due to a lack of good draught through the human air box, the lungs. The reason for this is that the heat in that hot climate expands the air so much that a gallon of air taken into the lungs contains far less oxygen than in a cold climate. This is why these natural conditions in hot climates force, we may say, large lungs, large chests and wide breathing nos- trils to the inhabitants of those climates, and therefore they can live on the same food and be healthy while a northerner is so liable to take a disease there, because his air box (the lungs)-in fact, all his flumes and chimneys-are not adapted to that climate; but by breathing more, eating less, working but little, sleeping plenty, Nature will gradually change his system to conform to his surroundings or kill him in the attempt. Nature is no respecter of persons; you must conform to her laws or suffer. Reader, have we a key that opens the door to the cause of disease ? We have neglected to mention another important point which is left out in practically all medical literature, namely, the effect of the air or atmospheric changes upon the skin and functions of the body under the same conditions that we have de- scribed. During the day the person perspires so freely; the pores, being open, eliminate waste; at night the air in these hot climates near the coast becomes moist and cold, contracting and closing the pores of the skin; this moist and wet air, breathed into the lungs, does not give up the oxygen to the blood as does dry air, hence has a THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 73 doubly injurious effect in retaining waste matter by closing up the pores of the skin as well as lowering the steam power, so to speak, of the system through the lungs; to make it more clear, in dry and hot climates these diseases are almost unknown. On top of this many of these soldiers had to do more work-yes, twice over-than ought to be allowed in such a climate and under such circumstances, thus creating an extra amount of waste to add to the already accumulated ashes and clinkers in the system. Among the sick and dying were usually those (all things equal) that were not lazy but ambitious and reckless. The lazy-go-easy fellow who used a little common sense and did not dissipate was the soldier that stood it best. Even with these little general explanations it would seem that any physician, with only the mental conception of our most stupid animal-perhaps excepting the dude-would see at a glance that we have suggested nature's key to this mysterious disease, yellow fever. We are satisfied that a realization of the above conditions will be plain to the minds of many laymen, because many of them study nature and watch her visible manifestations, and profit by them; but not so with the medical pro- fession. We will tell you why: Because the laws of nature and the laws of the human body and their relations to each other are not taught nor studied in any medical institution in the world, although these medical savants are free to admit that nature is what they are dealing with. On top of that statement they howl contagion, quar- antine, vaccination and microbes with the dignity of a turkey gobbler on dress parade. Knowledge and genius make men humble, but this assumed dignity is nothing more than a peculiar kind of gall; it is the stock in trade of fools, bolstered up by printed Ethics and Dogmas made by the old fellows for the young fellows to live up to, in order to keep them whipped up in line, and thus keep a poor public in ignorance of their ignorance. For one, we would rather be a louse on Aguinaldo's head and riddled with American bullets than prey upon the life and health of a suffering humanity with a fetid breath and foul hypocrisy, just for a handful of filthy lucre. How a man made in the image of an immortal God can stoop to such double- faced humbuggery can only be because his conscience is frozen at a temperature of about three hundred degrees below zero. 74 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE We, the medical profession, are something like the small boy who put on his trousers "tother side to"; you couldn't tell whether we carried our soul in a pocketbook or whether we kept it hung over the front seat of a fashionable church. Of course, this is not talking nor explaining natural laws, but the best of us sometimes like to waddle away from an intellectual duck pond, like an old flatheaded drake will fly on the grass and do a little squaking. It may well be asked how long a time will elapse before man will put a stop to these rascals who enrich themselves by teaching us falsehoods because we put confidence in them. The following para- graph, written by a physician who was the editor of a Journal, will show that they have the idea that the people are not going to open their eyes right away. He says: "Those of you who take up this work with the idea of making money should remember that the public will not thank you or patronize you because of your intrinsic honesty. You cannot, if you aim to make money, afford to emulate the frank- ness of this journal. The children of this world demand two things before they pay their money; they demand to be humbugged, and they demand that they shall not be permitted to understand how the humbugging is done. If you can reconcile it with your conscience to gratify them on these points, financial success is yours. In place of talking sense, talk nonsense; tell him the power lies in you, and for this, being a fool, he will respect you, wonder at you, pay you, and afterwards abuse you, but you will have his money." This gentle and modest editor winds up by saying there is something rotten in human nature, a weakness, a canker, which infects the race. The above remarks remind us of a prominent professor in a medical col- lege who told us students that our practice would not make us suc- cessful, but he says: "I tell you boys you all want to be called good doctors when you go out, so you must learn how to talk glibly and have people think you are smart by talking long Latin names, even if you do not understand them yourselves; but your practice will not help you much, but it will be your practices that will make you successful." This is worse than tricks in dirty politics. No one who has ever given the business of the doctor any thought or investigation but what will agree that these quotations are the THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 75 stock in trade of nearly everything that is done in the practice of medicine today. It makes it plain that no matter how gray his hair is, or how high his authority, he is but a child in knowledge and his reputation a fraud. On a level with a child so far as his knowledge of the great truths in medicine is concerned, but is much different in other respects; his power of ruining healthy constitutions and lulling off his victims to the great beyond with the devilish curse of all drugs -opium and morphine. Oh, if these murderers will not stop to learn, would that they at least stop destroying human life. We boast of surpassing our ancestors in morals, but we have lost their sense of altruism. If we are not more cruel than the barbarians, we certainly can pass cruelty by with an air of indifference that surpasses the dignity of a darkey when making his breakfast on his neighbor's chickens, and thinks because he didn't get caught he has all the wis- dom of the world and believes in living among his fellow neighbors without surrendering his independence. But why should this darkey be any worse than one of these egotistical mental microbes or intellectual animalculae who says a long prayer on Sunday and is ready to bamboozle any woman out of her birthright by removing a pair of healthy ovaries on Monday; poison the systems of all the school children with a filthy poison, of which there is only one more animal poison that is its equal, namely, the poison of syphilis, on Tuesday; on Wednesday we find this in- human monster ready unnecessarily to remove the appendix in a case of appendicitis; on Thursday he injects the poison of diphtheria, which has been run through a living horse machine, into a half a dozen children, of which at least four of them will be only a case of tonsilitis (called quinsy), and crows because only one died of the two genuine cases of diphtheria. We have often in our own experience found houses where the family was quarantined; signs marked "diphtheria" tacked on the house; the whole neighborhood in excite- ment, and really nothing existed only common quinsy. Two physi- cians of my acquaintance made an enviable reputation by this same trick. On Friday our Christain friend is ready to tell you that you have kidney disease, when it is only lumbago, and the pain is not within eight inches of the kidneys. The next patient has heart dis- 76 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ease because she has a little short pain occasionally in that region, which is only a pain of the muscles covering .the ribs; the third patient has a serious stomach disease, thinks he can prevent it from becoming a cancer; when all the patient needs is to be told that he should give his stomach a chance to digest by giving his brain a rest-that he has not blood power enough to run both at high speed at the same time. On Saturday our medical fraud has free clinic, treats all poor people free of charge, takes lots of pains with them and tries to cure them if possible, has it advertised well so as to catch suckers who have plenty of money for the next week. This is not done very much by the honest doctor on some four cor- ners in the country; it is the scheming doctor; it is the doctor that makes lots of the country doctors believe that they have not the facili- ties for these difficult (very easy) cases. That they keep the microbes in the city hospital boiled down and the city sterilized; that success is assured to these patients that need these different operations but are really not very sick until told of the terrible disease they are afflicted with by this eminent inhuman monster. If the merciful God will let any of these highly educated and unmerciful pious frauds into Heaven, please send me to Hell, if there is such a place-we prefer to be with those whose sins are at least human. Some will likely say, "Doctor, you are too harsh"; others, who by experience have tasted, or worse, those who will carry with them to the grave the results of this legal quackery, will say you can't choke a bad dog to death with the sweetness of honey; while others, who are cold in their graves, if they could speak, would say that the record "Died of heart failure," ought to read "Murdered by morphine or quinine," or some other depressing agent; some will say you ought to use more moral suasion-that is the better way for those who have served their profession faithfully and honestly; but, unfortunately, this small minority have no show to get their hand on this powerful lever that moves and controls their murderous fads in medicine. To use moral suasion upon these frauds would be too much like trying to move a drove of Texas steers by repeating the Lord's Prayer-it won't work. We have driven many an ox team in our day (perhaps we ought to be driving one now), and we know that moral suasion THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE A MURDEROUS FAD 77 will not move them. Nor will moral suasion move these horny fel- lows so long as the public will applaud and pay them for poisoning their systems and ruining their constitutions by one of the most deadly animal poisons, under the pretence of preventing or curing a disease. There is as much sense in the logic as it would be sense to call Pat Betsey, and thus make a girl out of Pat. The abolition of this cruel practice upon a suffering humanity, a practice against na- ture, against the eternal laws of the Creator, is what we are contend- ing for. These monumental medical fads, such as the theories of contagion, vaccination, quarantine and the microbe as a cause of disease are a violation against human nature and its most sacred rights of life and liberty, against a confiding public, against the laws of nature, and thus must incur misery, suffering and death in their execution. These awful subjects, so important to the welfare of those now living and those yet to be born, demand the most solemn, earnest, honest and effectual inquiry. We appeal to the wisdom and united powers of every State to investigate thoroughly and decis- ively; then they will surely stamp upon it an indelible stigma which will do away forever with these iniquities. The evidences which nature visibly reveals are truths that carry with them what is superior to all argument, nor does it dread or fear the opposition of our great- est laboratory theorists. INTELLECT. "Just experience proves in every soil That those who think must govern those who toil." Man requires intellect to perceive and apply science and laws to health, to government, to happiness, and more than all to a right life. Facts, and the very structure of the human mind clinch this philo- sophical nail. Its frontal position proves that its office is to guide and govern all. There is an inherent fitness between this position and its directing functions. It is the pilot house above and in front of all that it can command. Mind has ruled, will rule the race; Socrates, Confucius, Cicero, Demosthenes and many others wielded unlimited power over men long after their death, because they ad- dressed themselves to the common sense of mankind. Thought writers govern men, and their influence is boundless and eternal. If I wished to control the greatest power possible over mankind, both temporary and permanent, I would show them facts and give them reasons. If my object were to benefit and reform them, I should address myself to their understanding. Great reasoners sway the masses. The savants of all nations do more for them than their rulers. Great statesmen, in peace and in war, control nations and ages. Races are not always won by the swift nor the battles by the strong, but the longest and clearest heads, deepest thinkers; shrewd- est managers and best planners usually carry the day. Then to properly expound these laws and facts of nature, and to properly direct your passions, your feelings, in fact all your propensities of the brain, by shining them through the intellect, your reason and com- mon sense; to teach you why and how this course is better than that, and the consequences of disobeying or obeying these laws of nature, and to enlist your very selfishness in behalf of their obedience, is this matter presented to you. Your own life, O man, woman and child, will be poor, imperfect and a failure, unless you put this intellect and understanding at 78 INTELLECT 79 the helm and not let it be warped by your feelings and passions. The laws of cause and effect, which are changeless for all time, will not change to suit the whims or fancies of some so-called scientist, and our object in writing is to bring you to understand these laws that you may have the power to properly apply them, which will enable you to acquire health, long life and happiness, instead of being mis- guided by charlatans and quacks, as is now often done. This is accomplished by the fact that men too often let their feel- ings think for them, whereas all should feel as they think; that is they should school their feelings to follow their judgment. None can be healthy, none can be happy until they do. Why do men's opin- ions and doctrines differ so much on all subjects? Just because they let their feelings overrule their sense. Then see to it that intellect is schooled and disciplined to take and hold supreme control over all you say, do and are. Man should be governed purely on intellectual principles, and not by his animal propensities over his higher and intellectual organs; all his actions and deeds should be governed by this principle. Matrimonial choice to be a happy state must be made on purely intellectual principles, and in harmony with nature's laws, or they will be warped and biased; in this one particular our lack of the right knowledge and judgment is unfortunately too often the case. All preaching should have for its object to strengthen devo- tion by appeals to the intellect, and all arguing of conscientious law- yers to. juries and politicians to voters should be individually appeal- ing to the intellect and leave it to the will to execute them. All mechanical inventions and their products and all modern improve- ments in machinery are but the result of modern intellects over their predecessors. The intellect directs every muscular motion; it should decide then which way to walk, what blow to strike at work, and just what to do and how to do it. Then, while every motion should be governed by sense, how much more should every feeling. Judg- ment then should help us to select our food, and to eat it properly; to exercise and work in the best manner; to avoid excesses in all things, and to keep up continually that law of balance which nature demands of us in order that we may live and enjoy to old age all the functions of the body. This intellect, when educated to under- 80 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE stand nature's simple laws, directs parents just what to do and what not to do for the best good of their children, so as not to spoil them by well meant but badly directed kindness. A well trained intel- lect will guide the propensity of force, what to do and what not, and make every stroke tell for choosing friends, and so manage as to obtain the most good and the least harm from them. It will show the seeker after truth what is right and wrong, true and false, good and bad. It will enable writers to write, teachers to teach, and learners to learn, inventors to get up combines and work machinery. It teaches by experience (that best of all teachers) ; it teaches the lesson of all past ages as taught by history and acquires and uses that knowledge which gives power to accomplish and enjoy, in addition to the pleasure which intellectual action gives, and of which man knows no greater. But alas, intellectual poverty stares us all in the face. How little men study! Yet they think still less. How many could recall in their own lives hundreds, yes thousands of in- stances, in which you could have avoided that evil, that sickness, that misfortune or another, and secured the good, if you had only had your wits about you, had known and thought, and therefore done as you ought. How often has this whim, or that notion pre- vented you from success, fame or fortune. How little men really know, and how little time and money they expend on science, philos- ophy and the study of nature, but instead ninety-five per cent, and perhaps more, follow their feelings or animal propensities instead of intellect. Emerge then from the littleness of a common place inferior status in life, to the nobility of perfect manhood and womanhood. As a man desires to be so will he become. Familiarize yourself with the thoughts of the men who have left their impress of real nobility and character upon the world in their writings, which are as freshly sweet to-day as when first, written. Books, books, books; let only the best of them be your advisory companions; they will lift you far above the low, groveling commonplace of a mere vapidity of gossipy, fruit- less, tawdry life, and make self education, thereby improving the intellect and higher qualities of the mind, which should be the acme of your ambition; to fit this earthly temple for the indwelling of holier INTELLECT 81 aspirations, and the completion of the well-rounded man. Is this not far better than crowding comic shows, and sensational exhibitions, yet pass by scientific lectures and works, and on the other hand read emotional novels, yet ignore good hard sense ? Learn the poverty and misery produced by following the feelings or propensities, and their power for good and happiness, when governed by a high and well trained intellect. How often does it occur in Congress, to the detri- ment, and even to producing suffering and misery to the majority of the people, that the picked men of the most intelligent nation on earth, who are sworn to decide and act according to their intellectual convictions, on the most solemn national occasions will act and vote on direct party lines, guided by selfishness and prejudices, and even stoop to consider mercenary conditions only, instead of following intel- lect and duty to do the greatest good to the greatest number. Then let us tremble lest our mere whims should blind our judg- ment on matters of minor moment. There is just one right way; let us seek and follow it. Then intellectual energy and culture, indi- vidually and public, becomes the very highest object of human atten- tion and pursuit; (religion not excepted) because this promotes all. Then by putting this cultivated intellect, fully instructed as to the laws of life, of health and all conditions to promote happiness, at the head of all moral excellence would install them lord over human doctrines, and conduct would banish ignorance, disease of all kinds, close grog-shops and gambling dens, annihilate vice, and depravity in all their forms; bury sectarianism with its bigoted intol- erance; banish both poverty and sickness, purify and sweeten every virtue, enhance every human capacity and excellence and crown hu- manity with the very climax of human perfection and enjoyment. Intellectual culture or the development of the mind is the most exhalted and enchanting subject and makes man God's noblest work, be he laborer, mechanic, statesman, scientist or artist; the most beauti- ful in form, complex in mechanism and perfect in function, powerful to accomplish and exalted in enjoyrpent, and creation's veritable lord and crown. All his other functions are great, noble and indispensable, but the intellect (and especially reason) is the crowning gift of God to 82 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE man, and his constitutional governor and guide. Let us praise and worship Him with our whole soul for all these powers and faculties, for crowning all with those intellectual capacities which enable us to perceive the great laws and fundamental truths of nature, and apply them to the study of Him and His works and the promotion of health, life, and our own happiness; though without morality it is despicable in proportion to its power, and men of impulse are men of misfortune and suffering. Yet intellect is the constitutional King of Man. Propensities are blind and blindly seek pleasures, and hence need intellect to direct them to their legitimate objects and teach the laws conducive to life, health and happiness. The better the thinker the better the laborer; capacity to furnish "brains," ability to see how "things hang together," is the measure of usefulness, from the railway president, the bank director, the' newspaper editor, down to the man who runs a store, a shop, or a farm. We make some curious distinctions between brain work and manual labor. We shrink from the latter, not merely because it is ignominious but because it is exhausting. The former is highly es- teemed, not alone because honorable, but because it apparently demands little physical strength. The correlation between strength and mental power is no more obvious than between strength of lungs and vocal power. Yet work is work, be it physical or mental. It is expenditure of force, and force spent leaves a vacuum behind it, an exhaustion felt or unfelt. We have said the world's workers are brain workers. Look the field over in America. Must we conclude that the stress of work is too great for human endurance? What means these sudden deaths of prominent men in the mature prime of life ? Why do so many busi- ness men suffer from nervous collapse? Is brain labor killing? Clearly the brain must have a good supply of thought material from the blood; the nervous system must be active and continuous in its operations, the removal of waste and repair must proceed with dis- patch and vigor. Just remember that you go to bed sick every night and should get up healthy in the morning. But how often do you follow nature in this respect? What does all this signify but the need for the INTELLECT 83 brain of robust physical life? There should be such a superabundance of vital energy that the brain shall be richly nourished and the whole animal economy preserved in all its integrity at the same time. In fact, first and foremost and all the time, the brain worker needs to be a good healthy animal. The better his qualifications in this line the more work and the more continuous work can he perform, and with the more impunity.. Gladstone furnishes an example of a distinguished brain worker who was capable of doing work not alone notable in quality; but he was able to thus cerebrate continuously without exhibiting any diminu- tion of mental energy or physical force. But you point to the illus- trious men who have achieved greatness in spite of ill-health; I in turn call attention to the fact that the best energy of their lives was put upon that work. There was no surplus, no reserve force. Also, mental action was not constant, but spasmodic and uncertain. Like the intermittent spring, when the reservoir was full the foun- tain of thought played; when the reserve of physical or nervous energy was exhausted or low, the thinker was temporarily "played out." Call to mind the successful men and women engaged in active cerebral pursuits coming within the range of your observations. Is it not noticeable that the element of physical vigor has been the main stay of intellectual efficiency? Happy is he who has been endowed with a superior intellect. Better still if its highest capacities have been developed through training. Thrice happy if that intellect be sustained by an A No. i physique. But quality of intellect and per- fection of physique are natural endowments not bestowed upon all alike. Also, the patrimony of natural robustness may have been tam- pered with, even recklessly squandered. The majority must work, if at all, within limitations more or less narrow. With them we are partially concerned. We may premise that work is healthful; that manual labor, normal in degree, seldom kills; that mental toil per se is not mischievous to the vital economy; that the nemesis of "over- work" is more likely to overtake the literator than the proletaire. One element of work is not, however, to be overlooked or dis- carded; viz., forced brain work, or worry, which is the great shortener of life, whatever the occupation. To define worry in accurate techni- 84 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE cal phraseology is difficult. Figuratively, under the influence of worry the mind works like an engine with the governing apparatus out of gear, frantically, spasmodically, ineffectively. Physiologically the nervous system, mediator between mind and body, is victimized by worry. Upon the one hand it must impel the brain to unremitting activity; upon the other, it is guilty of pitiless exactions upon the physical economy. It wears itself out by its own action, and involves mind and body in the common ruin. Herein lies the secret of "over- work." Whatever is done easily, is done harmlessly. Worry, at the dictation of ambition, or the strenuous demands of business, social and professional life, enforces work beyond natural limits. With flagrant disregard of the conditions of well being, the "candle of life" is heedlessly burned at both ends. Experience and observation tend to corroborate these statements. Henry Ward Beecher gave it as his testimony that he would have been in his grave a quarter of a century ago had he not overcome his natural tendency to worry. "I am convinced," said he, "that no youth can expect to achieve great success unless he learns that les- son. It is worry more often than work that kills men." Observation shows that many of the most largely successful men in business and professional life are the least careworn. They carry immense responsibilities lightly. There, is "no admittance" to taking care, and their work proceeds with the measured rhythm of assured power. One question is answered. It is not brain work, pure and simple, that kills. It is injudicious, unphysiological work; it is worry. But the average man does not possess extraordinary powers of endurance and while in the process of achieving success is exposed to the malign influence of worry. Must he withdraw from the list? Obviously this is the only alternative unless the work may, by conservation of his forces, be safely accomplished within his limitations. Or recog- nizing limitations he may systematically set about widening the fet- tering limits and intelligently husbanding physical resources. For him it is a question of quantity of nerve force rather than of quality. Remembering that mental energy is a transformed physiological prod- uct, it is evident that quantity of nerve force depends upon the tone and activity of the corporal mechanism. INTELLECT 85 The problem of perfect cerebration is almost wholly a physio- logical one, and resolves itself into how to increase the volume of force issuing from the brain. It is to be solved by ascertaining the conditions of physical well-being practicable under the stress and strain of an advanced and advancing civilization. This solution in its details I may not essay. While civilization has developed the mental and moral capabilities, it has made it increasingly difficult to live nat- urally, and has removed the safeguards of life that we have in a state of nature. Creatures of the wilderness are proverbially vigorous. We have in a degree exchanged the rugged strength of the tem- pest-tossed oak for the charming delicateness of the hot-house exotic. Escape from the circean effeminacy of civilization may be found only in a physiological return to first principles. Much might properly be said of the importance of hygienic diet, rest, pure air and recreation to the brain worker. "On the day of judgment," says Jean Paul, "God will perhaps pardon you for starving your children when bread was so dear, but if he should charge you with stinting them in his free air, what answer shall you make?" Nature's way of securing vigor is the best way, the only way. There is no brain quickener like unto physical exercise in the open air; there is no surer prophylactic against nervous maladies. Oxygen is inspiration, but physical exer- cise is not riding in a street car, nor sauntering down town. It is that which sends the blood pulsing through all its courses; that which takes the starch out of the linen and the effete matter out of the circulation; which builds in the temples and fires up the nerves to ardent action. This it is which gives the mind rest. There is salvation for the statesman in chopping down a tree; there is relaxation for the worried man of affairs in a spin behind his span of fast horses; there is recuperation for the exhausted thinker in a rapid stride or a turn on his bicycle, while the literary man finds food for mind and brain in his solitary tramp over the country through field and forest, nor is our reasoning empirical. The relation of brain work to body work is known and well established. Since the brain requires one-fifth of the entire supply of blood in the body, the drain imposed upon life forces by the brain worker is immense. The law of Treriranus gives the key to the utility of exercise 86 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE for overworked brain and nervous system, viz.: "Each organ is to every other as an excreting organ. In other words, to insure per- fect health, every tissue, bone, nerve, tendon or muscle should take from the blood certain materials and return to it certain others. To do this every organ must or ought to have its period of activity and rest, so as to keep the vital fluids (the blood) in a proper state to nourish every other part." The muscles, the larger part of the human body, thus act as a storehouse of vitality for the brain. Their exercise then is not only essential to their own health and vigor but to the proper nourishing of the brain and nervous system as well. They also in exercise act as an excretory organ for the brain. The vitiated blood is withdrawn from it, is purified and enriched. Re- freshment of body and brain follows as a necessary consequence. The teachings of history1 enforce the dictum of natural law. No nation has been so celebrated for intellectual attainments, no nation has furnished such a uniform showing of mental and physi- cal superiority as the Greeks. We in our day may well go to them for the secret of right living. They knew that the highest well- being of mind and of body went hand in hand. They knew there must be artificial compensation for the lost opportunities of physi- cal exercise in a state of nature. They were wise enough to provide a system of physical education which made Greece, Greece. The law of Lycurgus provided free training schools for the phy- sical education of both sexes. Greek physicians prescribed athletic sports. The Pan-Hellenic games furnished the stimulus to athleti- cism. It was "good form." Even the philosophers were "peripa- tetic," and as a race they were models of physical beauty and mental strength. I believe that we Americans would do well to emulate their example. I believe that if we would not become a nation of impotent valetudinarians we must preach and practice the gospel of physical culture, but it must not be overlooked that the law must be adapted to each in the degree applicable to each case. We must show intelligent reverence for the temple in which we live. We must con- scientiously consider the rational conditions of the thinking process. We must, by all the means in our power, facilitate the untrammeled expression of the ego through the medium of corporal matter. POSITIVE PROOFS THAT THE BLOOD CAN CIRCU- LATE WITHOUT THE AID OF THE HEART. The element that gives circulation to the blood received through the lungs by the air breathed. The most valuable discovery of the nineteenth century for the benefit of humanity. The key to health and the key to the existing mysteriousness re- garding the cause of disease. The human body has often been likened to a machine. It is not only a machine, but it is a machine shop, full of machines, each one of these machines having a particular duty to perform. All of the machines in this human machine shop are kept in running order and linked together so as to run by one center, i. e., by one power or force. If you go into a large machine shop and see a lot of machinery all running smoothly, you will see that each machine is run by a belt attached to large shafts, to which all of the machinery is attached. Anyone who was not acquainted with its workings would naturally inquire, what makes this machinery run? Some one would likely explain that it was run by an engine out there in the engine room; you would, of course, visit the engine room and there you would see a large, magnificent and powerful engine, which you would look upon with admiration and wonder. About three hundred years ago a physician by the name of Harvey looked into this human machine shop and there he saw a lot of machinery (the stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, spleen, etc.) running smoothly. But not satisfied, he inquired further and went into the human engine room, and there he saw a large engine (the heart) pumping and giv- ing force to run the machinery in this human machine shop, and thus discovered the circulation of the blood. He also came to the conclusion that this engine was the real power that circulated the blood throughout the body. 87 88 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE This theory of Harvey's that the heart is the power to circulate the blood, has been adopted and taught ever since. No honor can be too great to immortalize the name of Harvey for demonstrating that the blood does circulate in every portion of the body. No man was ever fought with more bitterness, or met with stronger opposi- tion from the medical profession. History tells us that the medical profession, for nine years or more, fought Harvey's discovery; and until some physician, we think it was a doctor from Austria, became so wrathy that he was deter- mined to forever put a stop to the foolish idea that the blood did cir- culate. To do this he determined to write a book and show by actual demonstration that Harvey was wrong. In those days experiment upon the living animal was not as easily accomplished as it is to-day. But this opponent was determined to demonstrate upon the animal to his satisfaction that the blood did not circulate. In short the re- sults were that instead of proving that Harvey was wrong, he proved positively that Harvey was right. And instead of writing a book to show that Harvey was wrong, he wrote a book proving the truth- fulness of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. From that time on it became generally accepted by the medical profession. But Harvey's accepted doctrine that the heart is a pump, and by its muscular contraction propels the blood throughout the body, is erroneous, absurd and an absolute physical impossibility. To demonstrate that this is true, we delivered an address in June, 1898 (and about six months later published a pamphlet demonstrat- ing positively that our position taken was correct), before our National Medical Convention held at Omaha, Neb. Although the thermome- ter registered 104 degrees in the shade, we received about as cold a reception as could be found in northern Greenland. And to cap the climax this national body barred my paper from being published in its proceedings. An instance of this kind, to our knowledge, has never occurred before in this country. But it goes a long way to show, even in this enlightened day, how the medical profession will always defend their position, no matter how false, unless it is a fad that can be sprung upon the public, with lots of money in it for the doctor. POSITIVE PROOFS 89 Then just what does circulate the blood is of immense import- ance, for it concerns more than anything else all human beings, throughout all times and places. Then all who think must search out the philosophy of the circulation of the blood as one of the most wonderful operations of nature. And when the real power which does circulate the blood is generally known, and the functions of the heart understood, we have found the long hidden cord that unites and accounts accurately, and can explain in a very simple manner what the world has been anxiously craving for for the past two thousand years-the cause of disease; how to prevent it, and how to recover, when, by accident or otherwise, we have overstepped the bounds of our powers. It will remove from the medical profession, and the world at large, the many mysteries that have beclouded us all in the past, creating such a diversity of ideas and theories, as well as the many false conclusions regarding health and disease. To make it clear to the reader that the element, that is, the main and essential one, in this wonderful phenomenon of the circulation of the blood, is received through the lungs from the air we breathe, we simply go from this engine room to the boiler room. Here is where the man who went from the machine shop to the engine room made the error in not trying to find out where the engine gets its power. Upon further inquiry he would have been told that it was received from the boiler room. In the boiler room it would have been explained to him how this power was generated that gives such wonderful force to the engine and all the machinery contained in the shop. And the engineer would have explained to the visitor that this power was called electricity, generated by this fire that was kept up by coal and air; and that a certain element contained in this coal called carbon, was the element burned and that the rest of the coal is turned into ashes and smoke. But this coal will not burn without air. When you remove the air from the furnace the fire goes out. This ele- ment in the air that is needed to burn the coal is called oxygen. And wherever we find heat or fire we find that this element carbon and this element oxygen from the air is always the cause of it, no matter where it is found. The heat in the body that is always kept up to 98 degrees is kept up by these two elements, carbon and oxygen. 90 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Heat or fire means the burning up or using up of carbon and oxygen. It does not matter where this heat is found, whether in a fur- nace, in a stove, or in the human body. Then it is clear that the human body must be furnished with coal and air from the food we eat and from the air we breathe, the only difference being that our food con- tains a larger number of different elements than the coal burned in the furnace. This shows another benevolent design in nature; the human system being so much more complex than the working machin- ery of a factory, it must be supplied with food equally complex. Although many of our foods are nearly all carbon, yet with a little mixed diet we furnish the system with carbon to supply its heat and other elements to keep the body in repair. Then, to put the whole matter in a sentence, there is practically but very little difference in the material, whether it is living matter or whether it is lifeless mat- ter, that they are made up of; the only difference lies in the com- plexity of the combinations that creates the power that runs the machine shop, and the material that runs the human machine shop is in the difference of the complex combinations of the same material. The principal elements in one are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. While the principal elements in the human body are the same elements just named, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. To illustrate the above, the human body is about three-fourths water, and water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, so we see that two elements form three-fourths of the human body. But it is their complex combinations with the other elements that makes the difference between a human being and the tree in the woods; between that and the stone on the mountain, or anything else existing in the universe. Then all of the difference there is in anything is the combination of elements in a simple form, and the combination of the same elements in a complex form. We have the oxygen from the air and the carbon in coal and wood combined to create a fire in a furnace. We breathe this same element, oxygen, from»the air into our lungs and from there it is taken into the system, but instead of forming into just a simple combination, as it does with the fuel in the furnace, in the human body it forms into many complex combinations, and by complexity POSITIVE PROOFS 91 of the elements we have what may be termed the foundation of life and the foundation of human existence. If we remove or cut off this element, oxygen, the human body in a few moments becomes cold and lifeless. This element, oxygen, is to the life of the body what steam or electricity is to the life and activity of the engine and all of its attached machinery. Heretofore it has been generally admitted that the oxygen from the air must be had to sustain life, and that its functions were to change the dark blood in the veins into the bright scarlet-red blood in the arteries; and to burn up the carbon taken into the system by the food we eat, and thus create an energy or steam for the body. But in this complex combination of the elements of which the body is composed this element oxygen probably more than any other is instrumental, or we might say "king of all the elements of the body," in forming all of its various complex combinations that form this won- derful structure called the human system. Life must be considered as the result of the complex relations outside of the body, to those even more complex relations of which the body is composed. Anything, then, that will sever these relations will cause death. Anything that would interfere with these relations to change them materially from the normal would be called disease. Of all other things combined, none has such an influence on health or disease as the one so ofteJn mentioned-oxygen, the king of life. We will in this chapter confine ourselves to the evidence, both inductive and those that can be absolutely demonstrated upon the living subjects. First.-At the birth of an infant we can notice several changes that are strong and incontestable evidence in demonstrating the power that propels the blood. What are these changes ? First: The placenta detaches itself by contraction of the uterus, and if the umbilical pulse beat continues a minute or two and then gradually becomes more feeble until it stops, the child is dead; but if the child makes a sudden gasp and begins to breathe life goes on. What are the explanations of these two phenomenal changes ? One is that the placenta is a storage battery, and when exhausted of its supply it stops; the other that the lungs of the new-born child are charged by air pressure. This air pressure is 92 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE about two thousand pounds to every square foot of surface, and by breathing the lungs stay charged from birth until death. This illus- tration alone shows the wonderful adjustment of the external relations to the internal relations and the functions of the body. Second.-By suddenly cutting off the breathing, as by hanging or drowning, the pulse beat keeps up for a few moments but gradually becomes feebler and as the lung cells become exhausted of their air supply the circulation stops and life is extinct. Third.-Why do you feel so logy and sluggish in muggy weather, just before a storm or during hot weather? For the reason that you do not get the force and power of the circulation of the blood, because of the lack of the quality and quantity of the oxygen in the air the pulse will be found weaker, not having the volume or force as in clear or cold weather. Fourth.-The reason people suffocate by gas in a room or when packed in a closed room, or in a room filled with smoke, is from want of oxygen and not from the gases, as formerly supposed, although the smoke or gases are responsible for the disappearance, or rather the absorption, of the oxygen. Fifth.-Another practical illustration is that when cutting the arteries of the neck of bullocks in a slaughter house without cutting the trachea, and when the animal has nearly bled to death, the blood running leisurely, they often make several strong efforts to breathe when the pulsation and spurting of the blood will renew with activity. Sixth.-Another strong argument that the heart can not propel the blood is that size (all other things being equal) is a measure of power. It is estimated that the heart in order to accomplish the task of propelling the blood to all parts of the body would exert a power at every pulsation equal to fifty pounds, varying in different persons according to health, labor, etc. This would be equal to two hundred thousand pounds every hour, awake and asleep, and this would mean that the heart puts forth energy sufficient to raise its own weight twenty thousand feet every hour, while an active pedestrian climbing a mountain can raise himself only about one-twentieth of that dis- tance. These estimations refute themselves and are impossible for an POSITIVE PROOFS 93 organ of its size. They are not made from the size of its muscles, or from what it is actually known to accomplish, but from what it must accomplish in order to send the blood throughout the system as fast and powerfully as we know it actually does circulate; and that all this immense power is needed to accomplish the circulation is admitted. But that the heart does not and can not supply this power its size alone would prove. The theory is absolutely wrong. What machinery could with- stand all of this terrible strain? Had we not better look about us and see if nature has not provided some other means more rational, and less liable to derangement, as well as not contradicted by every law of dynamics? Breathing is the source of all circulation, whether it be in animal life or vegetable life. In man and animals breathing is performed through the lungs, excepting fish, which breathe through the gills. All forms of vegetable life breathe through their leaves, the circulation fluid (sap) being carried from rootlet to bud with just as much cer- tainty, and with a thousand times as much force, as it takes to cir- culate the blood in a human being. But the plant has no heart. So are there other fluids in the body that need more force to circulate them than the blood requires, yet they have no heart, as the lymphatic and glandular systems. Everything in the universe is governed by what is differentially called power, energy, force, electricity, affinity, attraction, etc. The earth, sun, moon and stars are so accurate in their movements that time is entirely measured by them-each and every one are entirely dependent and related to one another. Man himself is dependent, related and united to them. We all know that all positive electric bodies proportionally repel, while all negatives and positives attract each other; hence by this same law is oxygen introduced into the system by breathing. This air when breathed charges the air-cells of the lungs while the iron in the blood attracts the oxygen. This charges both the air and the blood-cells positively, and thereby generates a self-acting, propelling force by each repelling that in the other. To make it as clear as the noonday sun that the heart does not 94 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE circulate the blood is an experiment made by taking a fluid and a force pump and injecting it into the arteries after they have been allowed to empty themselves. You can use all of the force possible, yes, ten times as much force as the heart can supply, and you can send the fluid only to the end of the arteries. Enough force can be used to rupture the arteries, but the fluid can not be carried into the veins. Why ? Because the arteries are a separate set of blood vessels as well as the veins, and the blood can only pass from one to the other by attraction or affinity; there must be a positive and a negative; this is the law that governs universal nature, which includes the human body. To make it more clear, the veins contain venous or impure blood, and the arteries pure, arterial blood, and these as well as the tissues have an attraction for each other, which is the cause of the blood passing readily and quickly from the arteries into the veins. This experiment was not included in my original essay, but this alone is all that would be neces- sary to forever brand the old theory as positively wrong. Is not this problem plain as well as simple, that it is the oxygen from the air we breathe that creates the proper conditions to circulate the blood, and not the muscular contraction of the heart? And this force is not like dynamic pressure, which would strain or even burst the heart, while the other works on a different principle-that of mutual antagonism and not of pressure. This oxygen is brought into the air-cells of the lungs by the act of breathing, crowding the air-cells full, which keeps passing through into the blood-cells, and the air-cells being kept charged by the air breathed. Harvey taught that the muscular contraction and the expansion of the heart was the real cause of the circulation of the blood, and no physiologist so far has questioned his authority. Our object is to show that this is absolutely wrong, and to show that our discovery of the power of circulation gives the key to all mysteries now existing as to what is the cause of disease and how to prevent it, and that nearly all of present conclusions drawn and taught by the medical profession are ruinous to our constitutions and are the cause of most of the suffering and misery that exists among mankind, thus shorten- ing our own lives, and more so the lives of future generations. The muscles and nerves now seize this oxygen thus brought to POSITIVE PROOFS 95 their hands and consume it in carrying on the various operations and functions of the life process, which leaves this blood negative by the time it gets through these capillaries into the veins. This negative state of venous blood now attracts it back to the lungs, only to recharge it positively and send it off again on its life sustaining circuit. Just think of the vast amount of power that it would require to propel this blood, by the mechanical action of the heart, to the surface of these minute capillaries, and to overcome all of the obstacles it has to encounter. For instance, the pressure of a person weighing two hundred pounds sitting on a fence or a board for hours, and yet the blood must be pushed through this point of pressure between board and bone in spite of this heavy weight and many other like obstructions. Think of the power it takes to resist a lady's tightly drawn corset, or to keep the blood flowing through the soles of the feet while stand- ing, or even to resist the pressure of the. air on the body, which is over two thousand pounds on every square foot of the body's whole surface. Yet this electric principle furnishes enough for all this without any strain whatever. The function of the heart, instead of propelling the blood, is to regulate, to distribute, and not to circulate, the blood; otherwise its functions would be chaos instead of performing its life work, just as the regulator of an engine regulates its motion; although the engineer most always keeps an extra reserve of steam that he can turn on at will. The machine works with the same evenness unless the steam gets below its needed amount; then the whole machinery begins to slacken. So with the system; a good supply of reserve energy should be kept on hand, which of course is generated by the combined func- tions, and when used up gradual exhaustion follows. If you want to labor hard with the brain or muscle, and without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly of good and pure air which contains the normal amount of oxygen, for it is only oxygen that is taken up in the blood. It is the invigorator of life and of all of the functions of the body. Nature has no panacea like it, for as fire goes down with the scarcity of oxygen and goes out when it disappears, so the fire of life goes down as its supply of oxygen diminishes, and 96 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE death follows when it disappears, showing that oxygen is more indis- pensable to life than any other substance, for we can live longer with- out food or any other necessaries of life, but it always should be taken in the form of pure air, as it is rarely of any benefit when taken arti- ficially. From the foregoing we see that breathing rightly promotes every life capacity and function, and we should attend more to breathing than to eating; yet many breathe so little that the heaving of the chest is scarcely perceptible, that it almost seems as if they were too lazy to breathe deeply, when it is so important to health and so cheap. Most of us might live many years longer and be always healthy and in every way better by redoubling our breathing of pure air, day and night. Most men and nearly all women breathe wholly with their ribs. This is largely due to their suspending their apparel from their hips by bands which press just below the diaphragm and prevent its downward motion. Apparel of men, women and children should hang from the shoulders and not from the hips, but with most of us the fault is in neglecting to cultivate the habit of deep and full breathing. Most ladies by noticing their own chest will see that their breath goes down only five or six inches, while every breath should move their whole chest; in other words, fill the lungs full at every breath. Not one person in a thousand fills his lungs as full and steadily while awake as when asleep, but if they did they would improve their health and vitality a hundredfold. It is when we are asleep that most of us breathe as we should when awake. Thep to know the real power that propels the blood is of more value and importance to all human beings, and all those yet to be born, than any physiological question brought out for centuries. It is of great importance to the physician in the information it gives him in diagnosing and treating diseases. It tells him that the old theories are wrong, and that he must look to the physical law of bal- ance and proportion between the internal, or bodily, and external elements and forces for the cause of all diseases, such as typhoid fever, yellow fever, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc. It tells how typhoid fever and like cofiditions are often brought about by the person going around full of grief, down-hearted, letting his head hang, and seldom if ever taking a full breath to send the blood bounding through the capillaries, POSITIVE PROOFS 97 and gradually choking up the fires of life. It is almost impossible to keep up the blues if you keep the normal blood bounding through the system by filling the lungs full at every breath with pure air. It also tells us why the people in hot climates (where the heat expands the air, hence contains less oxygen per volume) get lazy and indolent. This well-known fact would indicate not only that every physiological fact goes to show that energy or nervous force is mainly created by the combustion in these capillary blood vessels; and that this life force thus created by the combustion would depend almost entirely upon the normal blood being charged properly with pure air so as to keep up all of the functions of the body as they are, which is health. It tells why in Chickamauga Park (during the war with Spain), where nature has left nothing undone to produce good health, that there were about fifty thousand of the physical cream of our young manhood, selected from all over the country, and yet here they had a large amount of sickness and a high death rate. Why so much fever, measles and typhoid fever in such splendid environments ? It is caused by the violation of the law of balance and proportion, between the external and the internal forces, which are the same in each individual but differ in degree. When the fixed or normal equivalents are changed, you change it to something else, and this something else is what we call disease. In one of the criticisms published in a medical journal we were severely taken to task for claiming the honor to have been the dis- coverer of a valuable addition to science without the demonstrative evidence upon the living subject. The criticism we thought a valid one and set about to make it good. After making proper preparations we followed up our experiments and observations for six months. The result of these experiments were written for publication in the Chicago Medical Times and afterward published in pamphlet form, and the result of these experiments is reproduced in the following pages. To oppose a doctrine that has been one of the main pillars of physi- ology, one which has been advocated and promulgated by illustrious men for centuries past, may seem to be presumptuous, and theories so 98 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE advanced have always been, and as medical history will show, have always met strong opposition, until the question of fact involved *has been positively and conclusively demonstrated. Such was the case when Harvey taught that the blood circulates in the body. The following few pages will positively demonstrate my theory, the experiments having been made upon the living animal (all under the influence of chloroform so as to give no pain or suffering of any kind). First: That the blood can circulate without the aid of the heart. Second: That the arteries (as now taught) do not aid in assisting blood circulation by muscular contraction. Third: That the main function of the heart is to regulate, and that it is a distributing center for the blood. The strongest point made in my former thesis was concerning pre- natal circulation, in which I endeavored to show that the heart could not be the cause, neither could it have the power necessary with which to propel the blood. No one could study the great uterine placental and foetal circulation without coming to the conclusion that something besides the mechanical power of the heart is the force which accom- plishes this wonderful feat of nature. I also endeavored to show that this, with the many other obser- vations to which attention was called, ought to have some merit in proving that the heart can not be the main power that propels the blood, and if so, I thought they would perhaps stimulate some one with more leisure and wealth than I, by actual experiments and dem- onstration, to positively prove or disprove my observations and reflec- tions, and if proven, to thus add a very important discovery to physi- ology. Professor Winfield S. Hall has just published a work on physi- ology, and therein he says that the contraction of the heart is the only act that circulates the blood in the arteries. The professor having acknowledged reading my experiments upon the circulation of the blood, the statement that the heart was the only power would seem almost conclusive evidence that his new book was not written from his own knowledge, based upon experiment and observation, but would simply indicate that he merely copied the old story and signed his POSITIVE PROOFS 99 name to it; further, that he entirely ignores anything that comes from the woods and not connected with the fecund mother of dogmatism, which is the windy foundation of the practice of medicine. The following experiments will show that some of the conclusions in the first paper were not exactly correct, although they did not alter the principal contention that the heart does not create the circuit of the blood. The full-grown hog has proven to be one of the best animals for experimental purposes, because its inner organs compare nearer to man's than any other animal, and because their endurance under chloro- form or ether for a long time without the apparent nervous shock which other animals manifest is much greater. The first experiment was made upon an animal weighing two hun- dred and fifty to three hundred pounds. After administering an anaes- thetic the abdominal cavity was opened. The aorta (the largest artery that carries the blood from the heart) and the continuous arteries and accompanying veins were laid bare along their whole length to the end of the foot, making nearly four feet of blood vessels laid bare in one continuous length. The animal was then suspended by its hind legs, and the aorta was tied close to its emergence from the diaphragm; in less time than it takes to tell it the entire blood vessel (four feet straight upward) with all of the accompanying branches was empty, while the veins increased in their fullness. The aorta was then untied and the blood was permitted to circulate, and when it had found its equilibrium both the large artery (aorta) and vein were ligated at their emergence from the diaphragm, thus absolutely cutting off the circulation from any influence from the heart-the arteries all emptied themselves of their blood just as readily as when the artery alone was tied, the only difference being that the veins of the lower portion of the body became full. This experiment alone demonstrates beyond question the fallacy of the old teaching. The next step was to remove the stomach and the intestines and repeat the two experiments just cited, with the same results. These astonishing as well as gratifying results were a stimulant for further and more thorough investigations. The animal was then taken down and laid upon the table, the aorta ligated at the diaphragm, and all its 100 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE branches between this point and its bifurcation were also tied. It was then ligated at its bifurcation, when the blood vessels emptied them- selves beyond this point. The ligature at the bifurcation was then removed and again the remaining blood between the two mentioned ligated spaces started alone, although not as rapidly as the first. The little transverse elasticity of the smaller arteries therefore has no influence upon the circulation of the blood, but only gives space for the various changes of blood pressure that must of necessity occur very often under the many different conditions produced from differ- ences in respirations, excitements, brain or muscular activity and many other emotions that the human being is subject to while awake or asleep. In a concise manner I have considered the various experiments and observations outside of the chest cavity, but in entering the chest cavity which contains the heart and the lungs, we meet with many difficulties. First: On opening the chest immediate collapse of the lungs is pro- duced by the external air pressure, which consequently cuts off the breathing, which means death to the animal in a few minutes. To overcome this difficulty, to me at least, at first seemed impossible, but after a number of unsuccessful attempts a plan was devised by which an animal could be kept breathing for two or more hours without much difficulty. No one can watch the action of the heart, lungs and cir- culation in a large animal without marvel and astonishment. As all of the breathing of the animal now has to be entirely kept up by artificial means, the lungs can be made to collapse or be inflated at will and almost any kind of an experiment can be made. By allow- ing the lungs to collapse, we see the arteries emptying themselves of the blood, and the veins with the accompanying auricle and ventricle of the heart becoming distended, but the action of the heart goes on as usual, only more slowly, and gradually with less vigor, and to all appearances the animal is lifeless, except that the heart keeps up its motion (which it would do for a long time if cut out and laid on a plate). Now if breathing is begun (artificial) one of the first things noticed is that the heart arouses itself to vigorous action. The lungs begin to take up the venous blood, making its circuit through the lungs back to the heart, and as the heart begins to distribute it the arteries begin to fill and soon life manifests itself through the body. POSITIVE PROOFS 101 The above experiment suggests a volume of philosophy. I have demonstrated it on many animals of various kinds, and it accords so well with the idea of men who find that force acting upon matter bestows life and motion upon that matter. Call this force what you will, call it electricity, call it oxygen or ozone-it is this element of so-called force which is generated by the action of this element (oxy- gen) upon other elemental combinations, without which all matter is lifeless and without any power to move or alter itself. The fact is that that force brings about all changes in matter that our senses tell of, which, of course, includes the material human body. This last sentence may seem cold, but this need not be so. We only claim that material phenomena can be considered by themselves and by this can make the present medical humbug and empiricism into an accurate science. Nature is accurate; man is the product of natural law, hence can and should be understood. It is this force that causes all of the changes, matter remaining ever the same. And it is evident that did not unbound forces con- tinually influence our bodies we would have no life, for these bring about the change of matter within us, which is necessary to life, the bound forces only maintaining the structure of the body. These alone can not cause motion any more than the particles of matter alone can adhere to one another, for matter has no binding power. This is due to the forces that are inseparable from it. Then these bound forces must be the cause of the solidity of the body, and by this law of com- bination and differentiation the cause of nearly all diseases can be positively explained. Another point that demonstrates positively that the heart is not the real propelling power of the blood is the fact known to the ancients that after death the arteries are empty. It was from this phenomenon that the belief arose that the arteries contained no blood, but that they contained air; hence the name artery, which means air pipe. Now, if the heart were a pump it would be impossible for the arteries to be empty after death, for when a pump ceases to do its work the fluid pumped would cease to flow, especially straight upwards, consequently the blood would remain in the arterial system. We have now positively demonstrated that it is not the heart that 102 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE circulates the blood; and that without this element from the air (oxy- gen) it can not circulate. That the blood is circulated throughout the system by the same law that governs everything that is contained in God's great universe is easily answered, i. e., by the laws of attraction and repulsion; by affinity or electricity. But the exact way that these complex changes in this minute network of capillary blood vessels take place is not an easy matter to explain. It may be that during the process of combustion and in the combustion of the oxygen, thus making the venous blood negative to the arterial, may be the phe- nomenon that creates the circuit through the capillaries. But like elec- tricity, for all practical purposes all that is needed is an understanding of the law. We have also shown that no fluid can be sent from the arteries into the veins, so that there must be an attraction between the fluids in the arteries and those of the veins in order to make circulation pos- sible. In fact there must be a complete circuit of attraction from the lungs to the hair-like blood vessels (capillaries) in the skin and then back to the lungs. The plan of this circuit of the blood may be explained something like this: The tissues of the body being acid, the blood when arterial (charged with oxygen) is alkaline; this makes a mutual or electrical attraction between them. Thus, the lung tissues being always positive and the arterial blood negative, the tissues of the body being acid, and those at the other end of the route being negative to the blood, and instantly when the two bodies become simi- larly electrified a mutual repulsion takes place and they rush from each other with the same force that drew them together. At the other end in the tissues a similar process takes place. Electricity is supposed to have double the power of gravity, as it attracts and repels according to the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance. In the second century Galen thought that the object of breathing was to take into tfie lungs what is termed pneuma or spirits. The air breathed underwent in the lung tissue a change which resulted in the production of the vital spirits. The spirits according to Galen were not the substance of atmospheric air, but something produced from it by the transforming agency of the lung. If Galen could have known what is now known of chemistry he would have readily changed the POSITIVE PROOFS 103 word spirit to oxygen. He would likely have demonstrated the power of the circulation of the blood seventeen hundred years ago, of which we so far have been in the dark. He says further, "The lungs by breathing take up an unknown gaseous substance essential to life." Had this great ancient writer substituted the word oxygen for his word spirit his comprehension of physiology would have been ahead of ours at the present time, especially about the circulation of the blood. Again, Galen says that "the mechanical force of the heart was not the only one by which the animal fluids were drawn or impelled in the needful direction." He thought that there was a physiological force, which he compared with that of a magnet, by which the tissues attracted the ingredients for its nourishment, as we would express it today, that the electrical power has something to do with the circulation. If an animal is killed and the chest and abdomen opened imme- diately the arteries will be found empty; whether this animal was suddenly killed by a blow or killed by chloroform the result will be the same. In other words, as soon as the lungs collapse the cycle of circulation is cut off, the arteries emptying into the veins, which become very much distended. But if a large bullock or any animal is knocked down and stunned, the arteries of the neck cut, leaving the veins intact, the body will empty itself of blood through these cut arteries. This is all due to the breathing of the animal during this process, but if the animal is stunned sufficiently to arrest breathing the blood will remain in the veins. These are well known .facts to the butcher, and it ought to seem to anyone that if the blood did not have the power to travel without the assistance of the heart it would be impossible to bleed an animal thoroughly enough to render its flesh proper food for mankind. The more active the breathing of the animal, the more quickly is the body drained of blood. If an animal is obliged to breathe impure air, or to reinhale previously breathed air, upon opening the chest it is found that the arterial blood is not of a bright red color, but has more of the appearance of venous blood. Then if strong artificial respiration is kept up, giving strong action to the heart, by puncturing or cutting an artery we do not obtain the amount of force and the 104 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE steady stream of blood, as we do when the blood is well oxygenized. In fact the stream will often not be one-fourth that of normal arterial blood, and if under this condition the blood-vessels are ligated in the manner already described, the arteries will empty themselves slowly, and often much blood will remain in the arteries. If the blood is oxygenized by pure air, the arteries under the same condition will empty in less time than it takes to write it. This particular phenomenon I think the most important of all when considered in the light of health and disease. Its results upon the nutrition of the body and the action of such blood upon the chyle, and the inactivity of such circulation upon carrying off the necessary waste products, debilitating all systemic functions, so that the same food that is eaten today makes us happy as well as giving nourishment to the body; tomorrow the same food when taken without sufficient quantity and quality of oxygen in the air we breathe would produce all the way from a full feeling to some severe form of disease. Poor food and good air will do the same, but not so readily. The lungs and the heart: The functions of the lungs and heart afford the most striking evidence of Nature's skill and the most beau- tiful illustration of her handiwork. One strong feature can be noticed when watching the lungs and heart under experiment for hours-that the heart, so to speak, "dances to the music of the lungs." This means that when the lungs are taking in pure air, and the blood normal, the heart is acting just as the regulator of an engine does when it responds to the steam from the boiler. The one important function the heart has to perform is to keep up an equilibrium of the blood, and to accomplish this it needs nearly all of the power that an organ of its size could possess. We all know the extreme pressure often exerted upon the heart under severe excite- ments and emotions. Another condition is always certain, that when- ever breathing is aroused the heart action is also increased. This muscular activity of the heart, or its contraction, is a very necessary function, that of regulating the increased volume of blood that is being forced through it, and which passes into the various channels, to. the brain, arms, lower extremities and the different organs of the body, but besides this the heart has more of a whirling or churning POSITIVE PROOFS 105 action than direct contractile motion; possibly the heart agitates the blood. The lungs cover about fifteen or twenty thousand square inches of surface and contain from four to eight hundred millions of air and blood cells. The tissues of the lungs and body being acid, we can readily see how by attraction and repulsion the blood can be circulated. And by our experiments of cutting the heart entirely off we have positively shown that the heart has nothing to do with circulating the blood, but its great muscular power is needed to keep this circuit of the blood regulated and from becoming disconnected, and we have also shown that the heart is a central distributing station. I have tried in many experiments to discover how the blood circuit is made in the lungs, but at present can only describe what is visible to the eye. When the lung is inflated with air, by cutting off a third of the lobe we find two vessels side by side and of an equal size. Out of one of the vessels flows air and out of the other flows a stream of dark venous blood. The balance of the lung or lung cells present a bright red appearance, which means they are filled with arterial blood. The question that naturally arises in the mind of the thoughtful reader is, what has this knowledge of the power that circulates the blood to do with consumption or other diseases ? In the original pam- phlet we stated on the titlel page that it was the most valuable dis- covery in centuries for the benefit of humanity, that it was the key to health and the existing mysteries regarding the cause of internal dis- eases ; if this is true it means much to the public. We have certainly demonstrated in our experiments that this element from the air, which is called oxygen, by its action upon the blood and tissues gives circu- lation to the blood and activity to the body, and that this activity is in just the proportion to the amount and quality of this oxygen that is taken into the blood through the lungs from the air breathed. And just in proportion as the blood becomes normal arterial blood are the brain and body active; when the air is cool and brisk we feel brisk and active and when the air is hot or muggy we feel logy and even lazy. This is the time we should pay more attention to breathing; we should act and move more slowly and take deep and full breaths for two reasons; first, because heat expands the air and in breathing heated air we take in much less oxygen in a full breath than we do when the 106 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE air is cool, and second, most of all to rid the system of a poison called carbonic acid gas, which passes out by the lungs from the dark venous blood by the exhaled air. This process is only accomplished by an interchange of these gases by affinity, or in other words, the attraction they have for each other. The air is composed of two gases, nitrogen and oxygen, and when the lungs are filled with air the iron in the blood has a stronger affinity for the oxygen than it has for the nitrogen, hence by this strong attraction the oxygen leaves the nitrogen and passes over into the blood, which changes the dark blood as it comes to the lungs to a bright red; this leaves the nitrogen gas of the air alone, but the dark venous blood when it comes to the lungs is charged with a poison called carbonic acid gas and as the nitrogen left in the lungs has a strong attraction for this carbonic acid gas, it leaves the blood and unites with the nitrogen and in this way is carried out into the world and is taken up by vegetable life. The smoke that passes from our chimneys, and in fact all kinds of smoke, contains this same poisonous gas, and is taken up by vegetable life; in this way the air is kept pure. This simple process of interchange and reorganization shows so plainly the benevolent design in the workings of nature, and how everything is related to each other; nothing in all her workings are but for the good of something. There is one thought that we would like to indelibly impress upon every human mind, and it is this, that there is nothing in all the Cre- ator's laws but what is specifically arranged for the pleasure, health and happiness of every human being, and that it is our own fault, through our neglect and false education, that humanity is deteriorating in her constitution, and that she is suffering and afflicted with the untold misery in her midst. It is not due so much to the ignorance of the human being regarding these laws of nature; this truth is dem- onstrated by the fact that all animals, the savages and the Indians, are afflicted with very little sickness in proportion to ourselves; but it is due to the false conditions created by ourselves, through false ideas and beliefs as well as false education that we have accepted from lead- ers, teachers and medical authorities, and sometimes by false ideas and notions created by our own intellect, while if we would follow our instinct like the animal we would suffer as little as they do. But if POSITIVE PROOFS 107 we were educated rightly, and right education is only education in harmony with nature's laws, then we would enjoy health to old age; and every succeeding generation would be far better than the preceding one, because Nature's absolute workings are a continual change, never at rest; it is continually changing everything one way or another for the better or for the worse, in accordance with existing conditions. This must be particularly remembered in relation to consumption and other constitutional diseases, for it is this law that has brought nearly one-seventh of the people to a tendency to take consumption, which would mean about ten million persons in the United States. We be- lieve firmly that if the public would understand how and why this con- dition exists, and would set about to correct it, that at least eight mil- lion of the ten million of this people destined to die of consumption could be saved to live a reasonably long life, and the next generation far exceed this in the average life of the children born from this weak- ened ten million and the other sixty million be improved in the same proportion, by simply understanding and following this law of nature, that will continually, year in and year out, either lower or strengthen the constitution of the human body. This will be detailed as minutely as possible in the chapters to follow. Nearly every one will say that "we know that fresh air is good and that we must have air to live," but let us ask any one, we care not whether he be physician, scientist or layman, what do we breathe for, why we breathe, what relation has the air and the lungs to the human being? What would the answer be? The answer would be.that nearly every child can answer that easily; simply the lungs are for breathing purposes, and to oxidize the blood; in other words, to charge the blood with oxygen; then the heart sends the blood through the system and produces combustion; this in substance would be the answer. Let us emphasize in the strongest terms that this answer does not cover a small fraction of what the real functions of the lungs are and the part that the air plays in the living being and the effect of the action of the lungs and air upon the health or disease of the individual. There is no organ in the whole body and no element taken into the body 108 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE that has as much influence directly and indirectly upon our health and upon the diseases we are tortured with as the neglect or proper use of the lungs and air. Further, there is no organ of the body which has received so little consideration in this direction as the lungs. Why do we now put the lungs at the head of all others ? Because we can dem- onstrate that in just the proportion as the lungs are large or small, weak or strong, healthy or diseased, in just the same proportion will be the strength of the body. By this we mean the constitution of the body, its power of endurance, its powers of resisting the influences that produce disease, whether outside or inside of the body. Wherever you find a large and strong pair of lungs supplied with plenty of good air you will find a strong and powerful acting heart; weak lungs are always accompanied with a weak heart, and all other organs in pro- portion. Why? Because, as already stated, through the lungs we receive the power, yes, the force, that gives life, activity to every part of the body, on the same principle that a boiler and an engine furnishes the power to run a lot of machinery. If they are deficient in size the machinery will not run with that firmness that it would if the boiler and engines were large enough to furnish power to easily keep up a steady and firm motion of the machinery, so that if an extra load should be put on one of the machines that all the reist would begin to lag and not be able to do good work, or perhaps even stop the whole mill. But if the boiler is large and strong enough to keep a little reserve steam the extra load on one machine will not interfere with the rest of the machinery. So it is with the lungs. If they are large and a little extra work should be necessary on the part of one organ, like the stomach, brain, kidneys, etc., the large lung will be able to furnish this extra amount of steam, or rather this element, oxygen, to create energy, to keep up a firm and steady action of the machinery of the body, so that the organs will not become choked up but will be able to each carry off the extra supply of waste matter which is produced by the extra labor put upon the machinery. If the lungs do not furnish the necessary power to assist the body in elim- inating it this poison will be retained in the system and disease will result; because nearly all diseases result only from the retaining in the system of the waste matter which the organs have not been able POSITIVE PROOFS 109 to carry off, and most of the obstructions of the system that occur and produce disease would not occur if a good pair of lungs were kept in good action and furnished with pure air. Why is this so? We know that the system is continually burning used up tissues of the body which must be carried off by the different organs; we also know that oxygen is the element that burns; when this element is furnished in less than the needed quantity this process of combustion or burning in the system can not be good, just as your fire in the stove will not be good if you do not have oxygen enough in the air. You not only have a poor fire but you have more clinkers and ashes than if you had a good fire, and then clinkers and ashes soon clog up the stove so that you have a poor fire in spite of your efforts, good air or not. So with the system; if your lungs do not furnish plenty of this oxygen to burn up the fuel which is needed you have a poor fire, which means poor nourishment to the body, besides more clinkers and ashes and little power for the organs to carry off the clinkers and ashes of the system. You say this is peculiar reasoning, to compare the body to a stove; it is not only good comparison, but they are identically alike, with this difference, that the fire burns up the carbon in the wood and coal for heat, and the remainder goes to smoke and ashes while the human system burns up the carbon in the food to furnish the heat of the body and create energy; so far they are alike, but the food of man contains other elements which the body uses to nourish it; the rest is smoke and ashes and is carried off by the lungs, skin, kidneys, etc. This subject will come up again in a still plainer light, but it must already be clear that the lungs perform by far the greatest and most impor- tant part in the whole human economy, and it must also be evident that it is the most important knowledge that any human being can have. Then the important thing is to know what to do, when you have a pair of weak lungs, in order to make them a pair of strong ones, so as to avoid taking consumption, and how to keep a good pair of lungs, if so fortunate as to have been endowed by nature with such; especially to know how not to transmit weak lungs upon the children when the parents have good, strong lungs. All will concede that per- sons born with weak lungs are descendants from parents originally with healthy lungs. The commission of this one error of humanity 110 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. is the great cause of most of the cases of consumption due to a heredi- tary tendency. To present and answer many of these important ques- tions for the public in a clear and lucid manner, which means that they should be answered in harmony with nature's laws-this is the august object of this volume. AIR AND SUNSHINE. All will agree that pure air is the most important substance needed for life and health. We can live longer by far without any of the other necessaries of life than we can without air. And the highest degree of health is only possible when to the other necessary condi- tions is added a proper supply of pure air. The breathing of impure air from any cause whatever must be harmful to a greater or lesser degree. The universal belief is that in breathing impure air into the lungs the blood becomes poisoned from these impurities from the air. We think this belief is wrong. It is similar to the expression so uni- versally used, that "the sun rises," when actually we rise to the sun. The fact is we do not take impurities into the system from impure air breathed into the lungs, but our system becomes poisoned by breathing impure air because it prevents the double exchange that takes place in the lungs when we do breathe pure air. This double exchange that takes place in the lungs is the purifying of the blood by relieving it of its carbonic gas and charging the blood with oxygen from the air. Oxygen, ozone, etc., like heat, light and electricity, only differ in degree. Some day we think it will be shown to be from the same source. There are no two things that ought to be more thoroughly understood than the effect of carbonic acid gas and oxygen upon the system, for the one is death and the other is life. Take away oxygen from anything living and death follows immediately. There are poi- sons enough evaporating into the air every day to kill all the human beings on earth; in fact each human being throws off through his lungs and skin, every twenty-four hours, enough to kill him if it were retained within the system, to say nothing of the enormous amount of the same kinds of poisons evaporating into the air from other animal life. The decomposition of dead animal and vegetable matter, added to the immense amount of gaseous poison from sewers, chimneys, etc., besides a vast number of substances, vapors or solid particles continu- 111 112 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ally passing into the atmosphere, proves the absolute necessity, as well as the certainty of nature's wonderful and magnificent process of puri- fying the air we breathe, which is life's most vital substance. Many of these substances can be detected by neither smell nor taste and are inhaled without any knowledge on the part of those who breathe them. Others are smelt or tasted first, but in a short time, if the substance remains in the air, the nerves seem to lose their delicacy, so that in many cases no warning, and in other instances only slight warning, is given by the sense of these impurities of the air. But we find here again the benevolent design in nature is able to compensate for all this by a wonderful series of processes which go on in the air and on the earth, which keep the air in a state of purity. Poisonous gases become diffused and split up by the sun's rays; some are carried away by the winds and thus become so diluted as to be harmless. Solid sub- stances lifted into the air by winds or by ascending force of evapora- tion fall by their own weight, or if organic are oxidized into simple compounds such as water, carbon dioxide, nitric acid and ammonia, or they dry and break up into impalpable particles which are washed down by rain. Diffusion, dilution by winds, oxidation, the fall of rain, and the most important of all is the effect of the king of puri- fiers, the sun's rays; but in addition to these purifiers there is the won- derful laboratory of the world which keeps the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere within certain limits. If it were not for these counter- balancing agencies the air would soon become too impure for the human race, and it is wonderful how soon the immense impurities which daily pass into the air are removed except when the false ingenu- ity of man opposes or makes too great a demand upon these purifying powers of nature. All inquiries on mortality prove beyond a doubt that the causes of disease and death, especially when of an epidemic nature, are usually found to be due to some abnormal condition of the air, which acts directly upon the skin and nervous system, thus checking the function of the organs or producing disease from the direct action of these atmospheric conditions upon the body, or the atmosphere acting and combining with local conditions, then influ- encing the body, and producing disease of the same nature as the former, but sometimes only manifesting itself in a different form. AIR AND SUNSHINE 113 This is due in some instances to the partly impure condition of the system (which no doubt exists nearly all the time in all human beings, but differing in degree in each, just as no two persons are alike in health so there are no two just alike in disease), every human being going to bed sick every night, but no two, perhaps, going to bed in just the same condition. Sick Rooms.-In addition to being vitiated by respiration the air of the sick room is contaminated by the abundant exhalations from the body and by the effluvia from discharged excretions. The quantity of organic matter is known to be large, but at present it is difficult to give a quantitative statement. Moscati, who (in 1818) condensed the watery vapor of a ward at Milan, describes it as being slimy and as having a marshy smell. The peculiar smell of a hospital is indeed very remarkable and its similarity in hospitals of different kinds seems to show that the odorous substance has a similar composition in many cases. The reaction of ozone is never given in such an atmosphere. From the skin and lungs pass off from 25 to 40 ounces of water in twenty-four hours, to maintain which in a state of vapor 211 cubic feet of air per hour is necessary on an average. Of course, however, tem- perature and the hygrometric condition of the air greatly modify this. Organic matter is also given off from the skin and lungs, the amount of which has never been precisely determined, nor is it possible at present to estimate it correctly. Air of Cesspools.-The air of cesspools, and especially of the cemented pits which are still common in many continental towns and which receive little beyond the solid and liquid excreta and some of the house water, is generally highly impure. Levy refers to an extreme case in which the oxygen was lessened to 2 per cent, the nitrogen being 94 and the carbondioxide 4 per cent. In this case apparently no other gases were present; but in most instances there is a variable amount of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia sulphide, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and carburetted hydrogen, in addition to fetid organic matters. All of our epidemics of diseases are absolutely due to the existing effect of the impure, slow and inactive condition of the air upon our- selves and local conditions, and this impure air is due to the lack of sufficient rays of the sun, for without the electric and magnetic influ- 114 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ence of the sun upon the air, and especially upon the earth, the condi- tion called pure air can not exist. As before stated this condition of the air is primarily the cause of epidemic diseases but does not alone produce them; it is this impure, or as it may be termed, unelec- trified, air (on account of not sufficient sun's rays) acting (or, rather, not acting) upon our local conditions that produce all of our epidemics. In substituting this new term of unelectrified air in place of impure air it will be plainly seen that it expresses more exactly the condition that exists. My observations (extending over twenty years) have demonstrated conclusively that these conditions of the air, acting upon our local conditions, produce our epidemics, and that all epi- demics of disease known to man have, and likely always will, exist in certain localities, where certain impure conditions exist, is an unde- niable fact. And because these local conditions alone are often bad enough to develop these diseases we have local cases here and there called endemics of disease. Usually density of population implies poverty and insufficient food and sometimes unhealthy work, but the main condition as a rule is impurity of air largely due to overcrowding, combined with uncleanliness. Our zealous hygienic friends say perfect removal of all excreta and keeping the rooms clean and a very dense and poor population may be reasonably healthy. With the above statement I want to take issue, and want to emphasize it in the strongest terms possible, that no greater error has ever been made; it can be demonstrated without a possibility of a doubt that from this great error a large share of diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, etc., are the result and cause of millions of unnecessary deaths. The error I refer to is pent-up air, nothing more nor less. Impure air in order to become pure must move, must circulate and be penetrated by the sun's rays. If you want to live in good health in your homes, keep the air continually moving and charged with the rays of the sun, and I care not if the dirt on the floors and the walks is a half inch thick, and you will be healthier and stronger than those who are so very careful to have everything about and in the house scrupulously clean; but negleict this most important thing of all, moving air and the rays of this king of alU celestial bodies, the sun, the result must be disease. I have in my AIR AND SUNSHINE 115 practice found cases of scarlet fever and diphtheria, and when these diseases did not exist the family would be puny and delicate, although their fine mansion in which they lived appeared to the untrained eye as neat and clean as it could possibly be and hence they would always think out some theory as to how the disease was brought to the house by some one whom they had talked to or some one else who has or had had the disease in their family, or it had been sent by a letter through the mails, when the actual cause was right in their own homes. Because people have never heard any discussion upon this very impor- tant question regarding air it has been a hard matter to convince them of its importance and has established many foolish ideas about con- tagion of disease. In several instances of this kind that came under my observation the doctors actually thought and admitted they had in some way carried the disease into these fine homes and caused the death of some promising young man or woman. That this pent-up air is one of the most dangerous forms of disease producers can often be well demonstrated among domestic animals. The farmer who does not keep his stables very clean, but which are poor in their construction, with cracks and holes on all sides, has healthy animals, while his neighbor, who thinks himself scientific, studies all modern improvements and comforts for his animals, keeps his stables scrupulously clean, but as a result has more delicate animals, and probably with occasional disease breaking out among them. Is it any wonder that he believes in the scientific nonsense now so popular, that some microbe or germ has unfortunately visited his fine surroundings, and often even believes it to be some divine chastisement, when it is absolutely a punishment for his ignorance of a natural law? He is also ignorant that the science of medicine of today is the greatest ignorance existing among civilized man, which is that pent-up air and matter, regardless of all other kinds of cleanliness, is the most virulent poison for developing disease that exists. Observation and investigation, even without having the least scien- tific knowledge, will convince any one that this pent-up air and matter, creating a sort of foulness and decomposition of the existing elements, is the exciting when not the real cause of nearly all of this class of diseases that form our epidemics. Diphtheria, typhoid fever and small- 116 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE pox, likewise scarlet fever, are mainly due to these conditions and that these conditions are the main cause of these diseases is now almost universally denied by the medical profession. Yet it must be acknowl- edged that a world of evidence can be produced to show that these conditions existed for years and years and no disease developed in these families. This statement we admit to be exactly true, and because this is true the cause of these diseases has always been based upon false theories and suppositions; each one of these theories has had a certain period of popularity, when some one in order to gain notoriety and sometimes with honest intentions will spring another, and the more mysterious it is the more popular and the more scientifically it is looked upon by the public, and it is high time that all this puffery and claptrap nonsense be exposed and the conditions that produce disease and those that give health and a long life made clear and plain. These consist in observing simple natural laws that for all practical purposes are as easy to understand and as easy to learn and comprehend as it is for a child to learn the A B Cs. If this is true it ought to be an absolute disgrace, when these simple laws are once laid in plain, com- mon language before the public, to have any epidemics of disease to exist, and when they do exist the people should be made to understand, and it should be plainly demonstrated to them, that it was their own fault and due to their neglect of violating a law of nature and not due to a mysterious microbe or germ, or that it was a divine chastisement, but that it was a chastisement for their violation of the Creator's laws, called natural laws; that these laws never vary; that they always mani- fest themselves the same forever, when all things are equal. When it shall once be taught and demonstrated to the public that health and disease are governed by an absolute law and an absolute certainty, always and forever, all such claptraps as Christian Science, spiritual- ism and all sorts of such superstition, as well as the murderousness of scientific regular medicine, will be a thing of the past, just as the superstitions of by-gone days that bad spirits and witches were the cause of diseases and the misfortunes of mankind are now a thing of the past. Before going further into the subject of air and sunshine and show- ing what effect the many and different conditions of the atmospheric AIR AND SUNSHINE 117 air and the many different local and general conditions produce, and the wonderful effect that the rays of the sun have in changing these many different conditions of the air, also how and what effect these different conditions of the air have upon the many and different con- ditions of the body at different times and under different circumstances to produce all our epidemics of disease besides nearly all local dis- eases, to many at least it will be interesting as well as necessary to give a brief summary of the composition and physical conditions of the air. Atmospheric air is composed principally of two gases, four-fifths being nitrogen and one-fifth oxygen, or, speaking more accurately, 79 parts of nitrogen and 20.96 of oxygen. In addition there is cer- tainly present a little of carbon dioxide, usually about .03 per dent (3 or 4 parts in 10,000), traces of ammonia and nitric acid are found and a variable proportion of vapor or water. The proportions with but very little change are maintained at different heights. At first thought it would appear that the carbon dioxide, being much heavier than the other parts of which the air is mostly composed, would accumulate near the earth and there cause an excess of this carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide being a deadly poison), but in obedience to the law of diffusion the intermingling of these gases of which the air is composed is perfect, and hence the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air is quite as great on mountain tops as it is in the deepest valleys. The nitrogen of the air is generally uniform in its proportion, while that of oxygen varies, depending mostly upon the amount of carbon dioxide present. This last statement is one of the most essential things to be remembered, as the foundation and increase of the amount of this poison (carbon dioxide) can only take place at the expense of oxygen, carbon dioxide being simply a combination of these two elements, carbon and oxygen, in certain proportions. But what becomes of all this poison when each person gives off enough of it through the skin and lungs every day to kill a number of people ? How is it that man under such circumstances can live? There must be some means by which this poison is taken from the air. It is simply this, that vege- table or plant life lives by taking up this very poisonous element from the air, while man and all animal life take in oxygen; in other words, 118 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE man cannot live without the plant nor the plant without man; what will kill man is life to the plant and what is death to the plant is life to man. Does not this show the intimate relation of one thing to another in the whole universe? We can lose an arm or a leg and live, but if vegetable life be destroyed all animal life must die. But as man and animal life depend upon each other for the struggle of life, neither can exist without this king* of the universe, the sun, and his influence upon everything that lives is such that it is hard to find words to express it; it is more than mere control or dominance. The sun does not, like the moon, simply modify and determine cer- tain more or less important activities upon the surface of the earth, but the sun is almost absolutely the prime mover of the whole. To the sun we can directly trace nearly all energy and force, and the changes taking place every day, be they mechanical, chemical or vital, and this king of all kings in its effect upon our life, our health and our very existence, more than anything else, is left out of all our books pertaining to hygiene and the cause of disease. Professor C. A. Young says regarding the power of the sun's heat, that "The most powerful lens yet constructed thus virtually transports an object at its focus to within two hundred and fifty thousand miles of the sun's surface, and in this focus the most re- fractory substances-platinum, fire clay, the diamond itself- are either instantly melted or dissipated in vapor. There can be no doubt that if the sun were to come as near us as the moon the solid earth would melt like wax." Professor Langley makes an experi- mental comparison between the brilliance of the solar surface and that of the metal in a Bessemer converter. At the same time he made his measurements of the heat by means of a thermopile and found that the heat radiation of the solar surface to be more than eighty-seven times as intense as that from the surface of the molten metal. It will be recalled that the experiment only sets a lower limit to the solar radiation, so that it is altogether probable that were all the necessary correction determined and applied the ratio would be increased from eighty-seven to at least a hundred and perhaps to a hundred and fifty. Ericsson, in 1872, made a some- what similar comparison in a different and exceedingly ingenious AIR AND SUNSHINE 119 manner. He floated a calorimeter containing about ten pounds of water upon the? surface of a large mass of molten iron by means of a raft of fire brick. The calorimeter was raised a little above the surface and the water contained was kept in circulation by suitable mechanism. He found that the radiation of the metal was a trifle over two hundred and fifty calories per minute for each square foot of surface. This is equivalent to twenty-seven hundred and ninety calories to the square meter and is only 1-400 of the sun's emission. He estimates the temperature of the metal at 3,000 Fahr., or 1,538 per cent. Professor Langley, in his experiment, estimates the tem- perature of melting platinum, which is usually considered to be about 2,000 Cent. He bases this conclusion upon the fact that platinum wire, stretched above the mouth of the converter or dipped into the issuing stream, was immediately melted. Since, however, iron and its vapor attack platinum much in the same way as mercury and its vapor attack gold, there may be some doubt as to the correct- ness of his estimate. The same conclusions as to the intensity of the solar temperature follow from investigations by Soret and others as to the penetrating power of the sun's rays and from a compari- son with artificial sources of heat in respect to the relative propor- tion of the rays of different wave lengths in the total radiation. A body of low temperature emits an enormous proportion of slow swinging, invisible vibrations, while as the temperature rises the shorter waves become proportionally more and more abundant. Thus, in the composition of a body's radiation we get some clew to its temperature. Hitherto all such tests concur in putting the sun's temperature high above that of any known terrestrial flame. And now we come to questions like these: How is such a heat maintained? How long has it lasted already? How long will it cQntinue? Are there any signs of either increase or diminution? Questions to which, in the present state of science, only somewhat vague and unsatisfactory replies are possible. As to progressive changes in the amount of the solar heat, it can be said, however, that there is no evidence of anything of the sort since the beginning of authentic records. There have been no such changes in the distribution of plants and animals within the 120 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE last two thousand years, as must have occurred if there had been, within this period, any appreciable alteration in the heat received from the sun. So far as can be made out, with few and slight ex- ceptions, the vine and olive grow just where they did in classic days, and the same is true of cereals and the forest trees. In the remoter past there have been undoubtedly great changes in the earth's temperature, evidenced by geological records, carboniferous epochs, when the temperature was tropical in almost arctic latitudes and glacial periods, when our now temperate zones were incased in sheets of solid ice, as northern Greenland is at present. Even as to these changes, however, it is not yet certain whether they are to be traced to variations in the amount of heat emitted by the sun or to changes in the earth herself, or in her orbit. So far as observa- tion goes, we can only say that the outpouring of the solar heat, amazing as it is, appears to have gone on unchanged through all the centuries of human history. What, then, maintains the fire? It is quite certain, in the first place, that it is not a case of mere combustion. It has been shown that even if the sun were made of solid coal, burning in pure oxy- gen, it could only last about six thousand years; it would have been nearly one-third consumed since the beginning of the Christian era. Nor can the source of its heat lie simply in the cooling of its incan- descent mass. Huge as it is, its temperature must have fallen more than perceptibly within a thousand years if this were the case. It is a well established fact that if the rays of the sun were cut off for a single month the earth would die and all life upon its sur- face would cease, vegetable or animal. By many this fact has been more or less distinctly recognized. This one statement ought to be enough to arouse every human being to the thought that the sun's rays must be a powerful factor in relation to health and disease. From a still higher point of view, the sun is only one of a multitude, a single star among millions. But He alone among the countless myriads seems to affect affairs on the earth to any sensible degree. This supremacy of the sun has ever been made the foundation of religious system, as- with the Indians and Persians. But it has been left to our own century to show clearly just how and in what AIR AND SUNSHINE 121 sense the rays of the sun are the life of the earth. There are two doctrines of the mutual relation of forces and the power of preserv- ing energy, and these having been distinctly understood, it has been comparatively easy to confirm them by experiment and observation and to trace them, every one, to their solar origin, and the different classes of energy which present themselves in their various forms on the earth. For instance, how the power of waterfalls is only a transformation of the sun's heat; and the same thing is true, a little more remotely but just as certain, of the power of steam, of elec- tricity, and even of animals and men. In other words, whenever work is done it is done by the undoing of some previous work, like the Niagara Falls flowing year after year over a cataract, running down stream, to be intercepted and made to drive the wheels of mills, etc. The river continues to run because some power (the sun) is continually raising and returning to the hilltops, by rain and snow, the water which flows into the sea. Precisely the same thing is true of the heat produced by the ordinary combustion of fuel, by the action of oxygen on one side and carbon and hydrogen on the other, producing by their action fire and heat, and undoing what some power or energy had put together in the form of this fuel, coal or wood, of whatever kind. It is just as absolutely certain, and all investigations have proven it beyond a doubt, that this process of doing and undoing in man is continually going on, and goes to show that in a mechanical sense the body of man or animal is only a very ingenious and effective machine, by means of which the living being which controls it can utilize this energy derived from the food taken into the stomach. The body, then, regarded as a machine, is only a food engine in which the stomach and lungs stand for the furnace and boiler of a steam engine, the brain and nervous system for the valve gear, and the muscles for the cylinder. Now, this engineer or personality within us, which wills and acts, is put into relation with this valve gear or nervous system so as to determine the movements of this body in which it resides, and is the greatest mystery of life; but this mystery, which has never before been explained, will be made clear in another chapter. 122 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Our coal in the mountains is only bottled sunlight and so much strength drawn from the sun of former ages. With the plain fact before us that in the absence of the sun's rays planets cannot per- form the work of converting to a given state or generate the chemi- cal forces which are necessary, as in the leaves of a tree, the carbon and oxygen of carbonic gas and the hydrogen and oxygen of water are forced apart at the expense of the sun, and this amount of power thus sacrificed is accurately restored to the tree and all other vege- tables; then these vegetables are eaten by the man to furnish car- bon, and the oxygen is breathed from the air, to meet Mr. Carbon in the system and nourish and give life. When the carbon is exhaled with the nitrogen from the lungs, again to be separated by the sun's rays, the carbon again goes to supply vegetable life; hence we see a magnificent process as well as an axiomated truth, that the whole universe and all vegetable and animal life are continually dependent on one another to furnish the materials to sustain the othter, and none can get along without each other; any marked change in one will also produce a great change in the other. In all this process of change no creation of matter occurs, but that is only the conversion of these elements by their uniting and disuniting properties; these physical forces collected by plants be- come the property of animals. Animals consume vegetables and cause them to reunite with the atmospheric oxygen; animal heat is thus produced, and not only animal heat but animal motion. And now we come to see that this energy which lifts the water from the sea to the mountain top, which decomposes the carbonic acid of the atmosphere and plant foods of the soil, and builds up the hydro carbons and other fuels of animal and vegetable tissue, and that this power is mainly furnished by the sun's rays, should we not wake up and take a great interest and make much of the sun and study her relations to man and the central figure she cuts in the maintenance of life, and especially in preserving our health? By neglecting her demands disease is sure to follow, because as a puri- fier the sun is unequaled. Let her penetrate your rooms to absorb and split up the impure gases; health, even life, is impossible with- out her assistance. AIR AND SUNSHINE 123 Just think of it-our largest books written upon hygiene do not even mention the sun's rays; they talk about ventilation, pure air, cleanliness, pure water and good sewerage to insure health; then they talk about how badly the poorer classes are lodged in the cities, and that various laws have been passed to improve these conditions; but that it was difficult to prove that a dwelling is injurious to health unless in an extremely bad condition. The strongest proof that the rooms are not fit to live in is that when the rays of the sun cannot penetrate them, at least for only a few hours a day, and when this is the case dampness and foulness are sure to exist, and the result is that children will be puny and sickly looking, and upon the least provocation disease will be the result. And it is a fact that the majority of our blood diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., are generated most where the sun does not have the opportunity to do her duty. In fact, there is nothing but the sun's rays to purify these places where foul gases, dampness and pent-up air exist, and no better proof can be established than the statement that if her rays were cut off one month everything on earth would die. Dry and oxygenated air alone is fit for breathing, which is nec- essary chiefly because oxygen is the life-giving power. It is oxy- gen that makes it possible for the blood to circulate, but breathing consumes about half its vitalizing properties, besides charging it with carbonic acid gas. About five-sixths of the oxygen imbibed is excreted in this gas, which is most harmful and dangerous; a good pair of lungs in average action consume about two hundred and fifty cubic feet of air every twenty-four hours and expires about eighteen thousand cubic inches of carbonic acid gas, enough to make five and a half ounces of solid carbon. Breathing, then, has a double function: first, of oxygenizing the blood by inhaling pure air; and secondly, it decarbonizes the blood by exhalation in relieving the system of this poisonous gas, carbonic acid. Arterial blood contains of oxygen 23-100, carbonic acid only 63-100, while venous blood contains of oxygen but 15-100, yet car- bonic acid 75-100. These figures show how great is the consump- tion of the vitalizing properties (oxygen) of the air breathed, as 124 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE well as how great its vitiation by breathing, while the perpetual experience and instinct of all human beings and animals attest the absolute necessity for constant and copious resuppplies of fresh and well oxygenated air. How dull and stupid all feel after sitting a while in a hot room, especially if heated by an air-tight stove, which is unfit for use, because it rarefies the air so that we soon breathe out most of the oxygen. Hence the stagnation of the blood and lethargy of body and mind. But strike out into the fresh air and how differently you feel; how lively in body, how brisk in all the feelings, how clean in mind, how happy the whole man! Every human being ought to spend several hours every day, cold or warm, in the open air, coupled with much bodily action. Two to four hours of out-door breathing daily is the least compatible for adults, though more would be better, while children require a greater amount of both, because they have or ought to have a higher temperature and greater circulation, which has more to do in them than in adults, as they have to grow and build up the sys- tem, as well as to sustain it. This shutting them up in the house, even in cold weather, this being so afraid of a little fresh air, is downright folly, is down- right murder, for there is no numbering the deaths that this care- fulness has caused and is continuing to cause. Cool air is not harmful or poisonous, but much more healthful than warm air, be- cause for its bulk it contains more oxygen, that great quickener of the blood and stimulator of muscular, nerve and brain action. If a heated atmosphere had been biest for man nature would have heated it, but it relaxes instead of stimulating the system. All inhabitants of warm climates are indolent, mentally and physically, while all northerners are active, but are usually rendered inert in warm climates; hence the requisition of more or less cold to stir up the system. Unless you would make stupid blockheads or in- valids of your children, do not keep them shut up in a stove-heated room; however cold it is, let them go out, as all children delight to do, and their lungs will soon warm them up and keep them warm. If your dear darling, delicate child is indeed so weak that fresh air gives it a cold, you ought to be sent to prison for render- ing it thus tender; rather ought not to have a child. AIR AND SUNSHINE 125 Schools are great disease-breeders; children require an abun- dance of exercise and fresh air, instead of being packed into a small and overheated room. Just to sit on a bench and say D-O-G -to keep them thus pining for breath and action one-quarter of their lives, and the balance hardly better, signs, seals and de- livers the death warrant of many, a loved and lovely bud of human- ity. Our children, especially in the cities, do not get half enough air. This is what causes them to be puny, sickly and mortal. No wonder that half of them die in childhood; the only wonder is that more do not. All children should be rosy, while most juveniles in these days look pale and haggard. The city is no place to bring up children; they cannot get out of doors for fear of being run over, nor play without, because ma, grandpa or aunt is sick. Nor can they obtain fresh air in coal-heated nurseries or kitchens. God made the country, man the city. The country is the place for children; but, parents, whether you live in city or country, see to it that your children and yourselves have a full supply of fresh air and sunlight, daily and perpetually. VENTILATION. Citizens spend a large part of their time within doors, in places of business, amusements, etc., and country men average over half, while the women of both city and country live mostly within their own homes or churches, and many children are perpetually housed. All this, though absolutely wrong, is nevertheless a fact, and per- haps will continue to be so unless changed by public sense and sen- timent. The ventilation of houses, then, becomes as important to those who live mostly within doors as good breathing timber, because so valuable. This subject ought to engage public opinion much more than it does, because it certainly is neglected more than any other hygienic subject, when we consider its intrinsic value. All rooms in all homes should be furnished with a ventilator at the top for the escape of foul air, which will allow fresh air to enter, while the bad air which settles at the bottom can easily be drawn by suction and made to support the combustion of the fires about the house. Of 126 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE late years some attention is paid to this subject by builders and architects, but least where most needed. It is very much neglected among the crowded poor, which must cost thousands upon thou- sands of lives annually. Texans, when asked why they lived in houses with cracks in them nearly wide enough to crawl through, replied, because they are more healthy than tight ones. Northern builders take too much pains to keep out their best doctor, cool fresh air; no medi- cines are its equal for preventing or curing any and all ailments, and this doctor charges as much less than nothing as it costs to shut him out. Small bedrooms ten feet square and seven feet high contain seven hundred cubic feet of air; two persons sleeping together in it consume about one hundred and sixty feet in eight hours' sleep, and probably more, for we naturally breathe deeper when asleep than ordinarily when awake. The two have inhaled about one- fourth of its air, but they have excreted about twelve thousand square inches of carbonic acid gas, or nearly enough to make four solid ounces of carbon. Carbonic acid gas is a deadly poison; this is what kills those suffocated by the burning of charcoal in close rooms, and some- times a light burning in a bedroom for hours has already consumed its oxygen and loaded it with carbonic acid gas; or perhaps others have been sleeping in it night after night for months, with little circulation, so that its stench is almost unbearable until you become accustomed to it. On no account sleep in a dark bedroom which does not allow of thorough ventilation and the penetration of the sun's rays by windows or otherwise, if not by one or more doors and windows, so as to keep changing your air perpetually during the night, and make ample provision for this change before you re- tire. Most persons spend one-third of their lives two in a bed, in a little eight by ten bedroom, containing only five or six hundred cubic feet of air, and that vitiated to begin with, and stuff every crack and keyhole besides, in order to save a little coal or wood; breathing over and over again one-third of this poor air, making it almost thick with carbonic acid gas, and then wondering why AIR AND SUNSHINE 127 they became sick, and then laying it all to divine Providence, while it belongs to their own neglect and foul air; sometimes four or even more sleep in a little room not exceeding ten feet square and seven feet high; no wonder they claim that their vocation is un- healthy. How repulsive is the smell of bedrooms, and sometimes the whole house, and large families living and sleeping in them year in and year out; they finally call at the office and say, "Doc- tor, go down to the house; my children are all sick with scarlet fever or diphtheria," and complaining what hard luck the family is having these hard times, when cleanliness and fresh air, that cost nothing, would have saved all this bad luck complained of, and perhaps one or two lives. Even a draught on the bed, with plenty of bedclothes on, is far better than this pent-up air. Large, airy sleeping-rooms would add one-fourth to the average dura- tion and efficiency of life. They should be the largest rooms in the house. Night air is considered unwholesome. Nothing is more unfounded. Why, the idea conflicts with the whole economy of na- ture; all persons and animals that have to sleep out of doors attest the folly of such suppositions; if outside air is bad, inside air must be worse; can't be otherwise. If nature had made night air injurious, we would have been made to sleep without breathing. Nature never compels the least thing that is injurious to us. It is usually as wholesome as day air, and sometimes better. It may sometimes be damper, but that does not injure it for breathing purposes. It is usually cooler, therefore contains more oxygen; hence that makes it better than day air for sleeping purposes. Why are we so restless in hot sum- mer nights, and why do we sleep so sweetly and wake so invig- orated in cold fall nights? Only because the needed supply of oxygen is so much greater in the latter. So far from being in- jurious, sleeping with open windows greatly promotes sleep, even in strong, blustering weather; yet this practice should be adopted by degrees, so as to not take cold, as sudden changes are most always producers of colds. We should attend to breathing more than to eating, and pro- vide for a constant supply of fresh air even more than for good 128 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE food. Parents, see to it that your children have an abundance of it, day and night. Churches, lecture-rooms, theaters, vestries, billiard-rooms, de- pots and places of public resort require more ventilation than is usually provided. A public place forty by sixty feet, ten feet high, containing four thousand cubic feet, perhaps of poor air, is packed for two hours with a thousand persons; this gives twenty- four square feet to each one-barely enough for one hour's breath- ing timber. All are breathing over and over again the identical air just expired by the tobacco and rum filled listeners on both sides, while each expires about three thousand cubic inches of car- bonic acid gas. Three hundred thousand in all, enough to make seventy-five ounces of solid carbon. All this, besides the other fetid and noxious gases emptied into the room from foul breaths and perhaps still fouler stomachs. To eat and drink after others, even though they be tidy, is really considered vulgar; but to breathe after them, however, reeking with tobacco and bad whisky, is all right, while in point of fact to breathe the foul, spent air, just robbed and vitiated by another, is far more utterly nasty than to eat from their unwashed dishes. Blue veins signify insuf- ficient breath; the darker the blood the greater the amount of car- bon it contains. Now, this carbon should pass off through the lungs, and it will do so when we breathe abundantly; but when too little nitrogen is brought alongside of the carbonic acid con- tained in the blood to carry it off, it must return with the blood into the system, and being a rank poison as well as causing stagna- tion of the blood, it poisons and prostrates the vital organs, dimin- ishes life and engenders disease. Let such both eat less and breathe more, so as to thin and redden the blood; this is the only remedy. True, the blood in the veins is dark to a certain degree, but when very dark see to it, as you value your life, that this pow- erful disease breeder is removed by copious breathing of good fresh air. One in an erect posture will naturally breathe about one- fourth more continually than one in a stooping position, and of course live and enjoy life just that much more. Think what a difference and see to it that it is in your favor and not against you. AIR AND SUNSHINE 129 Only seeing or experiencing the different effects on mind and body of different postures can at all impress the practical importance of a position permanently erect, especially in children. A correct pos- ture will often benefit or cure invalids by the increased benefit it gives them through their breathing power. Sit, stand, work, write and walk erect always. IMPURE GASES NOT TAKEN INTO THE BLOOD THROUGH THE LUNGS. A common and very general notion is held by the public, as well as by scientific men, that we inhale impure air, thereby poison- ing the system. The fact is that impure air itself does us no harm and is not taken up into the system through the lungs because nothing but oxygen is taken up into the blood through the lungs, so that all people die either from suffocation for the want of this oxygen or they become sick by retaining their own poison within their sys- tems. As the poison (carbonic acid) that is exhaled from the sys- tem does not pass out from the blood, it must be plainly understood that this poison (carbonic acid) leaves the blood in the lungs, be- cause it has a stronger attraction for the elements it is combined with in the blood, hence leaves its old love and jumps into the arms of nitrogen, and so passes out of the lungs into the universe and is taken up by plant life; so it is with the oxygen. Air, as we know, is composed of two gases, called nitrogen and oxygen, and when the air enters the lungs the oxygen has a stronger attraction for the blood, hence leaves its old love and jumps into the arms of iron and charges the blood, changing it from a dark to a bright red; at the same time oxygen, which we will more plainly describe under the head of the circulation of the blood and show that it is the force of all life and that it is the main power through its electrical force which keeps the blood flowing continually throughout the body. So we can plainly see that when we breathe what is com- monly called impure air that there is a double, injury. First, it takes the force of life from the blood; and, second, it prevents one of the main poisons of the system from being carried off. This plain and simple illustration wants to be studied until thoroughly understood, for we see all the way through that it is 130 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the key to nearly all of the blood diseases ; besides this is another great point which should be remembered which has never been touched upon by any scientist before in regard to impure air. It is this : that when we breathe air containing impurities which are apt to be absorbed in the saliva in the mouth and secretions of the nose and swallowed into the stomach, and in this way could possibly be taken into the system, on the same principle that water will take up impurities from the air and if taken into the system in a sufficient quantity will produce disease. Although nitrogen and oxygen (which is air) are apparently very closely united, yet the oxygen has a stronger affinity for car- bon and hydrogen than for nitrogen, and whenever under appro- priate circumstances the carbon or hydrogen is presented to the air the oxygen leaves the nitrogen and unites with the carbon and forms carbonic acid, or with the hydrogen and forms water. In other words, the air is decomposed; its simple elements are sepa- rated from each other and a new compound is formed by the union of carbon and oxygen or by the union of the hydrogen and oxygen. Carbonic acid is composed of oxygen and carbon; this is a gas heavier than air and lighter than water. If it be in a vessel with water it rises to the top, and if in a vessel with air it sinks to the bottom. It is so much heavier than air that it can be poured from one tumbler to another, as can be done with water; it is found in some caves and at the bottom of some wells; it is the principal fac- tor in the process of fermenting bread, beer, wine, etc., and fills the bubbles that rise to the top of these liquids at the time of their fer- mentation; this gas often falls to the bottom and partially fills these reservoirs when their contents are partially drawn. It is also the product of combustion of charcoal, and often where this fuel is burned without any outlet near the floor for this gas to run off, or a chimney or sufficient draught to carry it upward, it par- tially or entirely fills the room. Wherever this gas is there can be no pure air, for this is excluded by it as certainly as it would be by water, and it is as unsafe for a man to enter a cavern, well, vat or a room containing it and carry his head below the surface of this gas as it would be if these contained water. AIR AND SUNSHINE 131 When the chest is fully expanded the air rushes in and fills all the air tubes and the air cells throughout the lungs. There it comes almost in contact with the venous blood, which is distrib- uted in the numberless little vessels and separated from the air cells only by a thin film of membrane through which the gases can pass. There an interchange takes place between the fluid and the gas. The blood absorbs from the air some of its oxygen and the air takes from the blood some of its carbonic acid and its water. By this change the blood is relieved of its used-up and dead particles and receives new and life-giving particles in their stead. The color is changed from a dark purple to a bright scarlet. After this the blood is again ready to sustain life and is sent back through the pulmonary veins to the left side of the heart, to be sent again through the arteries to the whole of the body, carrying nutriment to support it and oxygen to combine with its dead carbon. Carbon and hydrogen compose the principal portion of the waste matter of the living body, and these are thrown into the veins. There they meet with the oxygen that has been absorbed from the atmosphere in the lungs and carried in the blood through the arteries to the capillaries and the minute veins. There these, the hydrogen and the carbonic particles and the oxygen, meeting together, unite, and form carbonic acid gas and water. These new compounds are then sent with the venous blood through the veins to the heart, and thence to the lungs. FEMALE FORM. There is a common and mistaken notion of beauty of the female chest. In the eyes of too many it requires that the chest should be of a small and tapering form, diminishing from the shoulders downward to the waist. This opinion is strengthened and en- couraged by the fashion of female dress and encouraged by public sentiment; but, however general this form may be, and however long established in the world, it is artificial and not natural. It is opposed to that principle of beauty which nature has clearly and everywhere established, and it has done more than all else com- bined to produce the large amount of suffering among the female 132 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE sex. That the contracted waist is not the proper and becoming arrangement of those parts that are necessary and useful is a well- established fact. The chest is not a mere connecting link between the upper and lower portions of the animal frame, but it is the de- pository and the workshop of some of the most important of the vital organs, without the action of which life cannot be for a mo- ment sustained and without whose free and perfect operation life must be impaired, as well as enfeebling the coming generations. The chest is made for the use of the body and not for orna- ment; it was created to contain the heart and to give room and motion to the lungs, so that breathing could be carried on in the best manner. It would follow that form and size of this part of the animal frame is the most beautiful which would best answer these purposes and allow the lungs to perform their functions in the best manner possible. The size of the chest should be in pro- portion to the size of the body, so that it may receive a quantity of air proportioned to the quantity of blood that must be, purified in the system. Therefore a small waist becomes only a small person and a large, waist is necessary to the grace of a large person, pre- cisely as everything in nature is governed by the law of proportion. This is plainly the established principle of nature; we see it in all of her works. If we examine the little child who has never worn any close dress we find the circumference of its chest about as great as that of the body at the hips, and a line from the armpits to the hip would be nearly straight. If the waist is never subjected to the pressure of clothing which would interfere with the motion of the ribs, the chest will be continued through life in nearly the same shape, as that of the child or of the Indian female, whose garments have never been bound about the chest. We see the same in many laborers, more especially those from the. middle and north of the continent of Europe. The ancient statues show the full chest, the expanded waist and the broad freedom of the lungs for motion. But the chests of many who are encased in close costumes are small and taper downward from the shoulder to the waist. In some this is the temporary effect of present pressure, and when the close gar- ments are taken off the ribs rise to their natural position and the AIR AND SUNSHINE 133 chest expands to its natural size. In others, whose chests have been long subject to this close confinement, "this distortion of ribs and contraction of chest become fixed and permanent, and then they need no outward covering to confine the respiratory organs within these narrow dimensions. The bony frame by pressure may be altered and made to as- sume forms very different from that which nature intended. In the process of nutrition the old particles in all parts of the animal body are continually going away and new ones are taking their places. But if any pressure bears upon the depositing vessels on one side and closes them, the new particles are not placed there, but the blood is poured more freely into the other side, and there the growth is increased, and thus the shape of the organ, the bone or the flesh is changed. This distortion necessarily follows in the form and size of the ribs from the pressure of corsets or any tight clothing upon them; they gradually yield to the external form, and, bending inward, assume, the shape which the outer mould gives them and the chest, which was originally of size in due pro- portion to the rest of the body, now becomes permanently small and the internal capacity of the lungs corresponds to the external measurements. ACTION OF DIAPHRAGM AND THE AMOUNT OF AIR INHALED. The free operations of the diaphragm are sometimes impeded by the disorders of the stomach. In some forms of dyspepsia the sufferer feels as if the cavity of the chest were already filled and that no more air could be inhaled. His breath is short and he is often convinced that there must be serious disease of the lungs. In some of these cases the stomach is distended with gas, and this presses upon the diaphragm so as to prevent its motions downward. In other cases the peculiar kind, rather than the quantity, of gas affects this organ and impairs its power of motion. A man in good health will breathe about eighteen times a min- ute; some breathe more rapidly than this, others not so frequently. Children and women breathe more rapidly than men. Exercise, especially fast running, quickens the respiratory movements. So also the exhilarating affections, cheerfulness and laughter have the 134 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE same effect. On the other hand, fatigue, depression of spirits, grief and anxiety diminish the frequency of respiration. The lungs of a man of average size and in usual health, when at rest, when neither expanded or contracted, will hold two hun- dred and ninety cubic inches, or a little less than a gallon of air; but when distended by ordinary breathing they receive twenty cubic inches more. This fills them and makes three hundred and ten cubic inches. This twenty inches is the usual extent of breath- ing; it is the average amount of air which the lungs need and which they receive at every breath when allowed freedom of mo- tion, eighteen times a minute and one thousand and eighty times an hour. This quantity of pure air is not merely needed to fill the capacity of the chest and lungs, but it is needed for the purification of the blood, bearing in mind the fact that the blood receives waste matter from the system, mainly composed of carbon and hydrogen, of which it must be relieved; and knowing that it receives with them more water than is wanted and that when these are combined they go to the lungs to be disburdened of their superfluous and noxious elements, it is natural to suppose that the amount of air should cor- respond with the quantity of these matters which are thus to be removed. Then, in order that the air may meet the wants of the blood, the size of the chest corresponds to that of the body, and the motion of the ribs and the expansion of the lungs correspond to the flow of the blood. One would suppose this to be the case from a mere general view of the harmonies of nature, for the Creator makes all his works consistent one with another. The quantity of blood in the whole system of a man of average size amounts to about twenty-eight pounds. The heart in a man beats about seventy-five times a minute and forces out of itself about two ounces, or half a gill, of blood at each pulsation or con- traction, and consequently in one minute more than nine pints of blood are sent to the lungs to be acted upon by the air. In the same time twelve pints of fresh air are brought into the lungs, and the amount of carbon in the nine pints of blood corresponds very nearly with the capacity of the twelve pints of air to carry it away. AIR AND SUNSHINE 135 QUANTITY OF AIR SPOILED BY LOSS OF OXYGEN. Air that has once passed through the lungs is partially robbed of its oxygen, which is taken up by the blood, the amount absorbed be- ing estimated at about five per cent, so that the expired air con- tains about 6.5 per cent of carbonic acid gas, which is given off through the lungs from the blood. On this account we need about one-half a cubic foot of air every minute. When the gas goes out from the lungs it contains about four or five per cent of car- bonic acid gas, but if it contains more than three and a half per cent of this gas it is unfit to be breathed again. Then it necessarily follows that the air which has once been breathed contains about two and a half times this proportion and therefore the quantity of this injurious gas that is thrown off by each breath taken is suffi- cient to corrupt nearly once and a half as much more. The quantity which is exhaled in one minute would give three and a half per cent to 1,800 inches and render so much unfit to be breathed again. "There is a limit to the power of the air to take up and carry away the watery vapor from the lungs and this limit differs with the temperature. When the air is cooled down to 32 degrees, or freezing point, a cubic foot of it will hold about two and a half grains of water in solution. When it is raised to 62, which is usu- ally the proper temperature of sitting rooms, it will hold a little more than seven grains, and at 90, which is very nearly the temper- ature of the air when it goes out from the lungs, it will hold fifteen grains. This vapor is invisible and generally imperceptible. But if the. air at 90, containing fifteen grains in a cubic foot, be cooled down to 32 it then can hold only two and a half grains, and the dif- ference between these quantities-twelve and a half grains-will be condensed and become visible in the form of water. The cloud of vapor which one seems to expire in a cold day is caused by this con- densation. If in winter one or more persons sit in a room sufficiently warm to be comfortable, the air becomes filled with lung vapor. If the temperature of the room is the same throughout, this vapor is im- perceptible to the eye, but the air near the windows, if these are not double, becomes cooled by the action of the outward air and then this 136 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE vapor is condensed and lodged upon the glass in the form of water. If the air abroad is cooled below freezing point this condensed vapor freezes upon the window and the glass becomes coated with a layer of ice. So we usually find the windows of our sleeping chambers covered with ice on cold mornings of winter from this cause. The whole of the water thrown off from the lungs in this state of vapor amounts to about seventeen ounces in a day, which will make five and two-thirds grains a minute. This will saturate nearly one-half a foot of air at 90; but, as air usually contains about one grain of vapor in each cubic foot, it can absorb so much less and more air will be saturated with the pulmonary vapor." The insensible perspiration is another and very fruitful source of moisture in the air. The skin is a very active agent and is incessantly throwing off watery vapor from its surface. When this runs freely in drops it is called sweat and seems to be very abundant. But this is only a small part of the whole of this fluid, which is thrown off through the external surface, for a much greater quantity is sent off in an in- visible form. The quantity of this insensible perspiration varies and approximately is from thirty ounces a day in northern, to forty ounces a day in southern climates. Some writers estimate it to be about eleven grains a minute, while others give a much higher estimate, even going as high as 23 grains a minute. Taking the last as the standard and adding these twenty grains to the five and two-thirds grains of vapor thrown off from the lungs, we have enough to saturate somewhat more than two feet of air with moisture, and so much being saturated it can take no more vapor from the lungs. Thus we see that in these three ways the air loses its power of relieving the blood of its super- fluous carbon and water and is thereby rendered unfit for the work of breathing. First, by the loss of its oxygen in each minute, 720 inches; and secondly by saturation with carbonic acid gas, 1800 inches; and thirdly by saturation with vapor from the lungs and skin, 3590 inches. WANT OF FRESH AIR IN HOMES THE AMOUNT OF AIR SPOILED EACH MINUTE. About four cubic feet of air being rendered partially or entirely useless for the purpose of purifying the blood and giving it new life, AIR AND SUNSHINE 137 it will of course be necessary that we have so much new and fresh air supplied every minute for each person. If this, after having been once breathed or saturated with vapor, were carried immediately away, this quantity would be sufficient, but as the corrupted air mingles with the pure, this is partially corrupted, therefore we need a larger supply to support breathing. The best authorities on the subject of ventilation consider seven feet as the least amount that should be supplied to each person. Taking the lowest estimate, seven feet will be considered as necessary for the maintenance of the healthy breathing of each person in each minute of life. If we always dwelt in the fields we should have fresh air enough without any effort on our part, but when we live in closed houses it becomes a question whether we are thus supplied. The wants of nature must be supplied, and if our rooms are made air tight, then it is neces- sary to determine whether they contain air sufficient for the consump- tion of all that inhabit them as long as they stay there. If this be not the case, then it is necessary to find some means to carry off the foul air as fast as it is rendered so by breathing and to bring in a new sup- ply from abroad to take its place. A continued supply of fresh air for all inhabited rooms is as necessary as a continued supply of heat in cold weather, and yet provision for meeting this necessity is not usually and intentionally made in the arrangement of our dwellings and our public rooms. The architect and the builder provide carefully for warmth, but they generally make little or no provision for breath- ing. Fortunately the imperfection of the builder's work obviates, in some small degree, and generally prevents the immediately destructive consequence of the defects of the architect's plans. It is difficult, in fact, almost impossible, to make a room so tight that no air can force itself into it, when the internal atmosphere is heated or vitiated by breathing. A room sixteen feet square and nine feet high will contain 2,304 cubic feet. This will be sufficient for four persons less than an hour and a half for ordinary day purposes. This room, though not so large as some that are inhabited by day or night, is yet as large as most, and much larger than many rooms so occupied. It is estimated a proper economy to have small and tight parlors and sitting rooms for the oc- cupation of the family during the day and evening. On an average 138 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE these do not probably contain more than 1700 feet. If only four per- sons inhabit one of these, they would have air sufficient for less than one hour. It is considered by many a prudent architectural design to have many and small sleeping chambers. Room for the bed and ward- robe and for convenient dressing is all that is thought absolutely neces- sary. At least the plan of a good dwelling generally includes a por- tion of these narrow chambers. Many of these will not contain more than 500 cubic feet, and in such two grown persons, often more than two children, sleep during the night. Here is air enough to last two persons a little more than a half hour. In public boarding houses, in some taverns, and in the houses where the operatives of factories are boarded, it is an object to lodge the family as cheaply as possible. Consequently, the lodging rooms are often made as small, or planned to hold as many sleepers as is possible. Oftentimes these lodgers are so closely crowded as to have hardly air enough for half an hour's breathing. How often it happens that eight to a dozen men sleep in a room with less than 800 feet of air through the night; and for eight hours these men breathe over and over again the air from each other's lungs in the vain attempt to purify their blood and refresh their frames and invigorate themsplves for the next day's labor. In such conditions there would only be sufficient air to last them less than ten to fifteen minutes, and yet it was required to last them 480 minutes, and in this, as well as in other crowded chambers, nothing but the ventilation through the crevices of the imperfect carpentry would save these sleep- ing occupants from suffocation. The crowded state of the cabins of steamboats in which the sleep- ing apartments are below decks, and of the canal boats at night, leaves less air for breathing than even these rooms. Not unfrequently fifty, or even sixty, persons sleep in the narrow cabin of a canal boat, which contains more space than some of the airy chambers where only two cautious people would usually spend the night. THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. There is probably no word in the English language that so often sends a thrill of horror through the human mind as the word "conta- gion," as it is generally applied to disease. But a little knowledge of how nature produces disease will make the nonsensical theory that disease is contagious the laughing stock of all generations to come. Of course we are well aware that this matter of assailing popular wrongs is sometimes a thankless task, but nearly every advancement passes through several stages. First, people say it is absurd; then they say it is contrary to present views; and finally they say we always knew it was so; but a man may denounce the wrongs of the Canaanites, the Arabs, Hottentots and Mormons and be extolled as a brave man and true to his convictions; but if he attempts to oppose those who are now sanctioned and tries to save the people from being imposed upon by what he knows to be inconsistent, he is branded as a sensational or impracticable crank or a narrow minded bigot, and even smutted by false accusations or insignificant innuendoes. There is no doctor so pitiful, so hopeless, as he who thinks his creed or particular practice contains all the truth and who squares all his utterances by it; none so wretched as he who suppresses his nobler reasons in order to be consistent with the dictates of authority. To the thousands thus burdened who dare not speak the truth that burns within them, I appeal-be free! The law of truth is that it cannot be shut up without becoming a dead thing and mortifying the whole nature; truth cannot do any good except when it is lived for, pro- claimed, and sometimes suffered for. This is the lowest step of a nation's fall, when the people who know the truth refuse to publish it. There is a tendency in the masses always to think and believe not what is true but what is respectably orthodox; it comes partly from habit, partly from cowardice, from imitation, from the dread of timid minds to plunge into the investigation of them. That mind alone is free which is conscious of its own feebleness, feeling its own liability 139 140 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE to err, and turning to the light from whatever side it may come. You may be charged with skepticism, even infidelity. The professed friends of truth will do all they can to destroy your influence, and it takes boldness to stand by truth and its supporters and against man's threatenings and the devil's wrath. You need a patient meekness to bear the galling calumnies and false surmises with which, if you are faithful, some satanic working, which if it could would burn your body, will assail you through the pen and tongue of deceivers and de- ceived; who under a semblance of zeal will distort your words, mis- represent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek, by every poison breath of slander, to destroy your service. We would ask, of what consequence are all the qualities of a doctrine if that doctrine be not communicated ? And communicated it is not if it be not understood. I hope I have too much regard for justice and too much respect for my character to attempt to hurry you beyond the abso- lute and demonstrative evidence. My object is to convince you of a general truth, yes, a natural law, and to impress you with this truth, which you may not be prepared or ready to accept. It is obvious that the most effective method, which is the inductive, will lead your mind upon a culminating wave of evidence to the very point I aim at. A Unitarian aspect of man and all nature alone deserves study. All fragments are nearly useless. Completeness is an ordinance of nature and should be of all investigation. All isolated views pre- sented independently of co-working parts are of little practical ac- count because all parts of nature are interwoven and co-operate with all in manifesting life. Mere filling the mind with opinions of others, mere exercising the memory upon facts and fancies, is not knowledge; for that matter it is not education. To educate is to form and de- velop, to call out latent powers, to awaken thought, to enable one to judge right and wrong and abide by the right. He alone is learned who knows these laws of nature and their operations. They embody the Divine will and mandates. From the beginning in practice I have followed these principles, paying no attention to any of the respectable and orthodox theories which will only lead one astray by crowding out the main feature to be attended to in any case of disease that is now so dreaded on account of its supposed contagious charac- THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 141 ter. The fact is that this long cherished theory is what has infused so many elements of uncertainty, but I am free to admit that by fol- lowing out these natural laws in regard to these so-called contagious diseases, as explained in another chapter, that it would take a clien- tele of from four to six times as many families to make a living as it does under the present methods and murderous practice of handling and breeding this class of diseases, and if these laws of cause and effect were more generally inculcated in the minds of the public it would still take a larger number. Not only that; if the public once are educated and understand what produces this class of diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles and yellow fever, it would be rare that they occur, and when they did occur would be as easily managed and with as little danger as a common cold. This absurd theory that diseases are contagious has always been entirely based upon assumption. No one has ever tried to explain by any natural law how it is possible for anyone to take disease by contagion. Diseases have been traced from one person to another by the identi- cally same principles that a few hundred years ago disease was traced as due to witches and devils, etc. No one seemed to know the cause, and as in everything else humanity must have some belief, no matter how foolish, as to what causes disease. Diseases have been pro- nounced contagious almost conclusively from the fact that so many instances have occurred where one in the family comes down with the disease, and then another, and another, until often the whole family comes down; and then again an epidemic of smallpox or diphtheria will spread over a whole city or country. Another strong argument in favor of this view of contagion, and to which our state laws are largely due, is the fact that twenty, thirty or forty school children take a disease one after the other, and finally the school is closed and the epidemic of disease stops. Does not this on the surface appear as if it was positive evidence that these diseases are contagious? But when these assumptions are compared with the natural law that we have demonstrated to be the cause of disease, the theory of contagion will appear as ridiculous as the spirits and witches of olden times ap- pear ridiculous in the present age. It is so easy to lull and doze among the incense of fanatic belief. It needs no knowledge, it needs 142 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE no reasoning powers, it needs no judgment; but belief and faith will keep up the glorious imagination of the brain, and people will cling to their beliefs with a tenacity that is dearer to them than life itself, while the intelligent being who bases his knowledge upon physical or civil laws is more yielding. We can best show that reason, logic and common sense have little effect upon beliefs even among the classical and educated, by illustrating a case in practice. A family with two children, one seven years and the other one year old; the eldest was taken with scarlet fever; the family physi- cian was called, who himself strongly believed that disease was con- tagious. The father of the child was also a professional man, the mother a well-educated woman and at one time a school teacher, and both were ardent believers that scarlet fever was very contagious. Of course the first thing the doctor said, and naturally the first thing the family expected he would say, was that the house must be quar- antined and all remain at home. But the father pleaded that it must be arranged somehow so he could attend to his business-that he had an urgent matter on hand that must not be neglected. "But, my dear sir," said the doctor, "you must stay at home because you will spread the disease to others if I let you go;" but the doctor finally permitted the father to attend to his business, provided he would sleep down- stairs and not go up into the room where the sick boy lay. To this the father gladly agreed. But what about the mother and the other child? The mother nursed the sick boy and was at his bedside most of the day, and besides this, must feed, handle and care for her other child just the same as if no contagious disease existed in the house. There was no danger of her giving the disease to her little child when she was practically devoting her time from the sick child to the well one all day, but the father could spread it all over the city if he even went into the room of the sick boy, and the doctor could go into the room two or three times a day, from there go to see his other patients, go to his office, go to church-in fact, go anywhere he pleased, with- out danger of spreading the disease. Is not this medical science in a nutshell? Can anyone name anything or any superstition or belief of the dark ages that was based upon less common sense, less logic and reason and more ignorance of natural law than the illustration THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 143 just given? and everyone knows that our laws of quarantine and contagion are based upon the same windy foundation. We happened to have occasion to call at the above mentioned house; the mother, during our conversation, began to explain to me the care and interest that the doctor took so as not to spread the disease, calling her atten- tion to the doctor's and to her own logic that if scarlet fever was so contagious, why she would not give it to her other child which she was handling, feeding, washing and dressing, and at the same time taking care of the sick one, she cut me off short by saying: "Well, the doctor ought to know," and that she had confidence in what he said. Now, is this not the state of the public mind? Can it not be demonstrated thousands of times in every epidemic? Are there words in the English language strong enough to condemn such a sentiment? Although let it be understood that the public is not to blame, but it is enforced upon them by the laws of the state and by the impression made upon them through an ignorant or else an unscru- pulous profession. The following case so aptly illustrates the strong belief in contagion, as well as the cause of a large portion of diph- theria : Being called to a family a few years ago, when diphtheria and smallpox were raging, I found all the children, four in number, down with diphtheria. The mother, of course, was feeling very sad; she said that in a family in the neighborhood the children had had diphtheria and that her children had been playing with those of her neighbor's who had recovered from diphtheria and from those had contracted thie disease, and that it was a shame that the doctor or the parents allowed such state of affairs to let their children out while they were still able to give the disease to others; in other words, the blame of her children having the disease was put on the other family. I an- swered the mother by stating that if her children died she was to blame, and not the other family. Had not this family the utmost confidence in me I would not have dared to have made such an asser- tion without getting kicked out of the house, and as it was she repri- manded me with some very harsh words. The reason for stating to her that she was to blame for her children having diphtheria was, first, to convince her of the foolishness of such an idea that her chil- 144 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE dren had caught the disease of her neighbor, even if her idea was orthodox; second, to add another proof for myself as to one of the causes of these diseases. The conditions that I found was a nice, tidy looking home, so far as the untrained eye could see; everything showed that she followed the rules of cleanliness, so far as she under- stood them; but the four children slept in a little room eight by ten, with two beds in it, located on the south side of the house, the window also facing the south, the house being built five years; when entering the bedroom my nose told me immediately what was the matter; ex- aminations and the mother's statement showed that the windows had not been opened since the house was built. I told the mother if she would follow my instructions I would make her see the cause of the diphtheria as plain as she could see her stove in the room. By the use of an ax the window was opened from the top, and another in an adjoining room, so as to give circulation of air. The next morning when I arrived at the house she grasped me with both hands and said: "Doctor, forgive me for the harsh words I used yesterday. I see now you were right; I also know now why we never could get rid of a doctor at our house the year round. My children slept better last night, although they were very sick, than they have for several years." She said they were always so restless before this. They all recovered and practically without any medicine, and have had no use for a doctor since, which is about six years ago at present writing, and from the increased physical appearance and health of the children they never will. But you ask me why did they not get the disease before when the condition had existed for a number of years? This could be answered by stating that if you should have gunpowder lying in a certain room in your house it would be harmless until it became affected by some exciting cause, when the gunpowder would explode. So it is largely with all of this class of diseases. In this instance it is easily explained by an absolute law of nature; the win- dow in this bedroom was on the south side of the house, the sun having a good opportunity to penetrate her rays through the window enough during the day to at least purify the room sufficient to pre- vent the disease, but it must also be plain to the reader that these children never got up well in the morning, that their systems always THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 145 retained an abnormal amount of poison or waste matter, which was proven by the fact that her children were puny and sickly and from any little exciting cause would have a cold, sore throat or some form of bowel complaint; but during the season that diphtheria and small- pox were raging we had mostly cloudy, damp and dreary weather with little or no sunshine or thunder and lightning to clear the air, and this condition of the air and increase of affluvia from vegetable decom- position in the air gave the exciting cause, because there was nothing to purify this room during the day and, as already stated in other chapters, a large share of this waste of the body is carried out through the lungs and that this change can only take place when you breathe pure air. By pure air we mean air that will give up its oxygen to the blood, and by this act the system gives off the poison, carbonic acid. It is these outside extreme conditions that occur about once in so often, and this condition acting upon other unfavorable condi- tions to form a poisonous compound making the air in the room of other living or working places, making the exciting causes of these epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc. This can be proven in a more scientific manner when we consider the many forms the atom and molecule may take; that any change of number as well as of place will give rise to a different quality and different activity from the more harmless to the most dangerous and poisonous substances. These natural elements of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen may engage in almost any number and in compound pro- portion by changes in place, by additional elements, and the simple misplacement of an atom in a molecule may be the difference between health and disease, between life and death. It is this decomposed pent up air and matter, which is the most violent poison, that pro- duces these epidemic diseases; not because you directly take this poison into the system, but because it has appropriated the oxygen in forming this poisonous and pent up air, and thus preventing the blood being charged with oxygen, which is the force and life of man. Second: It prevents the system from relieving the blood of its waste poison (carbonic acid gas) through the lungs. Third: This foul air in a room prevents the needed action of good air upon the skin, nerves and the functions of the body, causing nervous and 146 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE other organic disturbances. This will form various forms of poisons within the system which the system cannot under these circumstances eliminate for the want of the powder (which is the want of oxygen) ; under these conditions good food, as well as bad food, will have bad effects upon the system. Often good food and a poor systemic condition will cause worse disease, and more easily, than poor food and a fair or good physical condition; all these combinations must be considered in tracing the cause of so many different conditions or diseases. Eating and drinking foods that contain decomposed animal or vegetable matter will produce the same result. Do we want any better evidence than the sun is one of our best purifiers? We may say that the food of man and the organic life of man is sunshine. A few years ago we attended a little girl twelve years of age who had a severe attack of diphtheria. By the request of the mother I allowed her boy, about the age of fifteen, to go into the back yard and carry in some wood, which lay about ten feet from the house; after treating the patient the next day I was called into a house across the street by a woman who began immediately to attack me by stating that I ought to be prosecuted, that I had no conscience nor feeling for humanity in allowing that boy outside of the house, as I was only trying to spread the disease all over the neighbor- hood. During her tirade her four children had gathered so close around me that they were touching my clothes; calling attention to her logic, showing her the poison on my fingers and some that had been spattered on my beard and clothes, which was spattered over me while trying to clear the throat of the patient with my fingers, but that she was not afraid of that nor was she afraid that her children Would take the disease by rubbing up against my clothes, but allow- ing a boy across the street to go into the back yard and carry in an arm of wood for his mother he could spread the disease all over the city. In spite of this explanation, thinking at least it would make her cautious and would send her children away from me, during our half hour's conversation, and again asking her if she was not afraid that I would give her children the diphtheria with this poison all over my beard and clothes; she answered by saying, "Oh, you THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 147 doctors never carry any disease." Is not this the general belief and feeling among the public? I could fill a volume with my own expe- rience which would support this view. Is there any sense, science or logic in it? This strong public sentiment and our strong health laws, which ought to be called death laws; they are created by scien- tific absurdity under the pretense of protecting an innocent and con- fiding public from these so-called contagious diseases, when only a little reflection and observation would plainly demonstrate that the theory of contagion and all the state laws upholding it are contrary to all natural laws, contrary to all common sense. They actually, as we will show later on, increase the number of these diseases instead of preventing them. This only shows that most people are governed by habit and imitation more than by reason and observation or this sort of hash could not exist from one year and one generation to another. It reminds me of the story told about old Ben Butler. When in college he boarded with an old lady who invariably served hash for breakfast. He ate all around it for some time, when his patience became exhausted; he wrote a note and stuck it in the hash, then left the table, settled his bill and quit the house. One of the boarders inquisitively examined the bit of paper and found it referred to a certain verse in the Bible, which he looked up and found, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and forever." Just so are the public being stuffed full of hash like the theory that diseases are contagious, the theory that germs are the cause of disease, the theory that vaccine will prevent disease, all of which are the boldest and the most nonsensical ever sprung up in our world. A flimsy frame of hypothesis constructed upon irrelevant facts with a complete depar- ture from any scientific investigation of nature's laws as regarding health and disease, they are nothing but a jungle of fanciful assump- tion and ruinous and murderous in their application. Nothing is certain except that which is governed by natural laws. A few years ago two families moved into a house on the out- skirts of the city, with surroundings and location very desirable, excepting the house not having been occupied for about two years, with windows and doors closed and boarded up so as to prevent the entrance of sunlight. Any one can imagine the foulness of the 148 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE air in this building, the dampness of its walls, which would be liable to throw off poisons for weeks afterwards. In less than three weeks every person of both families, excepting one of the mothers, came down with diphtheria of the worst form, eleven cases in all, four of them dying, one of them dying within ten hours after manifest- ing the external signs of the disease. The excitement ran high, probably more on account of the great fuss the health officers made to keep the disease from spreading all over the city and country, but the three physicians attending them, the writer being one, could go in to see these patients three times daily, go home to our families, attend to our patients in the office and at other residences, handling weak and delicate persons, the three physicians probably visiting thirty to forty persons a day, without danger of spreading the disease, no objection or fault found by anybody, but if any other person attempted to offer their services or give assistance to these two families in dis- tress it would not be allowed unless they agreed to be quarantined in the house with the sick ones. These are our laws and progressive intelligence and medical science in the closing year of the nineteenth century. We defy any one, all things being equal, to show any super- stition of the dark ages that is equal to these damnable doctrines of contagion and quarantine. In the above two families the cause was purely a local one, due to decomposed, pent-up air in the house, and instead of quarantining everything should have been thrown open, the sun and air to be left to penetrate every nook and corner in the house; first, to let out the poisons that had accumulated in the house, and second, to let out the poisons that are thrown out of the bodies of these diphtheretic patients, and let this poison also sail out to the weather to be taken up by the winds and the rays of the sun. Just as any other dead animal or vegetable matter all over the earth, it goes to the wind and the sun to be split up into its primitive elements. All poisons within the body are similar and of the same nature, whether thrown off from a diseased person or a healthy person, as those thrown off from the animal and vegetable kingdom outside of the body. How is it possible that so much unadulterated gall and nonsense could exist in regard to disease in the medical profession ? If the one little simple THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 149 fact would be considered that all of these diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever and measles are only a combination and accumulation of the same poison that the healthy body is throwing off every moment during life; it depend- ing only upon what portion of the nervous system and other functions are disturbed by our surroundings, local and general; which particu- lar function of the body that eliminates waste matter would be- come the most obstructed, and we must not forget the condition the system is in when the above mentioned conditions act upon the func- tions of the body. Why do we arrange our plumbing or sewer sys- tem in the house to carry off all decomposed animal and vegetable matter, whether from the body or outside of the body, and keep our rooms well ventilated during the day and night in order to carry out into the air the poisons eliminated from our skin and lungs so they can become diffused and disorganized from the forces of the sun's rays and the air? Then why in God's name do not physicians, or speaking more properly, why do not these self-made and self- constituted authorities who, with a dollar and a half charter build a diploma mill, have a little hole drilled into their skull to give their faculty of conscientiousness a chance to grow? This would enable it to become large enough to stimulate a little honesty and sympathy for suffering- humanity and give this humanity this little plain fact, that all of these so-called contagious diseases, no matter what name they may be called by, are composed of the same identical poisons that the healthy person is eliminating day and night, only that they have gradually accumulated in increased proportions in the body, until they have increased to such proportions from themselves or from the checking of some function from the external influences of the air, such as cold, damp, hot or impure air, general or local, until one or more of the functions become so strained, like the increased pressure upon a dam, which finally breaks through and relieves itself of this pressure. Just so does the system take the helm in her own hands and break the obstructed dam and relieve the body by throwing these poisons (according to the combination formed within the body) out on the surface, and we call it smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., and in this way the body will clean itself of these impurities if 150 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the skin and kidneys are kept free to perform their function, for, mind you, these are the same kind of poisons as those thrown off in health, only in larger quantities, and nature will get rid of them or kill you in the attempt. So we plainly see that these diseases are like an obstructed sewer in the house, the obstruction generally being caused from the same identical material for which the sewers are made to carry them off. Again, this system being just like the sewer system of a house, can become obstructed if too much exposed to the external cold. We cannot repeat too often, in order to impress it upon the mind of the reader, that this eruption of smallpox, scarlet fever and measles and the membrane of a diphtheretic throat is not a disease, in the sense generally supposed; it is simply nature's effort to rid itself of the foreign or poisonous matter through the natural sewers of the body, such as the skin, kidneys and other excretory organs. In other words, nature has begun to cure herself. The rise of the high temperature, which we call fever, is nature's internal remedy to burn up the excess of carbon, and the increased breathing, which is usually combined with fevers, is nature's method of supplying the system with an increased amount of oxygen to perform the health produc- ing process. Reader, these thoughts are worth pondering over; com- pare them with the usual methods of treatment and see how incom- patible they are. They clearly show why many of the present meth- ods of treatment kill more people than the. disease itself. The phy- sician's duty is to assist the above mentioned functions of nature that her sewers do not become obstructed and support the patient, then when nature has completed or rid herself of these poisons the patient goes on to convalescence; this ought to be accomplished in from three to ten days and not from three to eight weeks, as is now the case, and then thank the Lord that they escape death. I have seen cases where a bullet fired through the body could not have killed the patient much quicker. We remember a case of scarlet fever in one of the wealthiest families in the city in which I lived; it was their only child; the so-called leading doctor had the child stripped and cold water dashed over its body, thereby closing up the pores of the skin and preventing the elimination of the poisons, the child dying in twelve THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 151 hours. I told the father afterwards to tell the physician that I said he was the murderer of that child through his ignorance of a few simple laws and that I was ready to meet him in court and prove my accusation. To make the above statement more clear we will quote an instance where I was called in consultation; three patients were being treated for what the attending physician called catarrhal fever; I found two were convalescing and one dying; this latter patient, a girl about ten years old, lay there with a temperature of 106% degrees, unconscious and delirious, and could not have lived many hours in that condition. I told the parents and the attending physician that the skin was so dry that there was no chance for the patient to get rid of the poison and thus lower the temperature, and if that could be accomplished before it destroyed the child all would be well, but the treatment I suggested they thought was harsh. I assured them that it was soothing to the patient instead of harsh and they finally submitted; I will also add that I never used the treatment before in this class of diseases, but the condition of the child and the object to be accom- plished in the quickest possible manner suggested it to me. I had the child stripped of its clothing, took a folded sheet wet in cold water, surrounded it with woolen blankets and wrapped the child in this cold pack, to be repeated every hour; the effect was almost magical; in six hours the child was conscious and in ten hours as thickly covered with the eruption of scarlet fever as a child could possibly be. Then I examined the two boys who were convalescing and found them scaling off, showing they had scarlet fever also, but the attending physician had diagnosed it catarrhal fever; the girl made a good recovery in one week. Does it seem possible that such ignorance and carelessness among physicians exists ? Our experi- ence has been that equal blunders are quite general, and we could fill a volume with cases that have come under my own observation, and the ones making the greatest blunders often having the highest reputation. It is the old story over that the success of a physician in treating the so-called internal diseases depends not so much upon what he does for his patient, but depends more on how he treats the well ones in the house and the neighbors he meets. If he has the 152 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE tact to please them and if he neglects or even kills his patients, he will be lauded for the great pains he took in the case, but it was be- yond human power to save it. We have seen this same doctor keep one case of scarlet fever, making from one to three visits a day, while we attended twelve cases in succession, he getting almost double the visits out of this one case than we had made to the twelve. In calling his attention to this fact he said, "You don't know your busi- ness," and from the money standpoint I often have thought he was right. We want to state right here, not for the sake of boasting, but more to show that lingering cases along is dangerous to life. I never lost a case of scarlet fever, and say again it ought rarely to occur; but how different are the facts. Only of late some great professor gave a report of three hundred cases, praising himself for losing only twenty-five and one-tenth per cent. It may be well here to say a few words before getting back to our subject of contagion and that is, in regard to the general belief that having scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, etc., once, frees the person from a second attack. This belief is not well founded. It is not a real one at all, but only apparent. Persons rarely have scarlet fever or measles twice, but we have known cases that have had them two or three times. But we know in all things that two successive occurrences of the same kind are always less probable than a single one and all physiological law proves conclusively that it is unjustifiable to conclude that because a person does not have these blood diseases twice he has become free from it through the first attack. It may be the result of the doctrine of chance, but we even doubt this, and we think it can be proven by the natural law of adapt- ability because we find, as already stated in the causes of disease, that in all the eruptive diseases the over acid condition of the sys- tem predominates. When this condition of an over poisoned system does not predominate the patient will come down with typhoid fever or diphtheria. Children more than adults, in the first ten years of life produce more uric acid and other waste matter within the sys- tem, necessitated by growth and development. This condition pre- dominates in all people, more in cold weather than in hot; hence small- pox exists more during cold and damp seasons than warm. This can THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 153 be made only as a general statement, because surroundings, the man- ner of living and the food eaten, and especially the manner in which the system is kept can produce this condition in local families. For this reason we occasionally have local diseases of this character. Doctor Gottstein of Berlin, in an elaborate paper gives a number of examples of the repeated occurrence of these blood diseases in the same individual and enters into an elaborate statistics to show that the frequency of having these diseases more than once is actually an excess of what might be reduced from the calculation of probabili- ties. Thus he quotes from Maiselis statistics of thirty-three second attacks of scarlet fever, thirty-seven of measles and no fewer than five hundred and fourteen of smallpox, and refers also to the recur- rence of syphilis and of whooping cough. Before giving our definite reasons that the theory of contagion is wrong we will quote one more instance that came under our own observation. A young man was taken with the smallpox, which the health officer claimed was from inhaling foul air or gases while sort- ing over rags in a factory that were supposed to be mixed with some that came from a smallpox patient. The whole city went into excite- ment, everybody was vaccinated, the house was strictly quarantined, and the family kept in the house, but the father was determined not to stay in and wanted to go to work, but was finally kept at home by an officer being kept about the house to prevent any one from leav- ing it. The result was the whole family, six in all, came down witli the smallpox, several of them dying, but the health officer was given great praise in his diligence and success in preventing the spreading of the disease any further. Two ladies called at my office and asked me to explain to them the reason that the doctor should go into this house two or three times a day, go all over the city, visit his own patients, then after making his last call in the evening on the small- pox cases would come down to the dancing school, put his arms around their waists and dance with us without danger of spreading the small- pox ; but this poor father who wanted to go to work to keep his fam- ily from starving was kept in the house by a loaded shotgun. If this isn't good science and good darn fool sense, where would you go to find it? Is it not a fact that if the cause of the first case was due 154 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE to sorting rags in the mill, although we doubt the assumption of being correct, had not it ought to have been positively confined to the one case? And the result of the other five cases was due to our present scientific absurdity based upon a wrong theory and false conclusion and thereby killed three persons, put thousands of dollars in the pock- ets of the doctors, including the fees for vaccination and the treat- ment of these cases, when really it had ought to have«been the fee for only one case. Is not this legal murder and robbery? Does it seem possible that these are the facts in this enlightened century? This young man ought to have been put in a room as large as pos- sible, with good circulating air and the rest of the family should have been kept out doors to breathe the fresh air to charge the blood with this life giving element oxygen as much as possible; this in turn would increase the functions and activity of the system and assist to eliminate its poison and thus prevent the balance of the fam- ily taking the disease, while the chances are one hundred to one that the cause of the smallpox existed in the house and that all it needed was some exciting cause to set the systemic fires going. This whole house should have been kept well aired and well ventilated, instead of quarantined and closed up, so that this poison this patient was try- ing to eliminate from his body would not have been kept in the room or house, so that any person could go into that house and not in any way infect his system enough to develop disease. Is it not as plain as the noonday sun that if a strong healthy person can become infected in a room where a patient lies with the smallpox, from breathing the air in that room or otherwise, isn't it a mighty poor place for that patient to get well in by continually re-inhaling air which is mingled with the poison that nature is trying to rid itself from? There are no two classes that so rarely take these disease as those that are continually waiting upon the patient, that is, the doctors and nurses. This is at least strong inductive evidence that there is no contagious disease, or else these doctors and nurses have a special dispensation from God. A family with nine children moved from the country, several hundred miles away, into a large city, rented a house in a nice clean portion of that city, which of course was a great change from plenty THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 155 of fresh air and pure water in the country to a crowded city, where air is more or less contaminated, and perhaps the foods were not as wholesome and not of the same kind. The necessary care and pre- caution that ought to be taken by families moving from country to city were not understood; the children not having natural resisting powers to become acclimated so to speak; every one of these nine children was taken down with a most violent type of dyphtheria after living in the city three or four weeks, seven of them dying; three of the children were carted from the house to a fine hospital two or three miles away, in order to give them better care and treatment, but all died. The father and mother were not allowed to go to the hospital for fear they would spread the disease, but the children could be hauled from one end of the city to the other with the disease in its worst form; that, of course, according to our scientific absurd- ity laws, would not spread the disease-and the physician in attend- ance I saw every day going into the house, from there to the hos- pital, then to other patients. Oh no, they cannot spread the disease, but the poor father and mother dare not stick their heads out doors to get a smell of fresh air without spreading it all over the city. Reader, can the grossest ignorance on earth invent anything fraught with more danger, is anything more inconsistent with common sense ? This illustration is given to show, first, the necessity of people knowing how they should guard and prepare against the risk they take when moving from good healthy conditions, from the country to a poorer and unaccustomed one in the city. It has the same effect and is gov- erned by the same law which affects wild animals when caught by man in the wilderness and tamed in domestic surroundings, or as often is done by showmen, taken from one extreme climate of their natural habitation to another; if these animals were not given special care and study for a time until acclimated, or their systems have adapted themselves to their new surroundings, sickness and often death would be the results. This rule is a well established one in regard to animals, why not among God's noblest animal (man) ? Another family moved into this same city about the same time as the one referred to; being poor they rented a small place, partly a basement in which they lived; they had formerly lived on 156 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE a farm. In three or four weeks one after the other, until six per- sons from the age of fifteen up to sixty, were down with typhoid fever; all recovered. But to repeat, nature will adapt you to her conditions or kill you in the attempt. A few years before this occur- rence I moved into this same city with family all in good health; in three or four weeks one of my children came down with the measles, when no measles had been in that neighborhood for a year, and none followed. These illustrations show more strongly one cause of disease, and that is the adaptability to new conditions, and when the public are educated and understand the absolute need of obeying this law of adaptability its bad results can be easily avoided, by being more careful for a few months in what they do and what is eaten or drunk; that is where any change in food and drink is made to eat lightly of the same and to take plenty of out door exer- cise, but not to over-do and to be sure that the water is pure, espe- cially when taken from the hydrants of the city, until the system had gradually adapted itself to the sudden change. Usually the opposite occurs when city people move out in the country; the change of the conditions for health being better instead as in the former, where it is for the worse. All the Zymotic or blood diseases, such as diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, etc., are produced from the same causes, differing only as the same condition acts or unites with other different conditions. When the atmosphere is the exciting cause it will depend in what state or condition of health the person is in; for instance a child is in good health but is breathing an impure or damp atmosphere that is capa- ble of producing an epidemic of these diseases, but as long as the child's system is kept in this perfect state of health by keeping up perfect skin circulation it has resisting power enough to eliminate its poisons into the atmosphere and thereby escapes, but during this epidemic she takes cpld, thereby closing the pores of the skin, or checks any of the eliminating organs and retains more than the usual amount of her own poison, forming a poisonous compound in the system of the child, which develops scarlet fever; now, this eruption on the body called scarlet fever is simply nature taking the helm in her own hands to get rid of this poison by throwing it out on the surface of the body, and the fever is the burning up of the surplus THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 157 carbon retained in the system; now, there is only one thing to do in these cases, everything else is injurious to the child, and that is to keep the eliminating organs, especially the skin and kidneys, active. To keep the skin active is only to keep the skin moist by a steady but not severe perspiration. Reader, is not this simple? And see the horror and fright all people have of this disease, but we will guar- antee that ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, if properly treated, will get well. The certainty that can be attained in these cases and also its simplicity ought to be plain to any one. I want to add that during the time that any person is sick the room should be as large as possible, with windows kept open enough all the time from the top to keep plenty of circulating fresh air in the room, so that the sick one can get enough oxygen from the air to recharge the system in order to keep up its vital powers, for it is the oxygen that burns up the carbon and poisons in the system (nothing burns without oxy- gen) ; otherwise the person would be inhaling its own poison that he is getting rid of and forming a poisonous compound by taking up a large share of the oxygen of the air, thus depriving the eliminating process of the poison from the blood through the lungs, which proc- ess must take place or otherwise the blood cannot be charged with oxygen from the air. The old idea that has existed for hundreds of years that you breathe poison into the blood is wrong; breathing impure air simply prevents your own systemic poison from being eliminated, besides the double injury of not being charged and puri- fied by oxygen, which is the main force that circulates the blood; hence, all other children, if there are any in the family, should be kept out doors, the father should be allowed to go to his work, or business, and not as your physicians say-"keep the children in the house and the father from his business," and not locking the poison into your house that the sick one is getting rid of and mix with the air in the rooms; let it go out and let the forces of nature split it up and purify it. Is it not clear that our present method is scien- tific murder and only business for the doctors? But to follow out these simple but certain methods of treating these diseases has been with me a continual war with health officers, physicians and the pub- 158 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE lie, on account of the present theories being engrafted upon their minds through public sentiment and agitation. But a greater wrong was never perpetrated upon humanity than these false theories, that are as firm in the minds of the public and as hard to change as their politics or religion, but I am as sure that as soon as they see the error and the wrong that has been imposed upon them and the millions of lives it has cost they will ever after do some of their own thinking and not so readily accept every fad that is sprung upon them by medical men, because they will insist that the laws and principles governing health and disease, their causes and prevention, shall be taught in every school in the land by teachers who have a knowledge of nature's laws and their out-workings. To bring about this change, to teach the public the causes and their prevention of disease and have them taught to every child and have them under- stand them, and make these laws a part of themselves, as they now do reading and mathematics, the author proposes to make this vol- ume the nucleus for this important question, which is of such vast importance to every man, woman and child in the land. To show how* hard it is to change the opinions and sentiments existing at the present time, I will give one experiment in one of the wealthiest families in a village I practiced in. They had all this world's goods that could be desired, and were very anxious to have the family always enjoy gopd health; there was extreme care used contin- ually* so as not to have any sickness, but the reverse was the case; nearly always some one in the family was ailing with one trouble or another; one would have a cold, another a sore throat, then an- other would have rheumatism, the daughters all being delicate, the sons somewhat stronger being out doors more, but having so much trouble there was no such thing as enjoying their wealth. Finally the children came down with diphtheria; one young and beautiful lady of twenty-two years and a lad of six years old dying; the shock to the family can only be imagined by those who have had similar experience. But the doctor who attended them, an old family physician, was blamed for bringing the disease in some way to the house, as no other cause could be assigned for their misfor- tune. The following year scarlet fever broke out in the same fam- ily and I was called*in to attend them; it did not take long to learn THERE ARE NO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 159 the reasons why this family, especially the female portion, were deli- cate, but by nature had good constitutions; why there was so much sickness in the house and why they had diphtheria the year before and why they had scarlet fever now. The very methods that they were carrying out to keep well was the very cause of all their sick- ness, deaths and trouble. They were very careful to keep the house very warm; every door and window fitted so close that very little fresh air could get into the house; windows kept closed so they would not take cold. The daughters (the belles of the town) staying in the house, except when going out in society, and then often with their slippers and low necked dresses, which was really not so bad as the foul air they were continually breathing at their own home. When I told the father to open the windows in the rooms where the patient was to get circulating fresh air, it looked at first as though I would not get the opportunity to make the second visit; he said, "Why doctor that boy will catch cold if I open the window with that high fever.'' The father was an intelligent man, and at the same time honest in his convictions, and by taking a few hours time and gradually getting him to see that there was practically no danger of a patient taking cold when it had a high fever; that the danger of taking cold was after the fever had subsided, explaining to him what scarlet fever was; that this patient was as bad a case of scarlet fever as is usually found, the throat being as badly filled with membrane as a severe case of diphtheria; when I told him very little medicine was needed, to simply follow my instructions in the manner here previously described, he knew the boy would surely die as the other children did the year before; he broke down and cried like a little child; by assuring him that the boy ought to get well and if he died it would be our fault and not the fault of the disease, he finally yielded to my earnest persuasions. In short, in one week the boy was out of bed and in two weeks well enough to get out. During these two weeks, as our acquaintance grew stronger and he was relating to me how much sickness, death and trouble he had in his family, gave me an opportunity to explain to him the causes of all his misfortunes, that they were induced by themselves by not 160 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE having the proper supply of oxygen in the house, which was the very principle and element of all animal life, that they should never sleep in a room that was not left open all day, in order to get circulating air, and to even leave a window open from the top all night, the open space depending upon the state of the weather, and to serve every room in the house the same way; and at the same time I ex- plained to him how the daughters could regain their normal health in ways already explained in other parts. For seven years now this family has had no need of a physician and have all enjoyed good health. This kind of practice is splendid for the benefit of the public, but it is mighty hard on the doctor's pocketbook. The physicians will never educate the public or insist upon these simple principles of nature except by pretense and on paper where people never get the opportunity of seeing it. Effective opposition by the public must be brought about by forming organizations and methods to teach the people and leave it to the physicians to treat those who shall disobey nature's simple laws, and the public must inform themselves sufficiently to know whether or not the doctor is doing the right thing. Note-In order to avoid a great deal of repetition, we will present our best evi- dence as to why vaccination, quarantine, the germ theory, and existing views of contagion are opposed to natural law and hence wrong, in our chapter on " The Causes of Disease, ' ' wherein we show what the real causes of diseases are, and hence this must of itself show why the above theories are wrong. THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE. Admiral Dewey explains his contempt for the foolishness of the quarantine laws. When on his way home along the Mediterranean coast, through some accident, he injured two of the blades of the star- board propeller of his ship. This made it a difficult matter for him to turn his ship in the place allotted her, and no lines could be run to the shore to assist in swinging her, on account of the existence of the Bu- bonic Plague, and for fear that rats might board the ship by traveling along the hawsers which attach the ship to the shore, neither would the health officers allow any one to board the ship. In discussing the subject of quarantine with a reporter, he re- marked, "I can take a thousand tons of coal and it will be put aboard by a lot of these dirty Arabs, pointing to a swarm of black creatures who were putting coal aboard a merchant steamer near by, "but if I so much as shake hands with you a quarantine officer will refuse to give me a clean bill of health, and for this little act of friendship I should be quarantined at Trieste for eleven days. Quarantine laws, you know, are the queerest things in the world, but we have to be gov- erned by them, and so you may look at me and talk to me, but you cannot touch me." The length of quarantine was originally forty days, but now is of undetermined length, during which a ship arriving in port is obliged to remain from all intercourse with the shore if suspected of being infected with a malignant contagious disease. But on land the same term is used to designate the isolation of people who are suspected of having been exposed to a contagious disease, such for instance as the quarantining of a family in which such disease exists. Pest houses and hospitals are quarantined for the same reason. There is probably no law that exists in any state which is thought to be of so much value to the public welfare as the laws of quarantine, and we feel if only by 161 162 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE inference we should attempt to antagonize this well-established custom, which is so firmly rooted into the minds of the public as of in- estimable value, we shall be rated as a fit subject for an insane asylum, if not a criminal. But we are not writing to please. Our object is to present facts as they exist and not cater to customs or sentiments; by far much stronger beliefs and customs have existed than this in times gone by, for which people even laid down their lives rather than change their belief; but enlightened and demonstrated facts have changed the world to the very opposite view. We are in many ways in error at the present day, in which we believe and uphold as were the people who lived centuries ago; it is only of another form and the future will prove the truth of our statement by absolute demonstration. The object of quarantine is to prevent the spreading, and thus pro- tect others from taking a disease from some one who has the disease or having been exposed to a so-called contagious disease. Quarantine is either right or wrong, and we shall give our evidence as clearly and plainly as it can be put in words,-and the demonstration of it will show and prove that quarantine as now conducted is absolutely wrong; that it is injurious and actually has the tendency to, and often does, increase the spread of the disease it is trying to prevent. That it is possible for any person to take a disease from another person who has visited a patient who has the smallpox or diphtheria, etc., by meeting him on the street, in the house or anywhere else immediately afterwards or at any time, is fraught with the grossest superstition and ignorance of natural law, such as can hardly be equaled in the centuries of medieval times; and for a person to go into a room where a patient lies sick with diph- theria or smallpox, and the person who does visit such sick person, should afterwards take the disease, if such a thing is possible, the reader must agree that it is a mighty poor place for the sick patient to get well in. Just stop and think for a moment; the visitor is generally a healthy person; if he should go into the room say five, ten or fifteen minutes, and while in the room certainly must breathe the air in that room the short time while there; if this will give him the diphtheria or smallpox, what in the world is going to become of that patient that must be in that room twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four hours and reinhale the same poison that gave this strong man the disease, say in fifteen THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 163 minutes ? The patient is weak and has a poisoned system, which is try- ing to rid itself of this poison in order to get well, but must day and night reinhale it. Is this declaration plain; is it convincing? Can the facts be disputed? Is it not this law of quarantine the law of every state in the union ? Can anything be more damnable, more murderous ? But this is not all; this is not the worst of quarantine law; we have only mentioned the least that happens. Take a family with five children, no matter whether rich or poor; one of the children is attending school; through existing conditions, perhaps in the school or conditions existing at home, or conditions ex- isting in the system because of retained waste matter, which may be from overstudy, poor food, or it may be produced by the combinations of all; at any rate the child comes down with diphtheria, due to condi- tions that up to this time have not affected the rest of the family; the physician is called, makes his diagnosis, reports the case to the health officer, the house is placarded and quarantined by the physician; he states to the family that the father must not go to work, for he would carry the disease with him and give it to others; the other four children are kept in the house; the neighbors keep an eye on the house, especially if close by, so that they do not care how much they spread the disease; although the law allows this much, and thanks that at least a few physicians tell them to open the windows, searching inquiries show that as a rule little attention is paid to it. At any rate we have a house quarantined with a case of diphtheria with four other healthy children; the sick one has a severe type, lingers along a week or ten days and dies. But soon after the death of this child, and perhaps before, one of the others comes down with the disease, then another, until all the children, five in number, are taken down with the disease; one or two of them die, or, as often happens, all die and the mother herself finally comes down with the disease, but, with perhaps a strong constitution, slowly recovers. Who cannot recite such instances? I never saw a family where this disease existed that the above was not the result, or nearly so, when the real cause of disease was from conditions existing at home, and originally affecting the one child only, and the rules of quarantine were strictly enforced by the health officers and carried out by the family. That the rules of quarantine are often entirely neglected 164 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE or only partially heeded is true, and it is more true than the health officers ever become aware of; this neglect has saved many innocent lives. What should have been the result in the family just mentioned ? The first case, as stated, was due to bad conditions existing in school; five others in the family took the disease; one, two, three, four, children die. Does it take much to answer ? Had not the disease ought to have been confined to the one case ? Could reason, science or logic answer differently? "Thunder" no! How could it have been accomplished? First, by removing all the quarantine regulations and allowing perfect freedom; then the physician should take special pains to explain to the mother what diphtheria is; that it is a poison within the system; that the terrible smell and membrane of the throat was nature's effort to rid itself of the poison; and to assist nature to do this, we must assist this body, if it needs be, with all the assistance possible to help relieve the child's system of this poison. How is this done? Not by giving it poisons to kill innocent germs, but by putting the child in the largest room possible with at least two windows in the room; throw the windows wide open, if the weather is warm; if very warm to put them in a tent out in the yard is still better; open the windows enough to allow a continuous circuit of good fresh air; if possible, not to connect with the rest of the rooms in the house; be sure and have the sunshine in the room if any exists; keep all the rooms in the house in the same con- dition, with a circuit of air; keep the rest of the family out doors instead of quarantined inside. If old enough, and the patient is able, have it breathe this fresh air with deep and full inspirations. It is this fresh air which the child needs most. Why ? Because it is the pure air that puri- fies the blood better than anything else and it gives increased power to the sewer system or eliminating organs of the patient, because it is this good fresh air that creates the power that circulates the blood, and in the proportion that this blood can take up pure air will the strength of the patient increase; also his chances for recovery; in this way the child has at least twenty chances to recover from diphtheria where it has none when treated under the quarantine regulations where it died, and the other four children and the mother are saved from taking the disease because the house was kept fresh by circulating pure air, and the poison that the child was throwing off in the throat in the form of THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 165 membrane, and through the skin, kidneys, etc., was carried out through the windows into the air and diffused, and its poisonous combination broken up through its contact with the air, and especially this great king of purifiers, the sun's rays, for take away the rays of the sun and all that is living upon the earth would soon perish. This ought to make it clear to the reader that this amount of poison that a few sick people would throw off from their bodies may be sufficient to infect an entire family and kill them, but it is only a mote when let out into the air and the sun's rays compared with the immense amount of similar poisons that must be changed and made harmless during every hour of the world's existence and is entirely harmless to do any injury and does not spread the disease as it is now supposed, because there is ten times, yes, a hundred fold, more poison passing up through the sewers and ventila- ting pipes every day, to say nothing of the poisons from all sorts of decomposing animal and vegetable matter, to give diphtheria to all the inhabitants of the United States, but it goes into the air, is diffused and purified by the sun, etc. Is this not true? Then why the injurious quar- antine laws, etc. ? Does it not show how benevolent for humanity the Creator's laws are? If we would only think and observe a little for ourselves and watch the results, we would be infinitely benefited. Let us look at it now from the Doctor's standpoint and from the stand- point of the quarantine laws. We have related an instance of six cases of diphtheria and four deaths in one family, where the father lost six weeks of his salary by being quarantined in the house; cost him two hundred dollars for funeral expenses, a doctor's bill of as much more, whom he praises for working hard and diligently to try and save the lives of his beloved wife and four children who died. From the stand- point of following God's simple and plain common laws, there would have been only one case of diphtheria and no deaths, and a doctor bill of only ten or fifteen dollars. To sum up the difference between our mur- derous quarantine laws and nature's simple laws is something like this: Doctor bill, about two hundred; funeral expenses, about two hundred; father's wages, at two dollars a day, seventy-two dollars; four hundred and seventy-two dollars and four persons killed, against fifteen dollars and no deaths. I could give dozens of such sad illustrations of my experiences and 166 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE observations, and demonstrate them in just such plain manner as the case described; some, of course, were much milder in results, some much sadder. We have stood trial in court for trying to save innocent lives from the effect of enforcing our present system, but no better or easier recreation can a man have than to go into court and meet a health officer on these questions; it is just simply surprising how they fall to pieces when you tackle them upon physical or organic laws. I was called one evening to come to the opera house, that one of the players was sick, who happened to be a boy about twelve years old; examining him in a hurry on the stage while the curtain was down, I found the boy's body covered with the eruption of scarlet fever, and, according to our present quarantine and nonsensical contagious ideas, all the other children taking part in this play, of which there was a large number, were exposed to the disease as well as the several thousand who were listening to the play. The mother, who was taking a leading part in the play, was very much frightened when told that the boy had scarlet fever, as if scarlet fever almost meant sure death. Being told to go on with the play, that there was little danger of taking cold while a fever was high, the play of the evening was carried out, which was a second evening of a week's engagement in a city of three hundred thousand inhabitants. After the play was over we had the boy taken to the hotel and left instructions and treatment; when the week's en- gagement was over the boy was well and ready to travel to the next city. There was no notice given to the health officer, no one at the hotel learned what the disease was, and certainly no one was the worse for it, but all concerned the better for it. The mother learned that scarlet fever properly treated was not dangerous, as she had been taught to believe, and the opera and the hotel did not lose the patronage that would have been the result if announced to the health officer and the places quarantined. But what commotion and excitement would have been among the families with the children at the hotel if they had learned scarlet fever existed in the house, under the present foolish, nonsensical and injurious methods of exciting a community by the present quarantine regulations so engrafted upon the public mind to prevent disease, but which actually spreads it if anything. To show the fallacy of quarantine laws we will give the history of THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 167 one more typical instance in a city of five thousand inhabitants, where a family in very moderate circumstances was running a confectionery store and living in the rear. Four children were taken sick with scarlet fever and so far as was known no scarlet fever existed in the city. The very first question asked was, "Doctor, I suppose you will have our store closed and the people will be afraid to come near us for months, as nearly all our business is from what children come in and buy?" I said "No, that was not necessary, that the cause of her children having scarlet fever was right in the house in which they lived," and that she was to blame and that it was due to stagnant and impure air; no cir- culation of air in the rooms, everything tight with storm windows to save fuel. By the way, it is a good place to state that storm windows have been the means of making a large doctor bill and often funerals. I had the windows opened, with the strongest orders to keep good cir- culating air, but not to allow the draught to strike the children; gave instructions how to take care of them, left one prescription with direc- tions, told the mother to follow them, and if she would, it would not be necessary for me to return. I never made the second visit, and the children all recovered; no other case developed in the city and the busi- ness was not closed; in fact, no one ever found out that the disease existed. Did it ever occur to you that, for instance, in a large city where there were three or four hundred physicians and that during an epidemic these physicians, perhaps all of them, have some patients who have these diseases, going from house to house treating diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., then go to some other family where there are a number of children that are well, go to their offices, go to their families, eat with them, sleep beside them, and no fear or danger of carrying the disease, but make the poor father, whom the family depends upon for support, stay at home four to six weeks because some one in the family has a so- called contagious disease? Is it not highway robbery? Does it not show conclusively the utmost confidence people put in their physician without a thought as to whether he is right or wrong? Is it not the repetition of all history that where vigilance and thought have not been exercised by the public themselves, that those they placed implicit con- fidence in without a thought of investigation, have turned out to be 168 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. corrupt and deceived them? Invariably when confronting physicians upon these subjects the answer would be "the American people like to be humbugged." This is a direct insult to every human being, for I am satisfied that people are craving for knowledge in regard to health, but say what else can we do ? We must rely upon the doctors when we are sick ? There are two sides to these questions; first, there are more thinking minds outside the profession than there are in it, but they think they have no time to devote or think over these matters; but your health and your families are worth more than a few extra thousand dollars, and if you will devote ten minutes a day to this subject for three months, in the right direction, which is certainly not asking too much, there will be no more doubt in your mind as to what ought to be done when sick, and what ought to be done to never get sick (barring ac- cidents). Just think of the little amount of sickness there would be if we would only obey nature with our intelligence as much as the wild animals do by their instinct. Man has the same instinct as the animal, which is shown in the child when born, but our false training, by what is called educated minds, is what misleads us. Quarantine laws are wrong; they are injurious and murderous in their results, like all of the money-making fads in medicine; there is not an argument that can be made in its favor. We will not use the space to show the argument on the other side, but there is not one of them but what can be riddled all to pieces in a few minutes; they are contrary to nature's laws, therefore, absolutely wrong. Why? Be- cause nature shows by her results everywhere that all impurities evapor- ated and exhaled from our bodies should be taken up by the air and diffused and then taken up by vegetable life; this is proven by the fact that if we allow even the poisons that our body are giving off in a state of health to remain about us, that is, in our living rooms, our system suffers even up to producing diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc. Is not this true ? Then so much more necessary is that when we become saturated with poison, called disease, and nature throws them off in so much and larger quantities in order to purify the system that we should so much more make every effort for its disappearance in the open air when it will be changed by effect of the sun's rays and the air and be injurious to no one. We repeat and appeal to every thinking mind to investigate THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 169 and test my position, in any conceivable way, with reference to all these diseases for which quarantine laws are carried out. These eruptions on the body of this class of diseases, such as smallpox, etc., are only nature's method of curing herself. This is an entirely new view, but it is absolutely true, because it is an absolute law of nature, and if true, quarantine is wrong, and will increase instead of prevent disease. Put to experiment and demonstration it never fails, not in a single instance; if it does, we are ready to buy and burn every book. I have seen enough suffering and misery to realize the injury to the public by the false education impressed upon them regarding health or in the managing and treatment of the sick. It can be plainly seen that it does not take a whole library of medical books to learn to under- stand the simplicity of nature; for all practical purposes a little thought and study upon the subject makes everything loom up before us as clear as the noonday sun, and no one need to be in ignorance when they are put before them in a plain and common sense manner. Dr. Geo. H. Rohe, in his latest text book on hygiene, devotes over one hundred pages to the subject of quarantine, quoting the laws of different countries besides the marine, municipal and state laws; here it is not necessary to devote fifty or sixty pages, for the principles of the quarantine laws are understood by most every one, as they are carried out usually during the existence of any disease that comes under that head. On page 526 he says that, "It is now generally conceded that a small number of cases of certain ones of the quarantinable diseases may exist in a city of considerable size, without giving rise to serious apprehension, if intelligent and vigorous measures for the pre- vention of its spread are taken, and if scientific measures for the isola- tion of patients, the surveillance of those exposed to infection, and the disinfection of apartments and articles infected are carried out-. It is regarded as very important that the sick should be removed to centrally located hospitals established for treatment, thus increasing ease of management and administration, and diminishing the number of foci of infection. The surveillance of those exposed to infection should, in general, be for a period of time equal to the usual period of incubation of the disease to which they have been exposed. In the case of small- pox it may be necessary at times to detain the suspects the full period 170 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE of incubation, provided they are vaccinated and their clothing and per- sonal effects are rendered safe by efficient disinfection. They should, however, be kept under observation." Dr. Rohe further says: "i. The city should be divided into districts containing not more than 10,000 people. "2. Each district should be placed under the supervision of a com- petent medical inspector with necessary assistants (a) to make a house-to-house inspection; (b) to successfully vaccinate, within the shortest possible time, all persons who have not been vaccinated during the outbreak, the first vaccination to be completed within seven days; (c) to properly disinfect all houses and their contents where smallpox occurs. "3. Necessary means and appliances for efficient disinfections of materials, premises, etc., should be provided as the exigencies of each district may require. "4. Each case of smallpox should be immediately removed to a suit- ably constructed and properly equipped and officered isolation hospital. "5. Except in extreme cold weather, hospital tents, as prescribed in the United States army regulations, floored and warmed, are prefer- able to the average hospital or private dwelling, and increase the chances of recovery of the patients. Cases of smallpox necessarily retained in their own homes should, with their attendants, be rightly isolated during the period of danger, and physicians visiting such patients professionally should be subject to such regulations as may be prescribed by the local health officer. "6. Persons exposed to smallpox contagion should be immediately vaccinated and kept under observation for not less than fourteen days from time of last exposure. "7. It is the sense of this conference that unless such measures are enforced, it will be necessary for neighboring cities and States to exclude all persons from such city who are not protected against small- pox by recent vaccination, and to require proper disinfection of all clothing, baggage, and merchandise capable of conveying smallpox infection." Further, he says, that "The subject of municipal quarantine natur- ally suggests a subdivision of the subject, viz., domiciliary quaran- THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 171 tine, or the exercise of restrictive measures against a particular house or part of a house on account of the occurrence of a quarantinable disease within its limits. These can be best accomplished by the stationing of guards to see that none enter or leave the infected premises except those necessary to care for the sick, viz., physicians and nurses. All intercourse between the outside world and the house under quarantine should be carried on by messengers, who should not be allowed to enter the premises, but who should report to the guards. "It would be most desirable that the physicians and nurses, on leav- ing the premises, should practice personal disinfection of hands, at least; though, of course, it would be better if, in addition to this, a change into sterile clothing were made prior to coming into contact with the public. "It goes without saying that the rooms of the patient should be ab- solutely closed to the ingress of all save the physicians and nurses, and it is a practice of considerable value to provide all room-openings with curtains and hangings, which are to be kept constantly wet with a germicidal solution." The above is undoubtedly very familiar to the reading public, and likely sounds scientific to most people, as it has been the belief and practice for generations, and even centuries, by the profession and the public. But the question arises, do they do harm or good ? Are they consistent ? Do they prevent disease ? Or do they increase the spread of it ? This authority says that to accomplish the desired results guards should be stationed about the house so that no one could enter or leave the house except physicians and nurses. I want to ask in the name of suffering humanity why it is that the doctor and nurses can go out where they wish by washing their hands or changing their clothes, which any one knows is not even carried out by one doctor or nurse in a hundred. Why is it that a doctor can go into the house as often as he wishes ? The nurse can be with the patient all the time, but the rest of the family locked up in the house day and night, and by this murderous act claim they will not take nor spread the disease,but that you can take it from the father, mother, brother or sister by meeting them on the street; but this father, mother and children are supposed not to take it themselves by being in the house day and night. Does it seem possible 172 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE that such ignorant beliefs and scientific absurdities exist at the close of the nineteenth century ? Is it anything but absolute ignorance and as- sumption that no one has ever based the cause of disease upon any different law, when all diseases are based upon an absolute law? Ac- cording to the present superstition it would be the best thing for us all to become physicians and nurses, then that would prevent us from taking any contagious disease. Again, according to this doctrine, the only way to take a disease is that the poisons or germs first light upon the external portions of the body or clothes, and when a person, who has been in contact with a disease, meets you upon the street the germs or poisons jump from them upon you, and go down your throat into your lungs, and then hurry into the blood and poison your system, but those who are quarantined in the house are not in danger, as are not the nurses and doctors, whereas, if their theory were correct the family kept shut up in the house must surely be doomed to death, if this germ or poison were so violent as to pass from the clothes of one person to those of another when they meet on the street and then be taken into the system and produce disease. But what strange whims these germs must possess if they refuse to attack the person quarantined in the house. Will some one be so kind as to explain how these absolute contradictory ideas and state'laws prevent disease and why they should not increase them? We will agree to be the subject of experiment, if it can be demonstrated, and if demonstrated, will abide cheerfully by the bad results or effects upon ourself, and will forfeit the offered prize of one thousand dollars. Following are the regulations to prevent the spread of diphtheria and scarlet fever in the District of Columbia (Rohe, page 530), which is in substance a good example of the laws of health boards: "The term 'Scarlet Fever,' as applied in the act, shall be held to include scarletina, scarlet rash, and canker rash, and each and every case must be reported upon the forms provided. "Warning signs shall remain displayed on houses, in cases of scarlet fever, for a period of not less than four weeks, and in cases of diphtheria for not less than three weeks from date of report to the health officer, and for a longer period, unless report of recovery by the physicians in attendance has been made. THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 173 "In cases of death, the warning sign shall remain displayed upon premises for a period of not less than seven days, and longer, unless the health officer is satisfied that all proper means have been employed for the prevention of the spread of the contagion. "It shall be the duty of the householder, in every case where a warning sign has been displayed from the premises which he or she occupies, to report promptly the removal of such sign at any time with- in the periods given. "It shall be the like duty of the physician in attendance to make such report to the health officer of the removal of warning signs, unless assured that the report has been made by some one from the premises where the disease is prevailing or has prevailed. "It shall be the duty of the physician in attendance to report, in every instance, on the forms provided, whether or not children in the family or other children in the same building attend school, and at what school, building or buildings. "Children shall not be permitted to return to school from infected premises, except upon the presentation of the proper certificate from the health officer. "All persons suffering from either diphtheria or scarlet fever are to be isolated in rooms as far removed as possible from those occupied by other persons in the building, and upon the top floor, where it is practicable. No person, other than the physician in attendance, the ex- amining official, and the nurse or nurses, shall be admitted to such rooms during the prevalence of the disease. "Every room occupied by a patient suffering from either diphtheria or scarlet fever shall be cleared of all needless clothing, carpets, drapery, and other materials likely to harbor the poisons of the disease. "Soiled bed and body linen shall be immediately placed in vessels of water containing a solution of bichloride of mercury, chloride of zinc, or other suitable disinfectant. "Excremental discharges from the patient shall be received in vessels of water containing such solution, and all vessels used shall be kept scrupulously clean and thoroughly disinfected. "Discharges from the throat, nose, and mouth shall be received upon pieces of cloth, which must be immediately burned. 174 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE "All presons recovering from either diphtheria or scarlet fever shall be considered dangerous, and shall not be permitted to associate with others, or to attend school, church, or any public assembly, until a certificate has been furnished by the health officer to the effect that they may go abroad without danger of disseminating the contagion. "It shall be the duty of the person in charge of the premises where a case of diphtheria or scarlet fever exists, to exercise all reasonable care in the prevention of the commingling of persons who come into contact with the patient, or any other persons, whereby the contagion might be disseminated. "The body of the person who has died from either diphtheria or scarlet fever shall be immediately disinfected and placed in a coffin, which shall be tightly closed, and shall not be taken to any church or place of public assembly, and shall be buried within forty-eight hours, unless otherwise ordered by the health officer. "No public funeral shall be held in a dwelling in which there is a case of either diphtheria or scarlet fever, nor in which a death from either of said diseases has recently occurred. "Immediately upon the recovery of a person who has been suffering from either diphtheria or scarlet fever, or upon the death of a person who has been suffering, the room or rooms occupied shall be thoroughly disinfected by exposure for several hours to the fumes of chlorine gas, or of burning sulphur, and shall thereafter be thoroughly cleaned and exposed to currents of fresh air. "All clothing, bedding, carpets, and other textiles which have been exposed to the contagion of the disease shall be either burned, exposed to superheated steam, or thoroughly boiled. "No person shall interfere with or obstruct the entrance, inspection, and examination of any building or house, by the inspectors or officers of this department, when there has been reported the case of a person sick with either scarlet fever or diphtheria therein." Here we find one of the regulations, that all suffering from either diphtheria or scarlet fever are to be isolated in rooms as far removed as possible from those occupied by other persons in the building, and upon the top floor. Where it is practicable, no persons other than the physicians in attendance, the examining official, and the nurse or nurses, THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 175 shall be admitted to such room during the prevalence of such disease. Why can the officials and health officers, doctors, and nurses go in this sick room and not the father and mother ? Again is there one case in a hundred where a nurse is employed ? Why cannot the father and mother go downtown when not allowed in the sick room,but the nurses and the doctor will go into the sick room, handle the patient, mingle with the poison, can go where they please ? Can sense, science or logic answer ? Certainly they must. Why do most doctors allow a business man to at- tend to his business, go home to his family, walk on the streets, and wait on customers, when diphtheria is in the house where he is very friendly with the physician, belongs to the same church or lodge, when people who ask who is sick, "Oh, one of the children has a bad cold or has lung fever and the doctor said it was very sick and therefore for- bade anyone to go into the sick room?" This we have known to be the case in dozens upon dozens of instances and we have never seen any bad results from it. Usually the results are better than when the murderous quarantine laws are enforced. In one particular instance where I was attending a child with a severe sore leg, two joints having large open sores, I learned that in an adjoining room was a child having a serious attack of lung fever, which was being attended by another physician; down stairs the father was running a butcher shop. This is a splendid combination, for the mother admitted to me after the child with lung fever recovered that it was a bad case of diphtheria and not lung fever, and they did not want to close up the butcher shop. I asked if the father went in to see the child. "Oh, yes." Well, but don't you think that he will spread the disease, for meat will take up poison quicker than most anything else?" "Well, I will tell you the truth, doctor, we do not believe in the nonsense of carrying disease around and the doctor who attended the child says he did not believe it." But this same physi- cian is one of the most pronounced men I ever met to ridicule, malign and abuse any other physician who has the courage to publicly ex- press his belief that spreading disease on the street to anyone through or by your person is impossible. Here is a good example to show the difference between a physician with his opinions privately or publicly expressed when it effects his pocketbook, and it would surprise the jpublic if they knew how large a percentage of this class of physicians 176 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE there is, and right among those whom they would least suspect; while there are others who are honest and sincere at least on either side of the question. We do not quote the above as proof against quarantine and contagion, but it does show that this kind of evidence can be given on both sides of the question and each claiming that their way is the right way; but it is this class of'evidence that is always used to prove the nonsensical theories of medicine. They do not prove or demonstrate an organic law, which is natural law, but this evidence does show that those against quarantine and contagion are more apt to be true because no hindrance is put in the way, just as the claim is made in the prac- tice of medicine that a certain remedy will cure a certain disease be- cause it has been used in thousands of cases and ninety per cent of the patients recovered. Is this proof that the remedy cured ninety per cent, or in other words nine hundred patients ? Not by any means. The only way it can be shown that the medicine was any benefit is to show a much larger per cent would have died if the medicine was not given, all things being equal. It can be positively proved that a larger per cent of diphtheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, etc., can be cured without a drop of medicine than is cured today with all their scientific humbug, to say nothing of the injury to the constitution of the patient if they*recover. Every test made will demonstrate this fact, because the methods now employed are contrary to the laws of the human system instead of in harmony with it as they should be. It cannot be stated too often to impress the public with this fundamental law of the human system that the eruption of smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., is nature's effort to cure herself; that is, it has aroused itself to vigorous action to throw off through the natural sewers of the body a poison which destroys life if retained within it. The proof is to just try and stop this natural process of the body to rid itself of its poison and see the few hours it will live; usually ten to twelve hours will produce the death of the patient. This is no theory but it is as sure as the rising of the sun. From the discovery by Koch of the cause of tuberculosis and the numerous researches made* by him and other observers into the nature of the tuberculous poison, has grown the conviction of late years that tuberculosis, being communicable, is to a large extent preventable. The bacillus tuberculosis is the etiological factor of most importance in the THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 177 spread of tuberculosis. It has been proven that it is contained in large numbers in the sputum of tuberculous patients and that, unlike most micro-organisms, its vitality is not destroyed by drying. Therefore with the careful disinfection or destruction of the expectoration of tu- berculosis patients, one most important factor in the dissemination of tuberculosis will be removed. In almost all large hospitals, at the pres- ent day, the practice obtains of either isolating the tuberculous patients or of segregating them in special wards or apartments. With a view of preventing the spread of tuberculosis, the Board of Health of New York City has issued in English, German, Hebrew and Italian, the fol- lowing circular for popular instruction: "Consumption is a disease that can be taken from others and is not simply caused by colds. A cold may make it easier to take the disease. It is usually caused by germs which enter the body with the air breathed.- The matter which consumptives cough or spit up contains these germs in great numbers; frequently millions are discharged in a single day. This matter, spit upon the floor, wall, or elsewhere, is apt to dry, become pulverized and float in the air as dust. This dust con- tains the germs, and thus they enter the body with the air breathed. The breath of a consumptive'does not contain the germs and will not produce the disease. A well person catches the disease from a con- sumptive only by in some way taking the matter coughed up by the consumptive. "Consumption can often be cured if its nature is recognized early and proper means are taken for its treatment. In a majority of cases it is not a fatal disease. "It is not dangerous for other persons to live with a consumptive, if the matter coughed up by the consumptive is at once destroyed. This matter should not be spit upon the floor, carpet, stove, wall or street or anywhere except into a cup kept for the purpose. The cup should contain water, so that the matter may not dry and should be emptied into the closet at least twice a day and the cup carefully washed with hot water. Great care should be taken by a consumptive that his hands, face and clothing do not become soiled with the matter coughed up. If they do become soiled, they should be at once washed with hot water and soap. When consumptives are away from home, the matter 178 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE coughed up may be received on cloths, which should be at once burned on returning home. If handkerchiefs are used (worthless cloths which can be burned are far better) they should be boiled in water by them- selves before being washed. "It is better for a consumptive to sleep alone, and his bed clothing and his personal clothing should be boiled and washed separately from the clothing belonging to other people. "Whenever a person is thought to be suffering from consumption, the name and address should be sent at once to the health department on a postal card, with a statement of this fact. A medical inspector from the health department will then call and examine the person to see if he has consumption, providing he has no physician, and, if necessary, will give proper direction to prevent others from catching the disease. "Frequently a person suffering from consumption may not only do his usual work without giving the disease to others, but may also get well, if the matter coughed up is properly destroyed." Here we have it as plain as the English language can put it, that according to present medical authority on consumption, that consump- tion is contagious only from the germs in the dried sputa floating in the air; even the breath they say is harmless. Well, if the breath is harm- less, then we must admit that the smell and gases from dead animals or human beings is harmless, because consumption is nothing more nor less than dead animal tissue. Will or can anyone dispute this state- ment? The other points made in the circular of the New York Board of Health have already been touched upon and explained in other parts. It leaves us to say a few words about the quarantine of ships and the carrying of disease from one port to another. The conclusions have perhaps already been drawn, from what has been said, that we will say it is an impossibility for a ship to bring a patient with any of the so- called contagious diseases from one port to another and spread the disease in this country, any more than if he took the disease here in a city and could thereby spread it over the city, except under the strict enforcement of the quarantine law; because if the system in eliminat- ing this poison and circulating air is kept in the room the patient is in, the poison will pass out of the room into the great universe, be diffused and be entirely harmless to anyone. These rules should be THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 179 followed when such diseases occur aboard ship. It is rarely we hear now-a-days that a passenger comes down with any of these diseases on board of a ship among the cabin passengers, because they are out in the air more during the day and their rooms have facilities of being aired and to receive sunlight, which is the great purifier. In proportion as these conditions are fulfilled the danger of disease is lessened, ex- cluding the one condition that is always possible, that a person can retain enough of his own poisons to produce disease. This brings out an important point, that the materials and poisonous gases outside of the body and his surroundings are very similar to those poisons or gases or other waste materials that are produced within the body. This statement wants careful consideration, for it has never been put in this way. The diseases on ships are usually among the steerage passengers; this is due to several causes; first-the passengers themselves are dirty and filthy, with a system well loaded with poisons which only need an existing cause to produce disease, which would be the poor conditions of the steerage; no sunlight to purify its air; perhaps not sufficient ventilation. Often these conditions alone are sufficient to develop any of the blood diseases, because these conditions for the traveling public on ships have been improved so much it has almost entirely stopped the large amount of these diseases which were so numerous in an early day, when the best facilities upon ocean steam- ers were perhaps not equal to the poorest that now prevail. Is not this true, and does it not demonstrate that natural law so often ex- plained? But our health boards say it is all due to quarantine laws. Natural laws are always the same; if the principle holds good on land it holds good aboard ship, and the unnecessary annoyance given to steamers loaded with passengers, because someone has come down with one or the other of these diseases, is wrong. It is unscientific, contrary to the demands and contrary to the law in nature to produce, prevent or spread disease. The only benefit in this unnecessary hypothesis is the many fees it brings into the pockets of a lot of doctors and politi- cians. Some day the sun will rise upon a people that will repudiate the damnable ignorance and unscrupulousness combined with hypothesis and superstition of a profession that is undermining the constitutions of a race and thereby bringing unavoidable, as well as incurable dis- 180 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE eases, among a people who put faith and confidence in their integrity, and through this misplaced confidence are suffering and deteriorated in constitution, instead of enjoying the gushing bloom of health, long life and happiness, which a benevolent creator intended they should. From the Literary Digest. In this country quarantine is very generally relied upon to keep out infectious diseases from foreign countries. In England, on the other hand, it has been given up as worse than useless. English medical pa- pers not only consider our methods absurd and antiquated, but poke fun at our physicians for giving them countenance. The hospital, Lon- don, objects particularly to Senator Caffery's bill for the more strict enforcement of quarantine in this country with reference to yellow fever and it is shocked at an article in the Medical News, New York, commending the measure and urging its passage. Says the English pa- per (January 8) : "It does not surprise us that an ignorant population should stand on guard at railway stations with loaded firearms and should forbid trains to stop or passengers to alight, but it does surprise us to find a medical contemporary even appearing to admit that the paper plausi- bilities of quarantine are able to confer some kind of degree of addi- tional security upon states in the vicinity of those which may be visited by a yellow fever epidemic. "The belief that any such security can be afforded in the manner indicated is one which could hardly fail to spring up and flourish during the darkness of the Middle Ages. The first proposals for quarantine date from the middle of the fourteenth century, and originated in the City of Milan, as a precaution against the Black Death. The example thus set was followed in Venice, where the first lazaretto was estab- lished in 1423, the disease then to be kept at bay being bubonic plague. "Two centuries later the system was almost universal and had reached its full development, inasmuch that very elaborate regulations were formed and enforced in this country with reference to the plague which appeared so early as in 1636 and which committed such terrible ravages in London, and in some country districts, as at Eyam, between 1663 and 1666. These endeavors to exclude the plague were as ef- fectual, in the words of Sir John Simon, as if their intention had been to bar out the east wind or the new moon; but, notwithstanding this, the THE INJURY OF QUARANTINE 181 epidemic of cholera which prevailed in Europe in 1831, found not only the populace, but even the sanitary authorities of this country, pre- pared to trust in quarantine as their supreme hope. As the government could only control the regular channels of trade or passage, all per- sons of influence residing on the coast, and particularly in retired vil- lages, were urged to impress upon their neighbors the dangers of in- tercourse with smugglers and other invaders of quarantine. It might have been thought that this very injunction would of itself have been sufficient to prove to those who issued it the utter futility of the whole proceeding. The government was able to interfere just so much as to cause the maximum of inconvenience and loss to healthy people and the maximum of injury to trade; and when this was done, they were unable to touch so much as the fringe of the innumerable points of leakage, which even the best organized system of quarantine must leave wholly unprovided for. Notwithstanding the quarantine, the dis- ease was not only introduced but it spread with terrible rapidity, and produced a mortality of many thousands, the precise amount it would be impossible to ascertain. Taught by experience, the general Board of Health, in 1849 and 1852, strenuously pointed out that quar- antine could not give any but a false security for the purpose it pre- tended to accomplish; and, adducing illustrations of its futility and oppressiveness as commonly administered, boldly proposed as a practi- cal conclusion, that this country should entirely set aside existing quar- antine establishments and should rely exclusively upon the protection it could derive from a system of local sanitary improvements. Our present method is to admit freely, but to be on the watch for it when it comes. If plague or yellow fever were brought to any English port the actual sick would be landed and placed in a proper hospital for the reception of infectious cases; the sound would be permitted to proceed to their several destinations, the sanitary authorities of which would be instructed to keep them under observation until all danger was past, and to send them to a hospital if the disease should show itself to them; and the ship and its cargo would be subjected to disinfection. When we had quarantine, plague and cholera were not only introduced, but de- stroyed their thousands. During the last European epidemic, cholera was introduced into many of our ports, and it frizzled out as harmless as a lighted match on a stone floor." THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTAGION AND INFECTION. The words contagion and infection are used as often, perhaps, to express the same things, as any two other words in the English language. By infection we mean that the human system has taken into it a substance or matter of any kind that is detrimental to health or life in any degree, no matter how small or great. Infection may be caused by taking into the stomach a form of matter that acts as a poison, or causes any disturbance, from a slight ailment to death itself. Infection may be caused by absorbing the poison into the system from a wound upon your body; and it may be caused by absorbing into the system poisons that are put in or upon a wound under the pretense of a cure. If the world knew how many thousands of people are in their eternal home from this latter cause of infection it would seem as if they would at last wake up to the fact that they (the people) must begin to learn and have the requisite knowledge that is needed to know whether or not a doctor is doing the right thing for you. Infection may also be caused by absorbing matter by the way of the skin, such as ointments or baths which are injuri- ous. In short, anything that is taken into the system or anything absorbed from our own person, and which acts as a poison, is termed infection. The word contagion should be abolished from the English lan- guage. To say that a disease is contagious means that anyone can take a disease from another by going into the room where the sick one lies, or by meeting a person on the street who has been in the house where such disease exists; the belief that a person can carry a disease from one country to another or send it through the mails. All these things or beliefs are false, and cannot be demonstrated, and are ridiculous beliefs as the belief that witches, Jews, devils and spirits were the cause of disease. The people of the world seem determined to have some belief regarding anything pertaining to their welfare, until it is demonstrated by nature's laws that these beliefs are false. 182 ARE DISEASES CURABLE?-IS HYGIENE BETTER THAN MEDICINE? Most civilized people are more or less ailing or diseased; today it is utterly impossible how many or how much, for no language can depict the number or the aggregation of human maladies. Those who are down sick constitute only a very small proportion of those who are more or less enfeebled or disabled, or have this weakness and that ail- ment and yet keep about. They work on indeed, but are in perpetual pain or misery of some sort. Even those called perpetually well fall far below the standard of sound physical vigor which they are capable of obtaining. Why should this all be? The Indians, the wild men in the woods, the Esquimaux, in fact all the people that live ih a wild state and eating the commonest kind of food, expose themselves to all kinds of weather, and they have no health department which claims to prevent disease, but which with us, who claim to be civilized, actually helps to increase their spread. They have no doctor to every five hundred inhabitants to stuff them continually with drugs, and making them believe unless they take them their life is at stake. In other words, they do not have the scientific doctor among them to kill them or weaken their constitutions and shorten their lives with their damnable ignorance and wilful torture of humanity for the sake of the money there is in it. They do not have what we call fashions and ethics, rich foods, unhealthy modes of clothing, parlor and center tables, or keep themselves too closely confined, hence their faces and necks do not become tanned so that they spoil the low-necked recep- tions. That is, we are continually exposing ourselves to sudden changes and violating the laws of balance and not following the remedial principles that is incorporated into every human constitu- tion. This is what they do; they go to bed sick, as all of us do, and get up well in the morning, which we do not do. The time is, I think, near at hand when he who shows men how to prevent disease will be the greatest benefactor of the human race, while he who shows them honestly how to get well when sick is next. Now this direction is very 183 184 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE important. Disease teaches us the value of health, but nature can teach you more as to how to cure them than can all the medical institu- tions that exist at the present time. Just sit yourself any day upon a tree or old woodshed, or anything you like, that will give you a free view of the universal surroundings and ask yourself the question: "Am I a part of or have I any relation to this great universe? Is it a part of me or am I a part of it, or both ? Is it a friend or an enemy of mine?" After a little reflection over these questions you will say, "Yes, I cannot live, I cannot have health; if any great change should take place, I could not exist." Again, you would say these universal laws, which have always existed since the beginning of the world, are the same today, tomorrow, and always will be in the future, as long as the earth exists, and how plain this all begins to appear to me. All this vegetable kingdom, what is it for? Let me examine it? Why, it is a great benefactor, it gives off oxygen and imbibes and lives on carbonic acid gas. Next he finds that he himself throws off, by ex- halation, carbonic acid gas, and inhales oxygen from the air, which charges his blood with force or energy (oxygen) combined with the food he eats; the chemicals, separated by digestion, and combined with this force that charges his system from the air, unite and form a com- bustion which breaks down the wornout parts and replaces them with new, and should be balanced every morning, etc. He finds his system is furnished with organs and outlets to remove the broken down materi- als, which would produce disease or death if retained in his system. He says to himself, This is a great divine law and is always the same. I will just remain on this woodshed a little longer and think this problem over. He notices one paramount fact, that the wild vegetable kingdom if not molested by man is always healthy, because it always fulfills the laws of its being and never abuses it. He soon sees that wild animals and the uncivilized man is generally healthy, because he works in harmony with these laws of nature, and by instinct and not education, follows out the law of balance, and is not only well in the morning and goes to no extremes. Now he gets down off this wood- shed and goes among his civilized beings and finds all sorts of mis- eries; one place he finds smallpox, another diphtheria, and another scarlet fever. The doctors are running in and out of these places, ARE DISEASES CURABLE 185 from there they go down town to the drug store, go home to their own families, eat, drink and sleep with them; but down among those families, where these diseases exist, there are policemen and health officers, with clubs and authority to say to the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of these patients, "You must stay in the house until all the danger of spreading this disease is past." The father pleads and begs them to let him go to work to support the family. He asks the officers, "Why are you and the doctors not spreading this disease? You are in here, go where you please; go to your families without any restrictions, but make me stay in the house; make me in- hale this awful poison of diphtheria, which my son is throwing off from his system in order that he may live, and not take the disease." He pleads for mercy to not kill his whole family by enforcing these murderous laws, which were made to kill people, although perhaps not intentionally so. The policeman says shut up and go into the house. He goes into the house, and then the children come out and plead for themselves; they tell the health officers that they are ac- customed to and must have fresh air; they can't stand it in the house; we will inhale the poison that our brother with diphtheria is throwing off and we will all get it, mother and father, too. Why don't you let us out in the fresh air and let father go to work; let us open all the doors and windows so my brother can get fresh air, so he can fill his system with oxygen to burn up this excess of poison in the system; this way he is continually reinhaling his own poison and therefore must surely die and we will all take the disease and die, too; but if you will grant our request this impure air can go out into the grand universe and in a moment is purified by the sun and air, the same as all decom- position is that evaporates in the air every day from all sources. Go into the house you little tots, what do you know? We will enforce the law. Then the mother comes to plead for her sick son and the rest of the family; she says: Here is Mr. S. (down there about four blocks on the corner where he runs a store) had diphtheria in the family, but they called it a bad cold, so the store could be open for business, every- body running in and out, going up-stairs to inquire how the boy's cold was, but no one sees him because he was very nervous; but Mr. S. told us afterwards that it was a genuine case of diphtheria, but that the 186 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. doctor told them not to say anything and it would do no harm, and no one caught the disease, and the rest of the family were out doors and the little girl kept on going to school, and there has been no cases among the children; but just because we are poor and our children sleep in small rooms not well aired, because I neglected to obey the laws of nature, you officers want to kill the whole family. Is this what you call your hyperfluten smartness that these doctors learn, and have the legislature pass laws to kill people by this legal and scientific absurdity? If that is so I will discharge the doctor and do what I can to help nature to remove this poison by keeping the skin open and active and trust to his strong constitution to hold out until nature has rid itself of this poison. I will open all the windows to give plenty of fresh air, because it's the oxygen from the air that keeps us alive; without it no one, not even the strongest person, can live an hour without it. There now you officers can go; this is what I am going to do, and I will lay down my life to carry it out, law or no law. The man who has been sitting on the woodshed studying nature was standing near and listening to all this conversation between this family and the health officers, and says, friends, do you know that woman has a lot of good instinct and horse sense ? Do you know that she is right, and that every law of the universe, which always has been and will be, will prove it by practical demonstrations without a single failure? I tell you, you doctors and the health officers are ignoramuses or wilful murderers; you don't study nature's laws and their relation to each other in their entirety; you only study it by piece-meal. You learn something about Physiology and Anatomy, something about quinine and morphine, and something about keeping alleys and streets clean, and by this piecemeal study you go on theor- izing about the rest. 'One's theory is, knock nature out doors, deplete the patient and dope him with large doses of quinine (Allopathy). The next one says, like cures like, and a medicine that produces a red skin is good to give for a diseased red skin (Homeopathy). Another says both are wrong; you must give specific medicine and make specific diagnosis (Eclectic). Another says, you must believe that you are not sick and you will get well (Christian Science). Another says electricity is in the nerves, therefore electricity will cure ARE DISEASES CURABLE 187 you (Electropath). The Microscopist says, it is a microbe, and to cure you must kill the microbe, and if you kill the microbe you will kill the patient, but that is nothing. The treatment is good in theory, if it does kill the patient; it is scientific you know. "But, Mr. Health Officer, before I leave you, I want to tell you something; I sat upon the roof of my old woodshed this morning reflecting about these things, that is about the relation of myself to the universe, and how health is kept up in the system, and how diseases are produced, and I tell you that this father and mother and those little children told you more truth about diphtheria than all the doctors in the world know. I will tell you more about this in another place, but before I leave you I want to say if doctors would learn to know as much as I learned up on that woodshed, by observing nature about us and her close relations to us, and then carry out those principles honestly, they would be the grandest men on earth, except the one that teaches people how to prevent disease; but you know some people will violate laws of health, sometimes by accident or other- wise, and we ought to have physicians that know at least as much as that old woman at the house where the diphtheria was, for she told you some solid truths. Good-bye." Health is restorable and disease curable to a degree far exceeding our most sanguine hopes. The tendency of any abnormal conditions is for nature to invariably seek to right up all wrong functions, but when properly directed it is not a matter of doubt that remedial agents do exist but is a demonstrated fact. Regaining health is possible, though much more difficult than its preservation, while an ounce of its prevention is worth more than pounds of cures for disease, yet nature's recuperative provisions are indeed marvelous; her restorations are neither few nor feeble nor re- stricted. Though she punishes some violations of her health laws, such as an amputated head, a pierced heart, etc., by death, yet most diseases, if taken in time and managed rightly, can be cured. Fevers are in themselves a curative process; in fact, pain itself signifies that the system has life enough left to undertake restoration. The victim laid low in death by our present method in vogue, despite the curative powers of nature, and those walking wrecks 188 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE whose constitutions it has ruined, should warn the well to learn how to keep well and the sick to try some other, yes, any other, mode of cure in preference, as well as make its practitioners pause and tremble at its many fatal results: How can they hold up their heads as honest straightforward men? The fact that so many are now losing faith and give but little medicine, who once gave so much is proof that their own faith in its virtues is waning, but rightly handled their results are sometimes wonderful; when not the patient had better let nature alone than to incur all this life and death risk. Doing nothing surely cannot be worse. Doctors often pronounce death on patients who afterwards re- cover, in fact, it is almost an every day occurrence, because nature has taken the utmost pains to so vary her methods as to heal most of her ills to which man is subject. This shows plainly that diseases are not mainly cured by medicines. Men generally think them their only curative reliance, especially in extreme cases. All run at once to the doctor and to the drug store as if their very life depended on their speed; do such people ever stop to think just how medicines act? They may purge the alimentary canal and infiltrate themselves throughout the body by means' of the blood but they do not mend muscles, nerves and organs, scrape up and eject disease or change the organic particles; they can only be given on the same principle as a food, when given to assist any of these things because all the rest is the exclusive work of nature. Work thus delicate she alone can execute. Medicine may neutralize poisonous acids, etc., and supply nature with the required materials if rightly given and selected, but this is about all. Mineral medicines are especially hurtful to life, because they are as a rule constitutionally incompatible; it is perfect nonsense in the face of every principle of nature; besides, her entire economy is pleasure never pain, while poisons generally cause pain, which ought to condemn them, as the system usually relishes those best which she requires, and her curative process is always pleasurable and not painful; only what interferes with its restoration occasions pain, and this law holds good of all forms of convalescence. Now if obeying law gives us pleasure, why should a return from transgres- sion to obedience give us pain ? Does anything but violated law give ARE DISEASES CURABLE 189 us suffering? Then medicines painful in their operations nature con- demns by the very pain they give; otherwise nature would be inflicting pains to secure pleasure, which she never does; her motto is all good, no evil. Any other view of her misrepresents and belies her, or rather exposes him who makes it. Thus she often brings good out of evil and makes even the wrath of man save her, yet she brings greater good out of all good. Hence our surest and shortest road from sickness to health never conducts us through what is repulsive or painful, but only through what is pleasurable. This principle con- demns poisons, calomel and depletions; the principle upon which they act is their destruction of life; taken in health they induce sickness; then how much will they aggravate when sick? Their effect upon the teeth alone condemns them with unequivocal condemnation. Dys- pepsia follows their use almost as surely as daylight follows sunrise, because that is what produces it. Let observation, the more extensive the better, pronounce the verdict. Language cannot express or por- tray its ravages on health and life. I will here give the testimony of a few distinguished medical men. "Gentlemen, if you could see what I almost daily see in my private practice; persons from the south in the very last stages of wretched existence, emaciated to a skeleton, with both tables of the skull almost completely perforated in many places; the nose half gone, with rotten jaws, ulcerated throats, breaths most pestiferous, more intolerable than poisonous; limbs racked with the pains of the inquisition; minds as imbecile as the feed- ing babe, a grevious burden to themselves and a disgusting spectacle to others; you would exclaim as I often have done: Oh! The lament- able want of science which dictates the abuse of that noxious drug, calomel, in the southern states. "Gentlemen, it is a disgraceful reproach to the profession of medicine, is quackery, horrid, unwarranted, murderous quackery. What merit do southern physicians flatter themselves they possess by being able to salivate a patient, giving calomel? But I will ask another question; who can stop its career at will after it has taken the reins into its destructive and ungovernable hands? He who for an ordinary cause resigns the fate of his patient to mercury is a vile enemy to the sick, and if he is tolerably popular, will in one successful 190 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE season have paved the way for a business life, for he has enough to do afterwards to stop the mercurial breach of the constitutions of his dilapidated patients! he has thrown himself in fearful proximity to death and has now to fight him arm's length as long as the patient maintains a miserable existence."-Professor Chapman. "They affect the human constitution in a peculiar manner, taking, so to speak, an inner grasp of all its systems and penetrating even to the bone, to which they not only change the healthy action of its vessels and general structure, but greatly impair and destroy its energies, so that their abuse is rarely overcome. When the tissue of the stomach, intestines or nervous system generally, has been once injured by this mineral, according to my observation, it can seldom afterwards be restored. I have seen many persons to whom it has been largely given, who before they took it knew not what indiges- tion and nervous depression meant, only by the description of others, but they have since become experimentally acquainted with both, for they now constantly complain of weakness and irritability of the digestive organs, of frequent lowness of spirits and impaired strength, all of which they will ever after experience. Instances of this descrip- tion abound. Many of the victims of this practice are aware of this origin of their permanent indisposition and many who are at present unconscious of it might here find upon investigation a sufficient cause for their sleepless nights and miserable days. We have often had every benevolent feeling called into painful exercises upon viewing patients, already exhausted by protracted illness, groaning under the accumulated miseries of an active course of mercury and by this for- ever deprived of perfect restoration. No words can sufficiently describe the inconsistency, folly and injury of this barbarous practice." -Doctor Graham, Edinburgh. The above is true of the principle on which calomel and all mineral poisons act, and the more violent the poison the more injurious its consequence. Those who take them may recover, yet it will be in spite of both disease and medicine, but their recovery will be slow and constitutions impaired. The vegetable kingdom furnishes most required medicines, and since some are thus furnished why not all? Since nature has prepared them all ready at our hand, why resort to ARE DISEASES CURABLE 191 art? The simple fact that vegetable remedies exist all ready pre- pared, shows that we must not take nature's work out of her hands, and since she undertakes to cure, why riot trust her mainly? After furnishing her with the right materials and conditions let her mostly alone; she does well whatever she undertakes. Is health, sickness and death governed by law .or providence? Does law or chance govern the world? Does every effect have its cause and every cause its effect? Or does this most important of all effects occur without cause by providential interposition? Does God violate his own laws ? This doctrine is preposterous, false in fact, in- jurious in the consequence, subversive of all causation, conceived in ignorance and brought forth by bigotry. Our world is governed throughout only by law. All is cause and effect. We see, feel and know that some causes promote health, while others retard it. Certain causes always occasioning death and others averting it. If sickness and death are providential, why ever give medicine to remove the former or prevent the latter? Why vainly and impiously attempt to arrest by medicine a dispensation of an all- wise providence? Fear and tremble lest He smite you dead for giving remedies to thwart his unchangeable decrees. Sickness and death are no more providential than the rising of the sun or any fixed operation of nature, but the legitimate and necessary effects of their procuring causes. None practically consider them providential, but all treat them as effects in their very attempts to obviate them by removing their causes. All mankind do something to apply causes to the relief of pain and prevention of death as spontaneously as they breathe. What stronger evidence could be required or had, that all instinctively feel and know them to be effects governed by causation. Are deaths caused by poisoning, or shootings, providential? We often know by what causes particular sickness and death were produced, and are all internally conscious of that highest order of proof that they are effects equally with all other operation of nature. To argue this point is to argue what is self-evident. To suppose that a single glow of health or twinge of pain is not an effect but a providence, is supposing that this incalculably important department of nature is without the pale of causation and law. 192 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE The mind, its effect upon health and disease, is marvelous. The effect of the mind upon all functions of the body, by grief or any cause that produces a melancholy or downhearted state, is well known, but when this mind or will-power is turned in the other direction it is by far the most efficacious of all remedies. It is pleasant to take and always on call. It can sometimes make a well man sick, or a sick man well, thus demonstrating clearly that the mind can weave fact out of fiction and that the mental man is superior to the physical man. In- tellect is the natural exciter and quieter of all the other faculties and functions. It is installed the vice-regent over all and their natural slave driver to whip up sluggish ones, as well as to rein in those on the rampage and guide all right. A girl who was told that if she would hang up her stockings Santa Claus would fill it with good things; she did hang it up and Santa Claus, or some other claws, did fill it. Calling for her stocking the moment she awoke, it was tossed upon her bed, when she greedily ate down its entire contents of almonds, raisins, nuts, candies, cakes, etc., ate a hearty breakfast, was supplied with tidbits between break- fast and dinner and an hour after was taken with convulsions and in another hour died. Yet the pious minister preached her funeral sermon from the text: "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away from evils to come," ascribing this afflictive bereavement to a merciful providence, sent to wean stricken parent from earth and prepare them for heaven. What sacrilege! what falsehood, thus to charge the Almighty with killing this dear child; just as much as if they had unwittingly given it arsenic. O parents take warning in cause of this untimely death, to feed your children aright, so as to save them from a premature death. If all ministers would make known causes of the early deaths that come before them, an occasion for warning to the living not to hasten their own death by a like disease, there would be fewer deaths this side of a worn out old age; teach- ing men that nothing but violating the natural laws can possibly occa- sion sickness or premature death, especially juveniles, would enforce the most powerful motive to study and observe these laws and thus ward off sickness and preserve life. But these false consolations lull parents and destroy children by the thousands every year. How ARE DISEASES CURABLE 193 many ladies accustomed to wear high dresses and covered arms array themselves for a ball or party in low dresses and short sleeves, and thin slippers; dance to complete exhaustion, carelessly expose themselves while going home tired after profuse perspiration, catch a severe cold, which strikes to the throat or lungs, and die of lung fever or quick consumption; and a "Lord's Will Seripon" is preached at their funeral, when it should be "committed suicide by wearing low dresses and thin slippers." I believe you should first find out whether the Lord did kill a given child or an adult before thus accusing him of doing so. To charge him with killing those who were killed or kill themselves by breaking his health laws may be pious, yet it is therefore blasphemy as horrid as man can well commit. Many young ladies in some of our cities often walk in thin shoes and delicate stockings in midwinter. A healthy blooming young lady thus dressed in violation of these laws pays the penalty in a checked circulation, colds, fevers and perhaps death. "What a sad provi- dence," exclaims her friends. Was it providence or her folly? Lord Palmerston, the great English premier, when petitioned by the Scotch clergy to appoint a day for fasting and prayer to avoid approaching cholera, replied in effect: "Clean, your streets, keep your houses clean, promote cleanliness and health among the poor, see that they are plentifully supplied with good food and clothing and employ right sanitary measures generally and you will have no occa- sion to fast and pray, nor will the Lord hear your prayer while these his preventors remain unheeded." Life and health, sickness and death, are invariably the legitimate effects of their procuring causes. Nature's health laws reign as supreme as any other; from them there is no appeal and to them no exception. Observing them renders health just as sure as the rising of the sun, be- cause both are equally governed by inflexible causation. Then let us study and fulfill; see that it is taught in every school in the land, be- cause it is a sacred duty and paramount obligation to God and our souls. This will give all the inflexible determination and the intellect to know and practice the laws and conditions of health and life. GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE. Of all questions that have at intervals of time baffled the world, it has been the cause of disease. Passions and prejudices as well as false notions and conception, have been engendered and promulgated by the different arguments of every issue pertaining to the subject and it seems that when people get any kind of a view pro or con. regarding the cause of any disease they become fiercely fanatical as soon as their views would be contradicted by anyone. This is both true of the public and the medical profession, but one of the most colossal frauds ever perpetrated on a free people is the germ theory as a cause of disease. Its conception is so foul that it smells to heaven. It is infamy incarnate; it is the apotheosis of impudence; it almost would seem as if the Ameri- can people will tamely submit to most any brazen imposition that arises from the gall of this profession of arch-angels, or they would have made a roar long ere this that would have appalled the shameless sanctimonious genius who seem to be wo»ven double ply, all wool, and long enough to reach to any cemetery. They are somewhat like those philosophers who denied that there could be any such things as motion or force because they were unable to solve their own problems in re- gard to them. A sincere lover of the truth should never withhold his assent to things plainly visible and evident on account of other things which may be obscure, nor accept those which are doubtful and even dangerous for the sake of those that may be easily known. A science is a systematic arrangement of the laws by which any group of facts or phenomena is governed, hence the term "law." From this it is clear that we must have facts to begin with-science begins with a fact always, that is, with a thing and not with nothing. It is simply folly to talk about science of anything that is nothing. In order that there be a science there must not only be facts, but the facts must be associated facts. They must be in sequence or co-related with each other; they must be bound together by some common principle; they must be of such a sort as to yield to classification and arrangement into groups and 194 GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 195 catagories, for without this quality of association and relation to each other, though the field of inquiry be piled with facts even as high as the mountain peaks, there can be no science. There must also be demonstration and interpretation of the facts or else there is no science of them. True that this interpretation of facts and phenomena out of the unknown is the very substance of science, but the interpretation must accord and harmonize with the facts and not make the facts bend to the theory, for this will distort the facts and instead of becoming a science it often becomes a jungle of fanciful assumption, for anything to be scientific must be sure, and that only is sure and always sure which is governed by and in harmony with natural law. It is not enough that we have facts, but these facts must be associated under the reign of law; and the principle, which builds them into a whole of symmetry and beauty must be discovered. It is also necessary to discover the facts and the laws which govern them, for if there we stop we have only the half of science and the poorer half at that, for science also de- mands that we also be able to tell what will come to pass hereafter. The microbe and the microbe killer rules the opinion of today; in the language of the lobby agent of the legislature, "It is a big thing." If we could be allowed to apply another quotation, "In it we live and move and have our being." Someone also said that it is never less sig- nificant in the midst of the materialism that rules the modern medical world that the less the doctor believes in spiritual existence the more the enthusiastic in his faith in microbes and their all potency. The pub- lic say, and justly so, that they have no other alternative but to believe what the so-called leading men in the profession say, and they (the profession) only too well know this to be a fact,and with their uncon- scious gall these parrots outline and macadamize a little highway and sect of their own and tell you by this creed you have got to travel or else the recording angel will put a black mark on his ledger against you, and the world applauds them while they are trampling the health and constitutions of a nation below their brutal feet. But we may sub- mit in all seriousness that they may be physically incapacitated to tell the truth or work in harmony with nature, or have a specific attack upon their veracity due to the microbe of falsehood. At the present rate of 196 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE advance in microbe science, humbuggery will soon be pronounced a disease, caused by a germ who puts his hair in tins, wears a yellow dia- mond, and has a temper like a Texas steer and a voice that hoops and howls that the Lord made a mistake in not consulting him when he made the world. This will no doubt scare the cholera microbe and itch- baccili into having hay fever or epilepsy and stimulate them to leave the country and look for an orthodox heaven. This germ theory as the cause of disease has proved to be such a powerful agency in the dissemi- nation of error and giving the appearance of truth to the most damnable doctrines, as well as being so mysterious and wonderful in the eyes of the public, as to soon excite their admiration and wonder and thereby diverting their attention from the real and simple causes of disease, the result being a continual increase of disease, such as consumption, diph- theria, etc. More stress and emphasis have been laid upon consumption and diphtheria and so impressed is the public mind that germs are really the cause of every case of these diseases that nothing perhaps except vaccination has had a stronger foothold upon the public opinion than that germs, or microbes, or whatever name they may go by, produce disease, but the fact is that nothing has been sprung upon the public in two hundred years that is more absurd, more foolish, and more dan- gerous to the health and constitution of man; not because the germs do any harm, but the danger to the life and health and the ruining of constitutions is caused from the ruinous methods of the treatments that have been the outgrowth of this monstrous humbug in the closing de- cade of the nineteenth century, but it has been a financial harvest for those who have promulgated this gigantic, murderous method. Such being the case it is the duty of some one to withdraw the truth from its enforced and unnatural confederacy and show that there is a sense in which the causes that produce disease can be understood, and repose on a rational and natural basis; then it can render invaluable aid to both science and the public. The whole medical profession, almost to a unit, hold that disease is due to germs, and all their efforts, as well as those of the health department, are directed to destroy these germs. State laws are made and enforced in this same direction. Now if this theory is wrong it must be clear to anyone that the public are suffering an almost irre- parable injury by the enforcement of these laws. GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 197 First-Let us inquire what is a theory? The dictionary tells us that a theory is a scheme of things which terminates in speculation. A theory then is an assumption, and rules and laws, as well as all rea- son and logic, will demonstrate that a theory to be plausible should harmonize with the facts it is designed to explain; if it does this the more clearly is the theory demonstrated, so far as any inductive con- clusions can be demonstrated, but if the theory does not accord with the facts it is sometimes mighty hard on the facts, and in medicine it is often the hardest on the patient or even a whole community, and pos- sibly a whole nation may suffer even large loss of life. It is also against the many false theories which are based on the misapprehension of their true significance that error of the most danger- ous character creeps in under the cover of ambiguous phraseology and the poison of false doctrine is unconsciously imbibed by the public or by even the most cautious of the profession, so that it behooves us to be constantly on guard. Therefore it requires an intrepid investigator, strong in the sense of right, and certain in his interpretations of the teachings of experiments so that they harmonize with all known natural laws to arrest his intellectual freedom and to cope with those who imagine that they could not err and that the theories they universally quote in medicine to be accounted as so many canons of truth. But in spite of the fact that the germ theory as a cause of disease is contrary to all laws of nature, contrary to all common sense, the profession tiave forced themselves with such ardor to make every dis- ease, as well as its treatment, to corroborate their pet theory that it has made them one sided and circumscribed in their views, and it is very evident that they are suffering from intellectual shortsightedness. Be- fore giving the proofs for my strong assertions against this, the most popular and fashionable theory in medicine before the world today, we may here be permitted to remind the reader that it is of prime impor- tance to weigh fairly the arguments and objections; not only that, but the absolute impossibility that germs can be the cause of these many named diseases. You must divert yourself of all bias that may pro- ceed from prejudice or false education to consider the question on its merits and not let your mind be swayed by preconceived or it may be 198 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE by erroneous notions. Let the value of the evidence presented be esti- mated by the rules of logic and in the light of reason, backed up by the actions and expressions of nature's laws, for these laws can never err, are always the same and once understood they are understood for all generations to come. Is not such a grand proof worthy the at- tention of every human being, when you consider the happiness, the health, the long life, the prevention of the misery and suffering, to say nothing about the expense such misery and suffering is to yourself and family and their future generations? We can in one sentence make plain our position as to why germs do not and cannot produce disease, and prove it afterwards. If you will look around you, above you and beneath you, in other words, if you will examine every condition existing upon this great earth, every con- dition in the air or every condition within the earth and we certainly have millions upon millions of different conditions to select from, and if among these millions of conditions, including all conditions that are called disease, can be found one single condition in which any animal life develops, that the condition did not exist first; before the animal life could develop, we will admit that germs can produce the condition we call disease and we will be a convert to the germ theory as a cause of disease. Does not this seem a fair proposition? It is not only a fair proposition, it is a true proposition; this is what nature says and she manifests it all around us. We have put this question at every opportunity to men devoting their time to hunting and studying germs, but it still remains to be answered and always will. The answer usually received was how I could deny such eminent authority as Dr. Koch of Berlin, Klebs and Pasteur and others. It is simply the old story of accepting authority for truth instead of truth for authority, or more properly speaking, nature for authority, and remembering that every- thing that exists has evolved from the atomic and molecular action of those elements of which the universe and everything in it is made up of. This compels us to repeat that the visible manifestations of nature are only the expressions of her atomic and molecular actions, and any theory that is claimed to demonstrate how the atomic and molecular actions of these natural elements produce these visible manifestations must harmonize with them. We have practically admitted then that GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 199 we first take nature as she expresses herself, visible to the naked eye and that the above statement if true that wherever animal life exists the condition for its development must exist first. This statement is incon- trovertible ; then it must also be true among the small germ life that is not visible to the eye, for nature does not reverse her laws in regard to the development or the evolution of life that is not visible to the eye. No one will deny this law in regard to animal life that can be seen by the naked eye; no one will say that all the animal life existing in the ocean developed before the ocean existed. Good drinking water is claimed to contain twenty or thirty different kinds of germs. Did the germs produce the water in which they live and develop ? Further, we defy the whole medical profession to show a single instance in the past or in the future where they have cured a single case of any of the diseases they claim are produced from germs by killing the germs. This of itself condemns the theory, but the doctors and manufacturers of drugs, also patent medicine men, have made fortunes by putting up solutions which they claimed would kill these microbes and by this germ fad have been sneaking among the lambs of mankind for an opportu- nity to funnel some of their damnable poisons down the throats or on the wound of some poor human sufferer. There is one thing that must appeal to any thoughtful mind, in fact if people would only occasionally take the time to compare the state- ments made by these scientific frauds (the medical authorities) these murderous methods for the sake of money there is in it would never take root deep enough to spread beyond the laboratories in which they are concocted. For illustration let us take the two most common statements made by our germ theorists. First-Germs and their ex- cretions are the cause of disease. Second-They claim that germs must be destroyed in order to cure the disease. Third-They claim that germs will not molest healthy tissue. Fourth-That the weaker the patient the more susceptible and the more severe are the ravages of these germs; further, that millions of these germs exist in a diseased patient and that they multiply themselves by new generations every few hours and that the weaker the patient the more susceptible is the patient to the action of these germs. These being the statements made by the advocates of these germ idiots, must not the patient keep on con- 200 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE tinually getting worse until death relieves their suffering? Because the patient is much weaker than in health and certainly cannot become stronger if germs or microbes are the cause of the disease and are multiplying at such a rate. Is it not clear that it would be absolutely impossible for any patient to get well of diphtheria or any other disease until these germs were killed ? but the fact is, and it can be absolutely demonstrated, that these patients will get well more easily and better if the throat is left entirely alone, no matter how thick the mass of membrane or mass of microbes may be if only an opening is main- tained for air to get into the lungs. If no other explanation or argument could be advanced than this one it would be as positive a proof as any one needed that germs are not the cause of the condition called disease or that the excretions of these germs are injurious; put it in any light we may, the earth would be depopulated by this time if there were even the slightest truth in this the most gigantic farce, so murderous in its consequences. In spite of these facts it is one of the main foundations upon which the medical structure stands today. If any reasoning mind were to put the above statements together and show us how it was possible for any patient to get well before the germ theory was discovered, or how it is possible for any patient now at the present time to get well without destroying these germs, we admit our opposition to the germ theory to be wrong and to be simply the expression of an idiot. The superstition of witchcraft, accompanied with all its devils and spirits of ancient times, has never or never could produce the injury that the teachings of our medical humbugs of today in medicine are doing to humanity. Why? Because.the present methods are under- mining the constitutions of man and certainly no worse injury can be- fall a race. Epidemics are easily avoided, in fact more easy than man so far has ever dreamed of, but the lowering or weakening of the con- stitution of man requires generations to bring it back by the best of knowledge and culture. This lowering of the constitution and the unbalancing of the functional proportions of the body, so they cannot endure the ordinary surroundings in which we live, is the greatest cause of the present increase of consumption and so many other constitutional weaknesses. The quicker we change front and stop taking any stock GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 201 in an organization that claims to prevent disease, when their very existence depends upon the existence of disease, and realize the fact that at the present time at least five times as many doctors exist as can make a living if they did a legitimate and honest business, the quicker we will reach a condition of health consistent with our twentieth century civ- ilization. From the theory that germs cause disease many laws have been established that are as erroneous as the theory itself, besides keeping the public in a continual fright and dread of having some germ alight upon them and produce disease. They are made to believe that spitting on the sidewalk or any public place gives danger of spreading these germs; some even go so far as to say that the house and all its contents should be burned where a case of consumption, diphtheria, smallpox, etc., have existed. Is it not a fact if anything now advocated about germs or microbes is true that the doctor is truly a hero such as the world never had? And he always comes out of the battle without a scratch, showing he is a good fighter to keep the germ away from himself, but he has never succeeded in finding anything to keep them away from his patients, and when the patient gets well, like in all other conditions where germ life exists, there is nothing more for these helpful scavangers to do and they simply die off as we ourselves would when our sustenance is taken away from us. If disease is due to germs let us reason for a minute: Diphtheria has existed as far back as memory or history is known; if, as it is claimed, this disease is due to germs then the germs must be killed to cure disease; further, as it is claimed, germs attack a weak system and if the system is strong enough to resist the attack of the germs you are safe from having the disease; in other words, your system must be weakened to favor their attack. Our germ friends must admit that (if they admit anything )a child, we will say fifteen years old, takes a severe attack of diphtheria; the throat is thoroughly covered with membrane or disease; millions upon millions of these germs are in the throat and blood; will our germ theory men admit that this child is weak enough to favor the attack and the development of germs, which condition already exists according to their doctrine; that these germs multiply by the billions every twenty-four hours and THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 202 are excreting a poison; then how in the world can this child ever get well if the germs are the cause and are not killed? The system is weak, the germs are glorying in their fine field of operation-their number and their poison increasing every hour and the patient cannot resist germs unless she has a healthy system; according to their doctrine these germs must be killed before the child can recover, which is certainly true, but this child does get well without killing these germs- it gets well without a drop of medicine and the germs disappear as she gets well. The author has demonstrated the above facts dozens of times; will our germ enthusiast answer this and crack the hard nut? If germs caused disease it would be impossible to get well, but millions have recovered in the past two thousand years. Oh, the infamy and the ignorance or unscrupulousness, which is it ? When will they have the courage to tell the truth and say that the eruption in the throat and on the body of all cases of diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., is not the disease itself, but only the system already curing herself by throwing out the poison from the system? This point we urged so strongly five years ago in a paper read before a medical convention, in fact we covered the ground strongly in that paper as to the germ theory, contagious theory, vaccination theory, etc., and our name to them has been "crank" ever since; but we will keep turning this crank until the public is rid of the murderous methods that exist today in handling those diseases, and until they know they are easier to prevent than a common cold. To demonstrate this is the subject matter of this volume. How did the so-called scientists make this wonderful discovery that germs are the cause of disease? First, by taking some piece of diseased lung tissue or some of the matter or pus, as it is called, and putting this under a powerful microscope and looking through this piece of diseased lung or pus and to their astonishment they found a lot of minute germs of a certain shape and size, and by further investigation they found that this peculiar kind of germ is only found in diseased lungs; it sets them a thinking and they ask themselves, can these millions of germs be the cause of the destruction of these lungs? It looks reasonable to them; they investigate further on different patients and always find this same kind of germ. They GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 203 wonder if other diseases have the same germ, and they obtain diphtheria membrane and examine it; sure enough, millions of germs are found, but altogether of a different nationality; they have a different kind of head, are of different shape; whether the hair is curly or their skin red or black or whether they were of French, German or some other nationality has never been stated. Again the scientist takes some pus from a wound and finds another different kind of germ, and so on through the list of different diseases, and in each different kind of disease or condition a different kind of germ is found, and as the cause of these different diseases was never known the conclusion was soon drawn that a different kind of germ found in each so-called disease was the cause of it. Does it not on the face of this evidence look like a very reasonable and plausible conclusion? And soon the hue and cry went up, hurrah boys, we have found the causes of these dreadful diseases; but some one who is a- little more cautious steps in and says, don't be too sure, you had better try and see if you can produce these diseases by injecting the poison in which these germs live or some medium in which they can be developed, including the germs, into some animal. All right, that is a good proposition; it is done over and over again, and sure enough, according to reports, the disease was produced according to the kinds of germs and poisons that were injected. There now, with an air of satisfaction, we have positive proof that the germs are the cause of these diseases; the great discovery was announced to the world; the cause of diphtheria, con- sumption, typhoid fever and many others is now known. The treatment they thought now could be easily found. The germs are the cause of these diseases and the remedy that will kill these germs will cure the disease; this also looks logical and reasonable, like many other things that look reasonable from a superficial standpoint. But when we examine the natural expressions of nature we will find that these men's cool assumption should be decorated with a blue ribbon for their mighty aggregation of gall and ignorance. They are something like the Irishman who, in passing a decaying carcass and found it covered with crawling germs of insect life, he cried: "Ah! look at the poor beast and the maggots, sure they have kilt it entirely." Such is about the reasoning of our scientific men upon 204 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE germs and microbes; the effects are taken for the causes. But as soon as Dr. Koch, of Berlin, announced that he had produced a serum that would kill the germs of consumption the whole of the medical profession seemed to go wild; if we can only get some of this serum first there will be lots of money in it. Many took the steamers to Berlin to get some of the serum, some paying enormous prices for it, but any way to get it. In a few months the reports began to come in of wonderful results; people began to travel hundreds of miles to find some one who had the serum; very soon magnificent results were reported, of course couldn't do anything else to make money out of it, and it was that class that was doing all the blowing, but there was a conservative element that was waiting as well as thinking and observing, but during all this time the public was interested in certain patients or friends, judged only from the results upon these friends, but the hope that was impressed upon them soon changed into dis- appointment; their friends were a little better, then worse, until relieved by death, none of the patients getting well, and it can be truthfully said that the serum never benefited a patient. But if consumption had been one of a class of diseases in which some of the patients would get well, the cure would always be claimed to be due to the serum. But in diphtheria it is different. In this disease a large percentage of the cases will get well without any treatment, but thei cures now are credited to the serum used. This, in short, was the beginning of the germ and serum theory, practically applied in the treatment of con- sumption; the old treatment has failed, but the germs hold their office at the old stand, and we can assure the reader that wherever consumption of the lungs exists these germs will exist; and have we not made out a pretty good case, too, that the germs are really the cause of consumption? This particular germ (Tubercle Bacilli) is always found in this condition; do they not produce the condition (by condition we mean the disease) ? We answer emphatically, No. Why ? Because it is contrary to all laws of nature. If this is true our answer is correct, for nature never varies a hair's breadth. And because medical colleges do not teach the meaning of the visible expressions of nature the practice of medicine cannot be based upon any real scientific basis; hence the practice of medicine is mere guesswork, GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 205 intelligent or otherwise, and one has as much right to guess as another. There is no scientific, legitimate therapeutics; all physicians pretend to be much more skillful than they really are; therefore, all physicians are quacks, and the laws regulating the practice of medicine is nothing more nor less than giving one class of quacks the privilege to practice medicine and to prevent very often less harmless quacks to interfere with their murderous and scientific quackery. If a man holds himself out as a physician he should know his business, and the law should prevent him from ever practicing again if he does anything for or gives anything to a patient under the pretense that he knows what he don't know; he should be compelled to state to the patient that he does not know or is only guessing, so that the patient can decide for himself whether he wishes him to guess at the risk of his health or life. To use a mild expression of the day, medicine has its fad like other phases of society, and the theory that all disease manifestations is the result of a microbe is one of the fads of medicine. If the theory was not murderous and ruinous to the constitution of man it could be easily tolerated, but the unconscious gall of these pious pirates and the microbe killer die hard, and at the present time the microbe is the grandest being that ever graced the mighty tide of time, because he is a money maker, for it makes the doctor walk erect and goes along singing like a Jew's harp because he knows the public cannot catch him at this mighty murderous and profitable humbug. This microbe sensation, unless the public will open their eyes to its eternal danger, bids fair to eclipse all other chimerical theories that ever existed, but let the public put in a kick then these rascals will tremble like cowards and soon nothing will be left of it but the sad memory of the millions of victims of these pretenders of science. The following was written by Dr. E. B. Foote, and represents plainly and concisely how language can be distorted to make the credulous and believing think what wonderful science this nonsense is. "Judge of my surprise, therefore, when I found the unbelievers in this doctrine were confident that their opposition was quite as well supported by facts as were the claims of those who took the affirmative. I found, further, that the belief in the contagious character of consump- tion was much older than I supposed. For example, as far back as 206 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 1832, the King of Naples, acting upon the hypothesis that consumption was communicable, issued an edict requiring the physician to report all cases of ulceration of the lungs; the safe disposition of the clothing of the patient; the burning of household goods that might be tainted with infection; the burning of windows and doors, and the replastering of the houses where persons had died of consumption; and finally many other precautions too numerous to mention, severe penalties being imposed on those who failed to obey the king's mandate. In 1865 Villemin, a French physician, made a series of experiments which he though demonstrated the claim that tubercular diseases could be communicated by inoculation from man to rabbits and guinea pigs. He had quite a following who fully believed that consumption was com- municable, but other investigators found that inoculation with other morbid matters would in some cases end in the development of con- sumption. It was therefore concluded that Villemin's experiments did not fully sustain his extreme views. Coming down to the present time, we find eminent physicians and health boards in all parts of the country acting upon the belief that the whole question is settled, and recommending precautions nearly or quite as comprehensive as those adopted by the King of Naples, and indeed many of them far more ridiculous. Drs. W. R. and M. L. Amick, of the Amick Chemical Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio, present in as concise form as possible the absurd proposals and recommendations of what they style misguided enthusiasts. Although somewhat lengthy they are ex- tremely interesting in this connection, and I will present them nearly in their entirety: '■'That the several hundred thousand consumptives in the United States should be segregated, that the. several millions of persons suspected of having consumption in the United States should be segregated, that every house in which a consumptive has lived be destroyed by fire. That all carpets, draperies, screens, towels, hand- kerchiefs, clothing, and bed linen used by a consumptive or coming in contact with one, be destroyed by fire. (This proposition, remarks the writer, is sometimes made more mild, and only requires that such articles be disinfected.) That all furniture used by a consumptive be destroyed or at least disinfected. That all apartments in hotels which GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 207 have been used by a consumptive be placarded, and not used by any other person until thoroughly disinfected. That all domestics should be examined by an inspector for the bacilli of consumption before being admitted into the household. That school children should have throats examined by competent inspectors every morning before enter- ing school. (The writer regrets to remark that the preceding recom- mendation was made by no less a personage than the late Dr. Alfred Loomis, of New York.) "That it is not safe to smoke cigars, as they may have been made by a consumptive cigar maker. (Dr. Kerez, a German physician, inoculated guinea pigs with an infusion obtained from cigars, and produced alleged consumption.) That it is not safe to frequent the town postoffice or criminal court room unless they are daily disin- fected. That it is not safe to go to church which is not regularly disinfected. That it is not safe to ride in the street cars which are not regularly disinfected. That it is not safe to receive letters written by consumptives or handled by consumptive mail clerks or carriers. That it is not safe to use the cups, plates, knives and forks in restaurants and hotels, as the simple rinsing of these articles with boiling water is not sufficient to kill the bacilli (germs). That children of consumptives should not be permitted to go to cemeteries, as the bacilli of consump- tives have been found in the graves of consumptives twenty-five years after burial. That it is not safe to drink water which has not been sterilized. That it is not safe to use ice unless it has been made from sterilized water. M. Riche, a French physician, in an article in Modern Medicine, states that 175,000 microbes were found by him in a cubic centimeter of ice and that ice should not be used until it has been thoroughly boiled. (That the sanity of M. Riche may not be questioned, the writer expresses it as his belief that in making this recommendation M. Riche was not serious, but rather that he holds the germ enthusiasts in rather light esteem.) That all animals suspected of having tuberculosis should be killed at once. That all barns and hog pens and all other habitations of animals suspected of having tuberculosis should be frequently disinfected. That is the positive duty of every sensible physician to directly forbid the use of unboiled milk. That every article of food should be sterilized or over- cooked. That it is not safe to eat the flesh of cows. That it is not 208 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE safe to eat the flesh of fowls. That it is not safe to eat the flesh of rabbits. That the bacilli of consumption are frequently found in lager beer and bread. That children should be raised on boiled goat's milk. That pest houses for consumptives should be established to which consumptives shall be transferred, if necessary by force, and that everything and everybody in the remotest degree related to con- sumption or a consumptive be placed under sanitary surveillance. That for the carrying out of this plan special corps of medical directors, assistant inspectors, disinfectors, etc., be appointed." Under such a law the medical profession would be as attractive to the ambitious youth as the Standard Oil Trust or Sugar Trust. The writer concluded this string of absurdities with the facetious remark that "if the assertions of the bacteriologists are true, it is time for the human race to get off the earth." The foregoing recommendations, it is asserted by the Drs. Amick, have everyone of them been seriously advocated either in medical journals, medical works, or works on bacteriology, and most of us here today can corroborate the assertions. Of course the positive evidence that germs do not and cannot under any natural circumstances produce disease can be made very short: First, it is contrary to any law of human physiology and contrary to any other law of nature everywhere the eye can see, which means millions of proofs that the proper conditions must exist first before animal life can exist and develop. The live germ from which the human body is developed is developed from what? Why, from the meat, potatoes and bread and butter you eat, but these eatables will not develop this life germ by throwing those eatables out in the back yard, but they must be placed and handled as nature has designed, and thus the physiological process, in other words, the normal con- ditions within the body. In thinking and reasoning upon this subject do not lose sight of this great fact, that these conditions called disease, which kills millions every year, are as natural as those conditions that produce glowing health and long life. There is no such thing as an abnormal or unnatural action in the laws of nature. Nature only has one way of doing anything. It makes no difference, to nature whether you marry a person not adapted to you and thus GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 209 have puny and sickly children, or whether you marry a person well adapted and have good healthy and long lived children. But the strongest proof of all that germs do not produce disease is that these humbugs and frauds cannot produce the disease with germs, which they claim they can do. We defy them to develop consumption, diphtheria or any other disease, with germs in one single instance by any natural process, and if they accomplish it we will consider our- selves beaten at every point, because what nature will do once she can do again and again. For an illustration, these germ frauds claim that typhoid fever is due to a certain germ and that it can only be brought about by being infected with these germs. Now I would like to ask these enthusiasts if typhoid fever cannot be produced from the waste matter of one's own body and without the taking into the body anything that is unhealthy? Will they dare say no? Not by any means. If they know anything about physiological law they know that typhoid fever is produced from dead, decomposed animal or vegetable matter which is undergoing the process of change, each to its primitive elements, and it makes no difference whether the above named matter is retained from your own animal waste matter within the body or taken into the body in some form of food or drink. To the above named causes for typhoid fever we will add the influence of the atmosphere upon the functions of the body and upon the blood through the lungs, and we have mentioned in our general statement all the causes that produce every disease known to man, such as smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, chicken-pox, in fact all the so-called blood diseases. The above mentioned fact cannot be mentioned too often in order to impress it upon the public mind, as it is doubtful whether the present generation, from their strongly inherited beliefs and notions, will adopt or even allow themselves to think and reason or study physiolog- ical and natural law along this line. These statements (which are not ait opinion of our own but are the expressions of the God-given natural law and the expressions of nature) mean further that you are at fault and to blame nearly every time that disease overtakes 210 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE you, but no statement is resented with such force as to tell people that the cause of their having typhoid fever, diphtheria, or small- pox in their house lies at their own door. When this grand truth is once known, talked, discussed and insisted upon, then this millennium and the revolution towards the proper prevention of diseases will have reached that certainty for which the world for two thousand years has been craving, and added to this the one and most essential subject to health and life is the proper obeyance of the sexual and creative laws; and to make the four mentioned subjects effective and practi- cal to mankind they should be made the first and essential standard of all education. There is nothing in all the history of medicine that has given science such a black eye as these false theories, boomed to their full- est extent, because the boomers could see plenty of money and noto- riety ahead, most all of the practitioners and teachers falling in line with the procession. But it ought to be plain to the ordinary observer that trying to kill the germs has been of no value, but often injurious. Now they are procuring what is called germ culturers and the alka- loid from this culture to fortify the system or render it immune from disease, and this is done with such painstaking accuracy that it is really worth a better result. But what is the result? Is consump- tion lessened by these injections of these culturers? Every one knows it is on the increase. Many an one is occupying a chair in medi- cal colleges would like to say that they could see some benefit, but they too well know that the facts will not bear out the statement; but instead of boldly coming out with the plain truth as honorable men should, they still attempt to waive the direct question and hold out to the public a hopeful picture for the future, which if they had an inkling of the methods of nature's laws they must forever refute their nonsensical assumption. At the same time these teachers are keeping up and teaching these methods to would-be doctors, while they know them to be absolutely injurious, or worthless. In at least two instances the writer was assured by these teachers that they must keep up these fashionable fads or lose their job. When bleed- ing, blistering and mercury was killing at least four or five times as many people as disease, the same method was followed, and col- GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 211 leges and practitioners would not admit it was so, no matter how con- vincing the proof,'until public sentiment was aroused by the aston- ishing results of a few men who had the courage of their convic- tions, based upon observation, began to show up the murderous meth- ods; then it took a whole generation to change colleges from the error of their way so that the next generation does not even know of its existence. This is just what will occur this time if the public does not arouse themselves in a mass against the present murderous methods; it will, as it did then, cost the lives of a large share of this generation before they will drop what they now know to be injurious to all living, and all yet to be born, by weakening the con- stitution of the next generation by the injections of poisons and the continual funneling down of injurious drugs. To show that the intention is to keep up their false teachings, so opposed to all natural law, we will quote from the announcement of one of the leading colleges in the country for the year 1900. "The comparatively recent investigations of Pasteur, Lister, Koch and others in bacteriology, have wrought changes in our conception of the causes and nature of disease which have revolutionized our system of prac- tice, and enabled us to establish methods of treatment founded in part at least upon a rational basis." This plainly shows their position in spite of the fact that every test and experiment has shown that the theories advocated by these three men have proven to be false and injurious; are you ready for the question? If so, then act and act with a vigor, and you will be surprised how these frauds will change front, and they certainly will not do it until public sentiment wakes up to its own interest and to its own life and health, as well as for the children of the future. In another place we call attention to the similarity of everything that exists, including the human being, that there was absolutely no difference between the plant, animal and man, except in their com- plexity of structure, due to the behavior of the atoms of which all the natural elements are composed, and observation will show a strik- ing similarity between the behavior of the elements of nature and that of human being. We are built up of these simple elements and it is not surprising that such likeness in their action exists, for the finest and the most subtle motion is but a phase of physical or natural move- 212 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. ment. The attractions and the repulsions that these natural elements have for each other make it appear as though the universe were per- meated with life, but really whose ultimate essence resides in the atom itself, as well as in its most complex combinations. For an illustra- tion, take two transparent, colorless solutions which look like water, one made up of nitrate of silver, the other of common salt; mix them together and you instantly have a liquid and a solid. The chlorin contained in the salt has a stronger attraction for the silver than it has for sodium, while the nitric acid contained in the nitrate of silver seems to have po love for either of the other two and is glad to get rid of silver on any basis. So we see here a similarity of life. There are two divorces and two marriages, and our two original liquid solutions caused by changing their love for each other under differ- ent conditions, just as the human being will often change his love under new conditions. The one solution becomes solid chloratic sil- ver, the other a liquid nitrate of sodium. It is a curious fact in chem- istry that chlorin, like many human beings, is ever ready to marry for money; that is, it is about the only element that is always ready to attract itself to silver or gold. Even water loaded with impurities, if given a chance, will crystallize into pure water, and the sediments, if left a long time, crystallize into purity. Following up this law of attraction and repulsion from salt and snow to rubies and diamonds we will learn that these natural elements have a stern code of morals; their first aim is to be pure, their second is to be perfect in form, and their third is to act in harmony. It is from this law, this abso- lute and certain law, this law that no man can ever change, that we have taken our text upon which we have harped so much, that the human body has this same code of morals; first its aim is to be pure; second to be pure in form, and third to act in harmony. And wher- ever any elements are taken into the body, or any of those which she is continually throwing off through her sewer system, the skin, kidneys, etc., are retained within the body to any degree, to effect this code of morals, she rises to an extraordinary effort to throw them out upon the surface of the body and we call it smallpox or scarlet fever, or diphtheria; in other words, we repeat that these conditions that are generally called disease is only the natural code of the natural GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 213 law of the body to cure itself. This law is not denied in other branches of science except by the medical frauds; we say medical frauds be- cause we are satisfied that they know better, but if this simple law was once known, inculcated into the child and made a knowledge of himself as reading and writing is, most doctors would have to go into other business, and it is upon this law that no human being can deny that we justly brand the germ theory as a cause of disease a crime and fraud upon an innocent public. Every one of the elements of which our body is composed are, so to speak, immortal; they cannot be created nor can they be destroyed. There is no annihilation, no diminishing and no increasing; there is only dispersion and change of form to be followed by collection of a new form. There is no loss of force, such as heat, light, magnetism, electricity; chemical forces are all transmutable into each other. Death is only a certificate that these elements of which our bodies were composed are to change back to their primitive state and start anew on another plain, just as we burn a piece of wood or coal and it passes out of existence, dies as a solid, but is only a change from the solid to that of gases, from the visible to the invisible. This law is the ultimate essence of everything on its way to a higher evolution. This universe is not, as some would have it, a vast machine, wound up and set in motion to the certainty that it will run down; it simply changes from one form to another, ever evolving into higher forms on higher planes. The law of birth, growth and death, of endless destruction and perpetual renewal, is everywhere seen working in this universe; in sun and in world, in rock, in herb, and in man, all of which are but passing phases in the endless circulation of the universe in that perpetual new birth we call nature. To show the intense ignorance on the part of the medical profes- sion of the law that we have just defined we will quote in full the report of a case by Doctor William Jacobsohn, of New York, in the Philadelphia Medical Journal. He says: "On the night of April 28, 1899,1 was hastily summoned to my patient, Milton W., a school boy, aged 8 years, whom I found suffering with pains in his back, fever and vomiting. I made a careful examination, found the temperature 106 F., pulse 175, but no further symptoms. After having informed THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. 214 the parents that I believed some disease was developing and giving them directions to combat the high temperature, I left, promising to call the next morning. "The next morning at my visit, I learned from the mother that the child had been delirious and was now in a state of .stupor. The temperature was 105 F. and the pulse 166. I carefully observed the skin and fauces for signs to make a diagnosis, but found nothing of value. I had excluded thoracic, abdominal and pelvic disorders, for there were neither symptoms nor signs of disease of any of the organs. The delirium and stupor pointed strongly to the cerebro- spinal diseases but in the absence of the characteristics of these dis- eases, the diagnosis became indeterminable. It was not until late the next day that there appeared upon the face a diffuse rash very much resembling that of measles, but here and there dotted were small points about the size of a pinhead. A few of these points were also seen upon the abdomen, and resembled very strikingly the rash of typhoid fever, but differed from that eruption by disappearing on firm pressure only. The child, moreover, had not the respiratory symp- toms of measles, cough, coryza and conjunctivitis being absent. The temperature was 104 F. and pulse 160. The child was still delirious. "The following day I noticed that the macular eruption had been succeeded by a papular one, which now extended over back and extrem- ities; here and there I could observe a few vesicles and particularly about the knees where the garters had been worn the eruptions were more prominent. On this day the fact that there were so few vesicles, the latter resembling very closely those of varicella and that the child was developing a severe conjunctivitis would have given the casual observer the idea that measles, possibly complicated with varicella, was developing. The temperature was 102.5 ^., and delirium though present at times was subsiding. I examined the throat, found it con- gested, otherwise nothing of any clinical significance. "On May 2d I found the eruption becoming more prominent and revealing itself in the forms of raised papules, new crops coming out where the same on the previous day seemed healthy. The papules had a firm, hard feeling to the touch and were raised; in certain por- tions vesicles which were situated on a bright red base were forming. GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 215 The papules and vesicles varied in size from a pinhead to a split pea; they were resistant on pressure. The vesicles that had formed on the previous day became more developed and instead of the tendency to disappear, as in varicella, had become larger and more opaque. There were places where the vesicles coalesced to form large bullae. The temperature was still 102 F., but delirium had been only present at a few intervals during the course of the past 24 hours. Twitching was intense. I had now been convinced that I was dealing with prob- able variola. I questioned the mother regarding the boy's vaccina- tion, and elicited the information that the child had been vaccinated when an infant one year old, and again when seeking admission to school. She told me she was not certain whether it took. After mak- ing an examination to determine if there were any scars and not find- ing any trace of them, I concluded that the boy had never had the benefit of a successful vaccination. On May 3d on my visit I found the child'having but a temperature of 101 F., the eruption was now marked, no portion of the face being exempt; even the ears were densely covered with large pea sized vesicles and the rash had ex- tended to every part of the body. Some of the vesicles were com- mencing to show traces of umbilication. The child seemed easier, had no delirium, and though apparently overwhelmed with the toxemia, spoke rationally. The mucous membrane of the nose, palate, tongue, and fauces was covered with the eruption. "The clinical picture was now complete to make a positive diagnosis of variola. It is difficult to describe any eruption for one must see it to appreciate it, and even the most beautiful photograph and atlases fail to replace a naked eye view. "Immediately I informed the health authorities, who corroborated my diagnosis, and as no case of smallpox is by law permitted within the city limits, the child was removed to Riverside Hospital, where its subsequent history can be found. "The above case demonstrates that however important an early diagnosis is, difficulties beset the diagnostician from the beginning. On account of the high temperature at the start, the practitioner is certainly apt to be called earlier in a case like the above, but as in a child high fever may mean temporary derangement of the gastro- 216 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE intestinal tract, which upon the exhibition of a purge will fall, its significance may be overlooked. "Again, as, when such a high temperature takes place, there often results delirium and stupor, a mistake must not be made by diagnos- ing cerebrospinal diseases. "Later on the third day, when the eruption appeared it did not present itself typically, for its resemblance on the one hand to measles and on the other to typhoid fever, caused doubts. Still later, varicella may be mistakenly diagnosed. "However the temperature forms an excellent guide. In the above case the fall of temperature with the appearance of the characteris- tic nodular papules and umbilicated vesicles involving the entire body almost at one time, and the more permanent character of the skin lesion, fixed the diagnosis. "As cited above there was no epidemic as well as no environment to excite any suspicion of the disease; it seems therefore that we must never be surprised to meet any case, however rare. Should our diag- nosis be delayed, as it must be when called so early, distressing or dangerous symptoms must nevertheless be met with appropriate treat- ment. Isolation of the patient as well as disinfection of surround- ings and attendants should always be practiced in doubtful cases. There is no harm in being cautious, and it certainly is the only means by which we can prevent the propagation of diseases among nonim- munes "Vaccination had been established as a protective against smallpox. It must have been done defectively twice in the above case, as there were no traces to show its effectiveness. The importance of procuring a good vaccin virus and of preserving until the vaccination is success- ful should be obvious to every physician who vaccinates." The foregoing is a typical case to demonstrate the ignorance in the medical profession in this enlightened century in regard to these eruptive or zymotic diseases. It is enough to amaze the very gods and make the Almighty ashamed of his masterpiece. The doctor publishes this case to demonstrate that however important an early diagnosis is, that difficulties beset the diagnostician from the begin- ning, but if he had the first lessons of physiological law learned, GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 217 which ought to be known to every child in the land, he would have made his diagnosis in a minute. He says he found the tem- perature of 106 F. The child became delirious and was in a state of stupor. These are symptoms that will always follow a tempera- ture of 106 or above and what does this high temperature mean? Nothing more nor less than the locking up in the system of car- bonaceous matter, for a high temperature always means an excess of carbon somewhere within the system, and to eliminate these poi- sons is the first thing to do. If this doctor would have observed he would have found a very dry skin, and if he would have simply told the parents how to put this child in a perspiration or use the cold pack, as we illustrated in describing a similar case even more severe than this one on page 151, and not giving even a drop of medicine, he would have found his patient the next morning literally covered with an eruption all over the body and the temperature down to 100 or 101 degrees, and had he kept up this simple treatment, as circumstances and good judgment would dictate, his patient would have been well in five or six days. But instead he let nature pound her way through under adverse circumstances, and perhaps checked her actions by injurious drugs, and under this slow process little pimples were formed, or as he called them papules, and many other long sounding names. He still seems to be in doubt whether he had a case of measles or smallpox, but the proper treatment would have demonstrated that there would have been no doubt but that it was a case of measles, but the health officer helps him out and makes the poor people believe that it was a case of smallpox, and the case must be taken to the pest house, and inquiries if vaccina- tion had been properly made and intimates that defective vaccination was the cause of the child taking the disease, and on the top of that statement he admits that there was no disease of that nature in the vicinity or that the child had been exposed. These two statements are absolutely contradictory to each other. It may also be true that this physician was either much excited or not up to date in medical nonsense, or he would certainly have traced out that the winds had been blowing from some direction in the world where smallpox existed and blew a few of the germs over into this neighborhood and down the throat of this innocent child. 218 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE In the application of this germ fraud in surgery there is a comic and serious side to it. It has been admitted time and again that the comic side is carried out to not only beguile the public by excit- ing their wonder and admiration, but most of all to pull the wool over the eyes of the general practitioner so that he will send his patients to the great city fraud who runs diploma mills or some hospital and who claims that it is absolutely dangerous even to death to perform an operation in the house, because the microbes cannot be destroyed, but in their hospitals in a dirty city the microbes can be kept at bay with antiseptic, and 98 per cent of doctors swal- low all this and the other two percent take in the shekels to the extent of two to five hundred dollars for the operations, of which nine out of ten are not even necessary, except for the money there is in it. If the country doctor would cultivate a little common sense he would cure his patients without an operation, and get a reason- able fee with deserved credit. To see the modern surgeon and his assistants is to see the most modern humbug and fraud in existence, many of them not satisfied by deceiving everybody else but actually deceiving themselves. They will lay antiseptic clothes all around a wound to prevent germs getting into the wound; some tie a rag around their head, some around their nose, to prevent germs getting into the open abdomen of a patient, but it seems that microbes are by instinct capable of following rules according to the buggy creed of the surgeon. What one says is absolutely necessary to keep away the microbes the other considers of no consequence. The observa- tion of these little maneuvers of different surgeons condemns the germ theorists as frauds. A short time ago we cut out of one of the daily newspapers an article headed "Shall Doctors Wear Whiskers," by Doctor Nic. Sen, the reputed surgeon. The article was accompanied with the doctor's photograph in great military pomp, stating that the beard was an unendurable abomination for a doctor, and requires his assist- ants to be cleanly shaved and believes we will all have to come to it. The only reason assigned was that they should not come in contact with or distribute disease germs. If this germ can come in contact with a beard and spread disease, why not in the eye brows, or the GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 219 hair on the head, or in the ear and nose, or on the clothes? Why not down the surgeon's throat and kill him? And such statements are spread through the world and people think them great men of science, but when these statements are put to practical tests or weighed in the light of reason and common sense, nothing is more absurd, and still nearly all teachers and practitioners are in the same pit, and if some one tries to show up the fallacy of their doctrine they all line in opposition, as long as they can see that the public can be deceived and will go on supporting those who dishonor them. This in a few words is about what our scientific absurdity men from both sides of the ocean have accomplished in all these years, and call it science. Is it any wonder that it is hard nowadays to find a man who has good thinking and reasoning faculties who has any confidence in medicine or the medical man ? But says it is all a hum- bug, and that if it were not for the credulous and superstitious, doc- tors would have to go begging or engage in some other business. Suppose one of these microscopists should plant a large instrument in midocean and survey its depths, and see all the animal life it contains and exclaim, "I have found the cause that produced the ocean." Or, if in examining a glass of water found 20 different kinds of germs, would say these germs produced the water; or again, should examine various kinds of soil that contained any amount of forms of animal life and should say these animals produced the earth; or if he examined healthy blood and found germs in it, which he undoubtedly would, and say the germs produced the blood, we would say this man is insane and ought to be taken care of ac- cordingly. Is this not exactly what we are made to believe? And all medical colleges teach that the animal life produced the conditions it is developed and sustained in, instead that this condition was fa- vorable to the development of the animal life it contains. When spring and summer comes all forms and kinds of animal life are developed in the atmosphere and on the earth. Would you say all these germs and animal life developed the conditions or that the conditions were favorable to their development? Some superstitious people think a doctor more than human, that he is a wonderful man; that he is inspired, so to speak, therefore he can go where he pleases, 220 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE do what he pleases, without danger of spreading disease; especially you see this promulgated by the fakes, traveling and patent medicine men, but any person of common sense knows better. It is like the statement in the Old Testament, when God should have given Moses a prescription for making hair oil to grease Aaron's head, and said if anyone should make the hair oil he should be killed, and also gave him a formula for making an ointment, and God said if any- one made ointment like that he should be killed; this beats our pat- ent medicine laws. Do any of you believe this ever occurred? So are our medical books and teachers disseminating among the students and the public false theories and doctrines that will not bear inspection by the light of reason, logic and common sense. Organization and disorganization of the external existing ele- ments is the paramount law by which everything in the universe, living or dead, is formed. This law is made possible, yes positive, in every instance, by the inherent power of combining by the law of affinity, attraction and repulsion of these elements; and the com- binations formed by this law is the cause of diphtheria, etc., and by this law is health maintained. Remember then that all changes in this universe, without exception, are caused through and by this law of organization and disorganization, that this law pervades the whole domain of nature and that these principles concern alike every department of science, yes, every department of human thought. It is upon this divinely created and eternal law, a law admitted and demonstrated by the scientific world, even admitted by the medical profession when faced with the fact. Every condition among the human race that is called disease is formed, and is the outgrowth of this same law and nothing else, and without the knowledge and consent of any nation of germs or microbes and without a microbe ratio of sixteen to one, or any other ratio. With these simple laws before us as already demonstrated in the chapters on the Cause and Prevention of Disease, with these deadly diseases before us as seen, it is as certain as the noonday sun that all can be accomplished that is desired, by simple living in accord with the teachings of these laws. We are certain that it is the only remedy, for following nature is the only remedy to succeed in pre- GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 221 venting this deadly enemy before us. In every other attempt or engagement we have met defeat. Let us go to work and train ourselves, each and every one of us, to do effective work. There being no cure for consumption only one opportunity remains for us- to arrange our forces most effectually to battle for its prevention, and prevented it can be, and if prevention can succeed there is no need of a cure. This hydraheaded monster exists on every hand. It is insidious and deadly in its very nature. If we wish to prevent consumption we must remove the cause and to remove the cause we must know the cause. If the cause is due to the lungs alone, or the lungs and body being too weak to withstand the attacks of external or atmospheric influences we must bring these lungs and body up to such a standard as to be able to resist these ordinary existing conditions, and this must be done by the proper exercise and culture of these lungs and body. This is the only method nature has; we must bend to her laws or suffer; without this nothing can be accomplished with this nearly all cases can be prevented, but the main way to be free from easily taking any disease is first to be born with a well-balanced hickory or steel constitution; in other words, we must study and learn to obey the sexual and marriage laws in order to be able to endow our children with this well-bal- anced make-up of the lungs and body must be averted and con- trolled in the rising generation by proper marriages, therefore let no one marry into a consumptive family if they wish healthy children, except under the conditions mentioned in our chapter on Prevention of Consumption, and unless this law is followed out we will always have more or less of consumption among our race, for people will not be likely to pay the attention needed to prevent it by the proper heeding of unfavorable surroundings, nor will all try to bring their lungs and body up to the normal standard by exercise and culture. If people will continue, as they have in the past, to devote their time to fretting and worrying that some of the germs will get them into their clutches and devour their lungs, just so long will they neglect to give the proper exercise to their lungs by proper breathing and the proper kind of air; there is nothing that keeps a person from exercising their lungs more than a very active brain. 222 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Watch yourself and see how true it is. A melancholia, downhear; * mood is even worse. We repeat that you should always take a full breath when thinking, or at any sedentary work, and see how much longer you can work without getting tired and feel the better, the brain clearer and every cell of the body be the better by being thor- oughly charged with this element oxygen that gives action and life to the body and brain. Whenever you begin to worry about the fool- ish notion that germs cause disease read the following story: A GERM STORY. Here is a story on the germ-one that is too good to be lost. I presume that its author is a strong believer in spontaneous genera- tion. "Speaking of germs," said the man with the sallow face and the listless eyes, "I am a doctor, and I have a strange experience to relate. Do you see this scar upon my neck? Well, that was made by a germ. Yes, you may stare-a germ. It was a case of abnor- mal growth; a freak of nature, such as manifests itself in giants among men. About a year ago I was making experiments with the germs of bacilli of diphtheria. You have perhaps heard that these germs are developed in gelatin; they eat it, and can be seen to grow under the microscope. Well, the account I have to give you is of the astonishing growth of one of these germs. I noticed under the glass that he fattened more rapidly than his brethren; in fact, it may be said that I was surprised that in the course of an hour he had attained the size of a large house fly. My interest was immediately aroused. I saw that here was a valuable fact for science. As soon as I could I produced some more gelatin and fed it to the germ. In the course of a week he had attained the size of a spaniel and frisked about my laboratory. I did not wish to consult with any of my medical friends until I had tested to the fullest just how far the germ would grow. I fed him myself, and he soon grew to know me and would lie down at my feet while I ate dinner. He had a head like a ferret, sharp claws and reddish hair. My wife, like a woman, was very much opposed to the germ. She said that he ate up a quart of gelatin every day, and was too expensive to keep. One day at dinner she said: 'Willie, you will have to get rid of that GERMS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 223 red haired germ; he tried to bite one of the children to-day.' We used to call him Dippy. I took Dippy to an empty room on the third floor and chained him there. He increased in size every day, and was soon as large as a calf. His consumption of gelatin was something enormous. One night I came home tired and forgot to feed Dippy. My wife and I were awakened by hearing him in the room up stairs shaking his chain, moaning and making the coughing noise peculiar to diphtheria patients. My wife wanted to feed him, but I had no^gelatin in the house. 'I can't stand this any longer,' said my wife, 'that germ will never go to sleep, and he keeps us awake.' I got up determined to give the germ some bromide so that he would forget his hunger. I went into the dark room, and was about to strike a match when suddenly, inflamed by the rage of hunger, Dippy broke his chain, rushed at me and clutched me about the neck. I was choking to death, when I happened to think of my hypodermic syringe full of antitoxin in my pocket. I man- aged to get this out and injected the contents into the germ's palpi- tating body. Its hold relaxed immediately and Dippy was dead." The crowd gaped! The sallow faced man drifted after leaving his card inscribed: J. Q. Brown. VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS. Truth is eternal. It can never die. Nature and all of her laws are an eternal truth. Truth is often buried by brutish ignorance. It is kept in the background by the fraud and by the polished and educated villain who has the blood of the snake, the heart of a beast, whose crime is the crime of greed, the lust of gain. Vaccination as a preventive of smallpox then is a truth, and a truth which can never die, or it is the*prince of frauds. The strong claims upon which our vaccination frauds base the value of vacci- nation is, first that smallpox has decreased; second, they try to prove this by statistics; third, it has stood the test of one hundred years. Galen's practice of medicine stood unimpeached for thirteen hundred years; and the murdering by bleeding and blistering stood unim- peached for nearly two hundred years, and both at the present time are a thing of the past. The anti-vaccinationists claim, first: That vaccination does not protect from smallpox; second, that the introduction of this vaccine virus poisons the system, so as to make it an easier prey to small- pox, besides predisposing the system to other and more dangerous diseases; third, that it is unnatural and contrary to any law of nature for preventing disease. To meet the charge that vaccination does protect from smallpox our vaccination friends have never offered any evidences except that which can be shown by statistics; and anyone knows that you can take any side of a question in regard to disease, and prove by statistics that you are right or wrong. And to show the weakness, not only that, but the absolute dishonesty on the part of those who push the vaccination theory, it can be proven that in nearly every instance of reported statistics they have falsified, perhaps sometimes unintentionally, but to my certain knowledge they have purposely de- ceived the public by giving statistics which were either absolutely false or at least misleading. If there were no other evidence against 224 VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 225 vaccination except these false representations to an innocent public, this alone, to any thinking mind, would be enough to condemn it. The strongest argument, and the one that has been used with such strong effect to make an impression upon a credulous public during the past year is that during the great epidemic of smallpox that existed in Germany during the years of 1870 and 1871 carry- ing off 143,000 victims in a population of 50,000,000, that after this epidemic they claim that Germany passed a law for compulsory vac- cination, and since that time the average yearly loss from this disease has been only 116. Their further claim is that similar figures are afforded by every civilized country, and that the lesson they teach is re-inforced by the disastrous experience of many careless communi- ties which have temporarily neglected to perform systematic vaccina- tion among the people. (This last statement can be shown as abso- lutely false.) Again is quoted what they call the sorrowful experi- ence of an epidemic of smallpox in the city of Montreal in 1885, and the English city of Gloucester from its outbreak of smallpox in 1896. The epidemic in Montreal ceased only after strict attention to cleanliness and eradicating the cess pits which reaked with rot- tenness and unmentionable filth, while at Gloucester the conditions were even worse than at Montreal. The reports before me state that in 1893 the epidemic began with three victims who were vacci- nated. In 1894 it started with seven cases all of which had been vaccinated, and in 1896, the year of the epidemic, the disease com- menced among the vaccinated portion of the population and ran from May until September before they found a single unvaccinated per- son who took the smallpox. If statistics are of any value, why are these not the strongest kind of evidence to condemn this scien- tific monstrosity and murderous fad, which is kept up just for the sake of not being manly enough to own up truthfully to what they know is wrong, and is kept in force by the health officers and lead- ers in the profession for the sake of the money there is in it. Another illustration that is used so strongly in favor of vaccina- tion is the report of an epidemic that prevailed in Boston in 1721, compared with another epidemic in the same city in 1872, there being a space of over 150 years between these two, the first existing be- 226 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE fore vaccination was known, and the other after vaccination had been tested for over fifty years. In 1721 the population of Boston was 11,000, and in the same year there were 5,759 cases of smallpox in Boston. Remember that this was over one-half of the entire population of the city, and of this number 844 died, making the death rate a little less than seven per cent. A hundred and fifty years later the same city had a popu- lation of 265,000, and this same writer says; "That during the thir- teen months from Jan. 1, 1872, to Feb. 1, 1873 there were 3,872 cases, and the number of deaths were 1,045," making a death rate of over 33 per cent. Again he says: "A very peculiar condition of things existed, the causes of which he had not space to explain," and we should think he was mighty glad not to explain. To use the above statistics as one of their strong arguments in favor of vaccination, that in 1721 with over one-half of the popula- tion of the city down with smallpox, with no vaccination and no isolation, less than seven per cent died, while in 1872 with only a little over 3,000 cases in a population of 265,000, with a death rate of over thirty-three per cent. These figures would show, if statis- tics prove anything, that the latter epidemic was a much milder one, but with a death rate nearly five times as great. We would like to ask who killed the other twenty-seven percent. At Attleborough, Mass., in 1836, smallpox was inoculated on a cow's udder and the product used to vaccinate about fifty persons, the result being an epidemic of smallpox among these vaccinated per- sons, which caused a panic and a suspension of business. Further, our vaccination friends claim what was true in Boston in 1872 and 1873 was also true m every large town and city in Europe and Amer- ica during the dread epidemic; and that but the grossest of ignor- ance would sneer at these assertions, for a very superficial study of the history of smallpox* before the eighteenth century will afford the official narrative of smallpox epidemics, and that they were more destructive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than they were since vaccination was established. Another proof used to show that vaccination is beneficial is that in some of the barbarous and unvac- cinated populations they have epidemics of smallpox. We admit these VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 227 statements to be true; but by no means are these statements to be considered any evidence in favor of vaccination, for ten times as many places can be shown where smallpox has never existed in an un- vaccinated population. It is with vaccination as it is with the treatment of nearly all other diseases, i. e. if a person has some disease and for this disease has taken a certain treatment and gets well he usually praises the physician who so miraculously saved his life when the fact usually is that this same person would have recovered in one-half the time without any treatment. So it is with the vaccination; if some vac- cinated person -escapes smallpox they will claim that it is due to his having been vaccinated. If an unvaccinated person takes smallpox it was due to his not being vaccinated. This kind of reasoning is not only applied to smallpox but is applied to nearly all classes of diseases. As our vaccination friends rely entirely upon statistics let us for a few moments meet them on their own ground where compulsory vac- cination was enforced forty or fifty years ago. These are the coun- tries of England and Germany. The first compulsory laws in Eng- land were passed in 1853, and in Germany compulsory vaccination has existed since 1839. So strongly was compulsory vaccination enforced in England that from 1879 to 1889 the courts record that 23,572 prosecutions were made under those laws. Although a strong opposition existed against this manufactured crime, in many of the large cities prosecution was abandoned. But as one place became free others were found in the throes of struggle, so that the prosecutions, instead of decreasing, ran up to a total of 2,809 during the year 1888, the highest number for any year since the law was passed. Alfred Milnes, M. A., in a paper published in the Arena in 1895, shows clearly that no law was ever passed in the last two hundred years that was so damaging to the health of a nation as those recorded court records and other judicial statistics from all parts of England. He says, "That here be it noted that in all the years of its exist- ence, and among the thousands of its victims, this particular crimi- nal law has never caught a drunkard yet. Sunday-school organizers, 228 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE friendly-society members, building-society purchasers, their neat, trim, tidy homes, with book case and harmonium, bear witness to their thrift, their well-shod, well-groomed, well-taught children are a liv- ing testimony to their love; their lives without are circled with re- spect, and within are hallowed with affection. Such a man as C. W. Nye, of Chatham, who under the law of 1867 spent nine and one-half months in Rochester jail. A watchmaker, with hands made delicate by his trade, he was there set to wheeling stones for the prison repairs till, in his own words, 'The handles of every barrow that I wheeled were stained with my blood.' Such another man was William Ball, of Leicester, arrested by the police while his four children were kneeling around him at their evening prayers. No land, not even such a law-abiding land as ours, can afford to secure the bodies of such men for their country's law. Under no circum- stances could we afford it; least of all when, as I shall try to show is here the case, the wrong is wrought in support of the false. "This, then, is what I have to show-the truth of two perfectly independent propositions: that vaccination is an error, and that its compulsion is a wrong. Independent in this sense, that whether I succeed or fail in convincing my readers of the truth of the first, I have still an equal and unimpaired right to be heard upon the second. Of many things held excellent in themselves civilization has abandoned the legal compulsion; and the burden of proof lies ever on those who deny that the respect which all profess to pay to the theo- logical conscience should be shown also to the scientific conscience. For this is just the main motif of our indictment of the vaccination law-that we refuse to bow before the spirit of persecution when no better reason is vouchsafed us than that that spirit, changing its lan- guage but not its speech, has found new names for its ministers, who now threaten liberty with pestilence in the identical tones wherein freedom was once menaced with perdition. "I submit, then, that vaccination is an error, and in support of that thesis I now endeavor to show that the claims put forward on its behalf are false. To consider them all is impossible; a year's entire issue of the Arena would ill suffice for such a task. But some few of them I will take as examples of all, and will state and meet them in such broad outline as the available space will permit. VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 229 " 'Claim I.-Protection. If you are vaccinated, you will not take smallpox at all. This was the original claim. Listen to the words of Edward Jenner himself, as written on page 7 of his original 'Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolea Vaccinae.' "What renders the cowpox virus so extremely singular is, that the person who has been thus affected is forever after secure from the infection of the smallpox; neither the exposure to the variolous effluvia, nor the insertion of the matter into the skin, producing this distemper." "Nor was this the mere dream of an over-sanguine and enthu- siastic inventor. In 1857, Mr., now Sir John, Simon, for so long the high priest of the vaccine cult in England, wrote, on page 14 of his 'Papers Relating to the History and Practice of Vaccination,' and in 1871 repeated in the appendix to the Report of the Select Com- mittee on Vaccination, page 351, these words: " 'On the conclusion of this artificial disorder, neither renewed vaccination nor inoculation with smallpox, nor the closest contact nor cohabitation with smallpox patients, will cause him to betray any remnant of susceptibility to infection.' "Moreover, our vaccine teachers have cut themselves adrift from the saving grace of a judicious hedge by the declaration of the Lancet of Feb. 2, 1888: " 'Smallpox is a disease from which anyone may be absolutely protected by vaccination and revaccination, so that to have it is almost a crime.' "There can be no doubt about the manner of the plea by which our vaccination laws were passed and maintained. 'Absolutely pro- tected.' Nothing can be clearer than the statement unless, indeed, it be its refutation by the facts. For when we come to test the extent to which so uncompromising a promise has been redeemed, we are at once confronted by a long and dreary history of failure. The first law was passed in 1853. Since that date we have had three leading epidemics of smallpox in the country. The first 1857-9, killed 14,244 of the people of England and Wales; the second, 1863-5, killed 20,059; and the third, in 1870-2, destroyed 44,840. Between the first and second epidemic the increase of the population was seven per cent, and that of the epidemic was 40.8 per cent. From the second to the third the population increase was nine per cent, and 230 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the epidemic increase was 123 per cent. And when smallpox again broke out in London in 1881, coming upon a city 90 per cent of whose inhabitants were at the time officially claimed as vaccinated, it was confessed that of the 491 patients admitted into the Highgate Hospital, the principal of the hospitals then receiving smallpox pa- tients, no less than 470, or 96 per cent, had been vaccinated. So that comparing the proportion of vaccinated patients to total patients inside the hospital with that of vaccinated population to total popu- lation outside the hospital, we find vaccination left six per cent to the bad. "But strong as this direct evidence is, the question of revacci- nation is yet better approached indirectly. Its advocates propose the universal imitation of the Prussian law enforcing revaccination at the age of twelve. But in the great pandemic of 1871-2 smallpox attacked, in Berlin alone, 2,240 vaccinated children under ten years of age, and of those 736 died. How could revaccination at the age of twelve years have saved them? And if primary vaccination will not protect a child of ten years, how can a second vaccination at twelve years render an adult safe for life? The claim of real pro- tection is thus smashed, destroyed, and pulverized by the resistless logic of facts." The following few pages are taken from a paper read by the author before a medical convention in 1897. Immediate adjournment of the meeting was carried to prevent its discussion. But my oppo- nents said they would tear my arguments all to pieces at the next session, which was to be held the next forenoon, but instead the mid- night trains found these windy mouthpieces on their way home, the most of them being teachers in a medical college. A theory is a scheme of things which terminates in speculation, and the more perfectly the theory harmonizes with the facts it is designed to explain, the more nearly it is demonstrated, so far as any inductive conclusions can be demonstrated; but if the theory does not accord with the facts, it is sometimes mighty hard on the facts, and in medicine it is often the hardest on the patient, or even a community, and possibly a whole nation may suffer even large loss of life. VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 231 It is also against the many false theories which are based on the misapprehension of their true significance that error of the most dangerous character creeps in under the cover of ambiguous phrase- ology, and the poison of false doctrine is unconsciously imbibed even by the most cautious, so that it behooves us to be constantly on our guard. Therefore it requires an intrepid investigator, strong in his sense of right, and certain in his interpretations of the teachings of experiments, to assert his intellectual freedom and to cope .with those who imagine they could not err, and that the theories they universally quote in medicine to be accounted as so many canons of truth. The fundamental principle of medicine should be to support and assist nature, for it is nature that cures. Then the legitimate pur- pose of medicine or any remedial treatment is to prompt and assist the natural energy to remove the noxious qualities encroaching on the vital reserve and to recuperate the enfeebled organism. To assist nature by selecting from any successful means which will arrest or control any diseased conditions of the human body is, then, the motto of the true physician. But to accomplish this we must understand the laws that govern this natural body in health and disease; this means universal nature, because man and all nature can not separate, one is absolutely depend- ent on the other (here all schools are lame), and any theory carried out for the treatment or the prevention of disease, that does not accord with these facts, must be injurious and dangerous to human- ity. Most of these spoliative theories of bygone generations are entirely supplanted and gone glimmering, and happily so; except the theory of vaccination; and in the last few years our medical brethren have brought forward the germ theory and have promul- gated it with so much zeal that most people as well as physicians accepted the notion that nearly every disease is caused by germs, and the ardor with which these theorists have forced everything to corroborate a pet theory has made them one-sided and circumscribed in their views, that it is inevitable they are suffering from intellectual myopia. Before giving the proof for my strong assertions against these, 232 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the most popular and fashionable theories in medicine before the world today, I may be here permitted to remind you that it is of prime importance to weigh fairly the arguments and objections to vaccina- tion as a preventive, and germs as a cause of disease, and to divest yourself of all bias that may proceed from prejudice of early educa- tion; to consider the question'on its merits and not let one's mind be swayed by preconceived or, it may be, erroneous, notions; let the value of the evidence adduced be estimated by the rules of logic and in the light of reason. My reasons as to why vaccination is wrong are, because it is unscientific, is dangerous, is a crime against humanity, because there is not a single evidence in existence that is even plausible, either by experience, observation or statistics, that it ever prevented a case of smallpox. But the main reasons are because it is contrary to natural law. But nothing is easier to prove than that vaccination has done more harm and caused more suffering than the bleeding and blistering in old allopathic times, and which still lives to a good old age and is very popular. I recognize the necessity of having all possible light on a question of such widespread interest; of seeking by all possible means to attain the truth respecting a subject which has been prolific of so much error and has proved such an agency for evil, and then "hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will." The whole world's history has demonstrated conclusively that by theory you can prove anything. By theory they proved that the world was flat and that the sky was the canopy of heaven. But all of this has vanished among the thinkers, and instead of everything being chaos everything is governed by an absolute law. But when we tackle our vaccination friends to define some law by which vaccination, or the injection of poison into the system, can protect or prevent disease, they simply blush, curdle up their eye- brows and refer you to some educated fraud in Europe who says that it does protect. Everybody knows not only that, but everybody is afraid that when they have a wound or abscess, no matter how slight the pus or matter may be, they know that if the very slightest amount of this pus or matter should be absorbed into the system that blood poison would be the result. If pus from your own body will VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 233 produce blood poisoning and even death; or if pus absorbed into your system from the wound of some other person will produce the same blood poisoning; or if pus from the wound of a dog or any animal will produce the same blood poisoning if absorbed into the system by man (these being facts that have been demonstrated over and over again, thousands upon thousands of times, not only that, but these processes are defined by absolute natural laws) ; or if pus from a dog, cat, horse or sheep will produce blood poisoning and death, even if injected into the system under all the new-fangled processes of anti- septics and cleanliness, why in the world should not pus taken from a heifer under all these same processes of so-called antiseptics and cleanliness, if injected into the system under the name of vaccine virus instead of pus, produce blood poisoning? Why should changing the name of pus to virus change any of its damnable and murderous effects upon the system, the same as if you call it pus or matter, any more than it would change the character of Judas by changing his name to St. Peter, or by changing the name of Johnny to Mary Ann would change his sex? Changing the name of a physical property, whether it be living or dead, whether it be sweet or putrid, does not change the law of the action of any kind of matter that is governed by the laws of nature, and all existing matter is governed by these laws. Again let us ask our vaccination friends what they do when they vaccinate a person. Do you not inoculate him with poison of which its constituents are nothing practically but pus? That it is animal matter in a state of disorganization or decomposition, the effect of such matter upon the animal economy is the first and most essential consideration. Yes, vaccine virus is about ninety per cent of pus; analyze it chemically or examine it under the microscope and con- vince yourself. Is not this pure virus with which you vaccinate mat- ter taken from a sore? This being true, is not pure virus a pure lie? Would not this sore that is produced upon the heifer's body if left to its natural course become putrid; not only that, but become pus and matter the same as any other decomposing tissue upon the living body? Then does not this sore from which this pure virus is taken contain elements of pus? Then is not pus putrid matter? Is it not 234 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE dead animal matter ? Then would not this lymph, or vaccine virus, or pure virus, become pus? In other words, it is matter on the road to become pus or putrid. It is in a state of disorganization and as such must keep up this change until it has changed back to its primitive elements and been taken up by some form of life before it is fit food for man. Now you allow this murderous crime committed upon your child under the name of pure virus, which is a pure lie; but you would shoot this same doctor if he told you he was going to put this same stuff into your system and he should call it by its right name-pus, or putrid matter. Stop and think a moment if you do not consider that there is but very little difference in the judgment of yourself, who is being humbugged, and not only that, but may be constitutionally ruined, and the man who has committed this humbug or crime upon your body for the sake of the filthy lucre there is in it. Does not ignorance have the same effect in all laws of nature as it does where it was wilfully committed. Would you allow the poison of typhoid fever injected into your body to prevent typhoid fever? Would you allow the poison of diphtheria to be injected into the body of your child to prevent diphtheria? Would you allow the poison of any dis- ease to be injected into your body to prevent the disease? Then why do you allow a man to inject smallpox poison into your system to prevent smallpox? Because the strongest vaccinationists, the strong- est supporters of this damnable doctrine, admit that vaccination is smallpox in a mild form, and they do not dispute that it will produce smallpox in its most virulent form. (The author himself has wit- nessed this in a number of instances.) It seems to me if we stopped right here that no more would be needed to condemn it forever, because what we have stated no one dare deny that it can not be demonstrated to be the truth and nothing but the truth, for nature never lies. What she demonstrates today she has demonstrated for thousands upon thousands of years in the past and will do so in the future. Medical science today as well as it has been in the past is like pure virus, i. e., a pure lie. Vaccination was built up from assumption. The practice of medi- cine is built up from assumption; in fact it is nothing but a jungle VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 235 of fanciful assumptions. Every doctor has his own assumptions. No two doctors will agree in court or out of court-each one stands upon his own bag of wind, assumption. But nature never lies and it is nature and her laws that medical men have to deal with. Could there possibly be any better evidence that the medical profession are either a set of ignoramuses or willful murderers? In other parts we have plainly shown that both exist. We find that the effect of this vaccination poison acts differently upon different people. In some it will not act at all, and it depends somewhat, if not entirely, upon the resistance that the body has to this poison. By resistance is meant antagonism-just as the woods- man resists the cold by the warmth thrown out by the skin while exercising his body, and just the same as a solid oak will resist a lighted match, but if the match is touched to the shavings made from this oak the shavings will not resist the lighted match. So it is with the people being vaccinated. The majority have resistance enough to prevent any absorption of the poison into the system but only have a local sore upon the arm; and this is what they call preventing a loathsome disease like smallpox. While those who are in delicate health, or have a delicate constitution, usually do not resist this poison absorbing from the wound upon the arm into the system and pro- ducing what would be called by our medical writers under other cir- cumstances (by a long list of different diseases, such as blood poison- ing, malarial symptoms, chickenpox and erysipelas) a blood poisoned arm that often has to be amputated; and last of all it will produce smallpox itself. All of these different kinds of diseases were pro- duced by the same identical poison, and if there were no other proofs this alone would go a long way to prove what we have so strongly impressed upon the mind of the reader-that the cause of nearly all of these blood diseases are identical, except as they act upon different conditions and under different circumstances. These facts are in accordance with all of the laws of nature and all of the laws of cause and effect. But when an epidemic of smallpox exists the position of the believing public is not difficult to under- stand. During an epidemic they are as if hypnotized by what may be aptly termed the confused movement of the mind, and are, so far 236 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE as they have ability to think and judge, in a state of chronic cata- lepsy. They mistake the loud assertions of the doctor and the health officer for proof, accept theories for science and regard a nice and smooth conglomeration of words, which really explain nothing, as so much veritable knowledge. It is as certain as that the sun shines that we must discard vaccination. It is practically the only theory of the old allopathic murderers by which we mean to cure one disease by producing another that has not been discarded. Now why is this? The key note to it all is this: It is so simple and attractive and so lucrative, because most people believe in it as they believe in the gospel. Therefore, the profession will never drop it until public sentiment makes them drop it, as public sentiment made them drop the lance within the last century, which has been killing about three- quarters of the people that died. In the practice of medicine, as in all other professions that men follow as a livelihood, it is hard to convince a man that his course is wrong while it continues profitable, but if he once sees that he is losing money by his wickedness he will wash his hands and go to the mourners' bench. I have known physicians who were publicly enthu- siasts on vaccination, but when giving their opinions privately would say: "I believe vaccination is a humbug, but I can make two, three or five hundred dollars, and if I don't take it somebody else will; and if anything goes wrong it is easily covered up." In a neighboring city a young man had to allow himself to be vaccinated or lose his position, and he soon developed a severe case of smallpox, but finally recovered and carries a well pocked face for it. While practicing in the city of Milwaukee I attended a girl nine years old who was vaccinated, and from that time her health gradu- ally failed, with all the characteristic symptoms of blood poisoning for several months, from which she died, a scab larger than a silver dollar being on her arms at the time of her death. I made out the death certificate, blood poisoning from vaccination, not thinking that I had stepped on some one's toes. But it seems that the girl was vaccinated by the health officer, who then changed my death certificate to diphtheria without my knowledge or consent. The newspapers aired VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 237 my case freely, the officers getting the worst of it. They finally made a bluff at me to call at the district attorney's office and show cause why I should not be arrested for not reporting the case diphtheria; I think a more humiliated man never left the court room than the health officer. "When are people going to rebel against such scientific murder, or when will the profession be honest enough to confess this wrong that has existed almost a century and sacrifice their pecuniary interest and forever rid the world of this damnable monster, Vaccination?" The medical fraternity has always been shrewd enough, like the Boers in South Africa, to remain in their trenches. They were never willing to come out in the open field and discuss the right or wrong of vaccination. But whenever forced into court or otherwise in indi- vidual cases they have always been beaten at every point, and never had they anything to fall back on except statistics, and these statis- tics have been found in nearly all instances to be false. While all statistics in every country in Europe have been carefully kept by those who were not physicians, but simply for the investigations of the truth regarding the value of vaccination, in every single instance do they demonstrate that vaccination has been one of the greatest curses for the injury of humanity that has ever been invented in the skull of any human being. To show how statistics, especially in this country, are falsified and published we here give a case in point: Dr. Gunn, of New York city, says, "In 1875 I personally investigated over seventy cases in this city who had been reported by the Board of Health unvaccinated and found that sixty-four of the number had been vaccinated and many of them revaccinated." On May 27, 1894, he published the following challenge, which has never been accepted, and never will be, for obvious reasons: "I challenge the health officials of New York and Brooklyn to publish a full list of smallpox cases that have been reported during the past eight months, with addresses, and I will undertake to prove that 98 per cent of them have been vaccinated." To accept this challenge would give the whole scheme away, and the thousands of dollars collected annually by these doctors in vac- cination fees will never be voluntarily relinquished by the health authorities. 238 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Investigations of the same character as Dr. Gunn's have been made a number of times at various places, and in every case it has been shown that vaccination had been "preserved from reproach" by keeping in their trenches and letting antagonism die out. But vac- cination is either right or wrong, regardless of any and all statistics. There is but one method of preventing smallpox, and all other zymotic diseases, and that is by sanitation. A perfectly healthy body will resist any and all diseases, of whatever character, under ordinary circumstances; and it is only by sanitation that this can be obtained. No profession has ever reformed itself, and the medical profession is no exception to the general rule. The doctors must be taught by the common people regarding proper sanitation, as they were taught in regard to blood-letting and other medical follies of the past. In the year 1853 one of the most despotic laws ever enacted by any government was issued from the British parliament. This law required all of the inhabitants of Britain to undergo the barbarous and disgusting operation of vaccination-to suffer their blood to be contaminated by the festering virus of a diseased animal or go to prison! This monstrous law, which in effect tears to tatters the Great Charter of Englishmen's liberties, has been imitated in free America, in contravention of every citizen's inalienable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." A free man may well be indig- nant when he reflects that he is at any moment liable to arrest, and to be constrained to submit to the indignity of vaccination, and to introduce into his system a foreign, perhaps a syphilitic, virus. The existence of such laws, and the fact that their enforcement is per- mitted by public opinion, show what absurd delusions an intelligent people may be subject to. In 1870 vaccination was enforced with unexemplified strictness in Paris, and though the lymph employed was almost exclusively taken from heifers, nevertheless a very violent epidemic of smallpox raged during that winter. In four months, October, November, December and January, 6,423 persons died of the malady; and in the fifteen months intervening between January 1, 1870, and March 31, 1871, the total number of deaths were 13,035. The total death rate from smallpox in modern times is about the VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 239 same as in the previous century, excepting many instances where the death rate was more than double on account of bad treatment. And you must bear in mind that the division of mild and severe smallpox in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the same as now, and the vaccinated are at present as liable to the severe forms and in the same proportion as the unvaccinated. Notwithstanding that Prussia was the best revaccinated country in Europe its mortality in 1871 was higher than any other northern state, the total number of deaths being 69,839. Recorded history also shows that in 1870 and in 1871 in some places of Europe, where revaccination was followed out with- out exception, the death rate was .five times as large as where vaccina- tion was not obligatory. We have statistics of smallpox hospitals which relate to the poorer class and probably do full justice to the fact of non-vaccination, inas- much as the vaccinated residue is to be found in those slums and tenements of the poor where smallpox (now as always) is apt to linger. In one of the eastern hospitals (Homerton) in 1871 to the end of 1878 there were 6,533 admissions for smallpox, of which 4,283 had vaccination marks, 793 had no marks although vaccinated, and 1,477 unvaccinated. In Liverpool, Glasgow and Dublin in the same period it was .025 per cent, and for some of the German states it came out much less than the .025 per cent. In 1871, out of 30,742 cases, 29,429 were vaccinated persons. In two London hospitals where 67,249 patients were admitted 51,732 were vaccinated. It is often alleged by our vaccination brethren, when confronted with these facts, that the unvaccinated are so much inflammable material in the midst of the community, and that smallpox begins among the unvaccinated and spreads to the vaccinated. The records of Cologne of 1870 show that the first unvaccinated person taken with the smallpox was the 174th case; in Liegnitz the 225th; and in Bonn the 42d case. Nearly all records show that smallpox begins with the vaccinated. Another argument often used in its favor is that the disease has 240 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE decreased; certainly no weaker one could be advanced. Why did the plague of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gradually leave Europe, then Egypt, even Arabia, and finally retreat to a few poor villages on the Perso-Armenian frontier? Because conditions have changed, and they are what produce all diseases. Then study these chapters that explain in plain language what conditions give health and what conditions produce disease. Typhus fever was a standing disease so long as Europe was the theater of protracted wars and all of their consequences, but like all infectious diseases it gradually declined and practically disappeared since the conditions on which it is dependent ceased. In all epidemics it has made its habitation among the crowded poor. It has had its victims among the upper class, just as cholera has had, but less now since their attention to modern cleanliness and fresh air. Many deaths which are alleged to be caused by erysipelas are really caused by vaccination; the death certificate is made out, stating that death was due to erysipelas only, when the real cause was vaccination, and the wide-spread belief that much of the eczema of childhood dates from vaccination is not by any means to be dismissed as mere fancy. History also shows an almost overwhelming evidence that many outbreaks of syphilis are due to vaccination. In view of the faith in authorities in the practice of vaccination in spite of experience, reason and common sense, an array of authori- ties can be furnished against vaccination who base their opinions upon extended practical experience. i. Dr. Epps, for twenty-five years director of the Jenner Insti- tute at London, has vaccinated 125,000 persons and opposes vaccina- tion in every form. He declares that virus is neither an antidote nor a mitigant of smallpox, but on the contrary a means to weaken a healthy constitution, and that nobody has a right to introduce such treacherous poison as virus into the system of a child. 2. Dr. Mueller, of Berlin, the great friend and supporter of vac- cination, had to confess that during the epidemic in Berlin in 1871 out of 1,191 vaccinated children 484 died of the disease. 3. Dr. J. Morrison, of London, in an official opinion addressed VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 241 to Lord Derby wrote, "If vaccination is correct we must abandon all doctrines of hygiene as unfounded." 4. Dr. Kussmaul, professor of the University of Strassburg, says, "As yet science can not explain how vaccination protects." 5. The medical faculty of the University of Charkow, Russia, says: "It is exceedingly difficult to bring the theory of vaccination in harmony with the principles of modern science; and that vaccination is not free from the charge of having an injurious effect upon the system, sometimes causing acute and even fatal diseases." Sheffield, the best vaccinated town in England, had 7,001 cases in its last smallpox siege; Birmingham had 3,127 cases. I do not find the number of cases in Bradford, but it is third on the list of deaths, with 149 to its credit. Leicester had 362 cases, and Keighly has not had a single case of smallpox in six years. Of the twenty-two English towns showing the most smallpox but three show a large vaccination default, and neither of them stands first in the line. Dr. Hill, of Birmingham, in his 1894 report sorrowfully owns up to the greatest smallpox death rate in England and Wales. Generally the best vaccinated towns have the most smallpox. It is the same in our country. Chicago two years ago did more vac- cinating than any other city, and had the greatest epidemic in the United States. Several other cities did much vaccinating and had serious epidemics, while Rochester, Indianapolis and a few others did but little vaccinating and had but little smallpox. Dunglinson's Med- ical Dictionary says, "Smallpox occurs at times as an epidemic after vaccination," and I think the above proves it. It is a common occurrence for smallpox epidemics to commence with vaccinated persons. Chicago's epidemic showed the first seven cases vaccinated. Dr. Thomas Skinner, of Liverpool, says, "There are many who die of vaccination, and scrofulous and other forms of disease are rendered active by vaccination." Gould's Medical Dictionary tells us that vaccination may be fol- lowed by a rash which is sometimes syphilitic. William Tebb gave evidence before the Royal Vaccination Com- THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 242 mission of over 800 deaths and 6,000 cases of injury from vaccina- tion. Dr. Creighton, of Cambridge University, gives the history of twelve cases of bovine tuberculosis (consumption) caused by vac- cination. Vaccination deaths are reported officially in England at the rate of one per week, and from septre (blood poisoning) disease over 700 per year. The New Yark Mercury, May, 1894, says: "Benjamin Tuite, offi- cial fumigator of the N. Y. B. of H., was taken down with smallpox after being employed eighteen months and vaccinated frequently." Dr. Henry May, of Ashton (near Birmingham) in 1874 stated that "a death from vaccination occurred not long ago in my practice, and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet, in my desire to pre- serve vaccination from reproach, I omitted all mention of it from my certificate of death." And the recent Leed's case fully shows that the Local Government Board will not hesitate to slander parents to render the happiness of man and wife by causing them to distrust each other's fidelity, rather than that vaccination should fall under reproach. The late Sir Thomas Watson believed that medical men generally attri- buted death from modifications of smallpox among the vaccinated to chickenpox, rather than discourage vaccination. The Registrar- General in his report, 1889, states that "most of the deaths returned as chickenpox are undoubtedly modified smallpox." Now if those were added to the deaths from smallpox the mortality from smallpox would be more than trebled. By Professor Ricord, M.D., Paris: "At first I repelled the idea that syphilis could be transmitted by vaccination. The recurrence of facts appearing more and more confirmatory, I accepted the possibility but still with reserve and even with repugnance; but today I hesitate no longer to proclaim their reality." Now, this commission, composed of thorough believers in vaccina- tion (none others were allowed), all save two, also firm believers in compulsion, and after a declaration by the government that if there had been any doubt as to the benefits of vaccination the commission would not have been appointed, have practically thrown the whole VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 243 case for vaccination overboard, the minority report having its total abandonment. If men thoroughly imbued with the vaccine doctrine (the English Commission), after an investigation covering almost eight years and reviewing evidence from all parts of the world, can only think and prove partial protection, surely there is but little more to be said. It is well they failed to say how long the ''limited" protection lasts, for the reports of every epidemic would disprove any statements they might offer on this very important point. There is not a doctor in any country who guarantees protection for any length of time, how- ever short. When official witnesses before this commission were asked "What is vaccination?" they didn't know. The commission were told, one witness after another having declared he did not know, that when Dr. Buchanan, of the Local Government Board, came he would tell them. But he didn't come. Like several others who were badly wanted, his health failed him. He got worse and worse and at last he died. As he was the only man in the whole world who ever pro- fessed to know what vaccination is, the secret was carried with him to his grave. He did not explain it and there was no one else who could. Nor did this commission attempt to prove a scientific basis for vaccination or give its pathological basis. Vaccination has resolved itself into a question for every man who can count. It can only be dealt with in figures. The testimony of experts is received, but it is for the jury to determine the truth of the testimony. It was upon the testimony of experts that witches were burned upon Salem Common, and today it is upon the testimony of experts that school children are burned alive with vaccinal-erysipelas. Always remember that vaccination was founded upon a lie (the absolute protection of the vaccinated); that it failed to keep its prom- ise, and that it has been wholly sustained ever since by lies invented one after another to keep it from falling of its own weight. Vaccination is the compulsory contamination of the blood of your pure, clean and healthy children with the animal poison from the diseased beast, on pain of expulsion from the public schools you have 244 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE erected and paid so much money to maintain. Your children are compelled by an infamous rule to be subject to the ghastly risk of having their untainted blood poisoned with consumption, cancer, blood poison and filthy, disgusting skin diseases to curse their whole exist- ence. This famous rule instigated by the Board of Health did not dare to attack the adult population, but like cowards it attacks the most helpless and defenceless-the little children attending the public schools. What is vaccine virus? Webster defines virus as "contagious matter of an ulcer; poison." Poison is the antithesis of life, and anything that tends to reduce the vitality, as vaccination surely does, must of necessity be an injury to the system. The whole vaccina- tion theory is based upon the idea that poison is a more perfect pre- ventive of disease than health, and that one disease (cowpox) must be given to protect from another (smallpox). The derivation of the word allopath explains the theory-alios, another; pathos, disease. I am healthy, therefore a menace to my kind; vaccinate (disease) me to prevent my taking disease. "I wish to be free, as much from mobs as kings, from you as me."-Byron. If the doctrine is that it prevents you from taking smallpox, those who believe this doctrine will go to be vaccinated, and then being themselves safe, have no reason, and therefore no right, to enforce vaccination on others by law. The rock of ages upon which anti-compulsory vaccination stands is that the moral sense of mankind is outraged by the official enforce- ment of the preposterous proposition that it is necessary to poison the healthy blood to insure health, and it is this moral sense which gives each man the right to refuse to obey such criminal legislation, either for self or children. That great student of human affairs, John Stuart Mill, says: "No state can be called free when a man has not. perfect control over his own health, bodily, mental and spiritual." And no truer words were ever spoken than those of a prominent educator in England, Professor Newman: "Against the body of a healthy man or infant even Parliament has no right of assault what- ever under pretense of the public health. No law giver can have VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 245 the right, and such law is an unendurable usurpation, and creates the right to resistance." Successfully vaccinated: On Friday, October 26, 1894, Johnny Flynn, Terre Haute, Ind., thirteen years of age, was vaccinated. On Friday, November 9, he died from its effects. Up to the time of vaccination he had been perfectly healthy, never sick a day, and although both his sisters had scarlet fever and diphtheria in the same house, he did not contract either disease. Immediately after vaccina- tion his arm commenced swelling and increased in size rapidly, becom- ing very sore and badly inflamed. About November 2 the soreness left the arm and went to the side, which continued to grow rapidly worse, until death resulted from septaemia by vaccination. There are a number of other circumstances that go to confirm the above. Upon inquiry it has been found that no report of this death has ever been made to either city or county Board of Health. Dr. May, of Birmingham, England, testified in a case of this kind that "in certificates given by us voluntarily, and to which the public have access, it is scarcely to be expected that a medical man will give opinions which will tell against or reflect upon himself in any way or which are likely to cause annoyance or injury to the survivors. In such cases he will likely state the truth, but not the whole truth, and assign some prominent symptom of the disease as the cause of death. As instances of cases which may tell against the medical man himself, I will mention erysipelas from vaccination and puerperal fever. A death from the first cause occurred not long ago in my practice, and although I did not vaccinate the child, yet in my desire to preserve vaccination from reproach I omitted all mention of it from my certificate of death." Our method is an improvement on the English method-fail to report the death at all. The reader can judge whether this is a case of "preserving vaccination from reproach." The vaccine points used by the Terre Haute doctors and furnished to the trade here are from Dr. Petet's vaccine farm, Chicago. An analysis made by the Columbus Medical Laboratory, of Chicago, shows that they contain pus-bacteria 90 per cent; of saphrophytic- bacteria 100 per cent (including the former). It is stated that the 246 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE saphrophytic-bacteria are due to methods of drying and can not be entirely avoided. What pus is needs no explanation. What wonder that death occurs! We learn from an exchange that a fashionable dressmaker in Atlanta, Ga., was recently fined twenty-five dollars for refusing to be vaccinated. After spending one night in prison the lady submitted to the operation. Atlanta had a smallpox scare from which the reg- ular M. D.'s purposed reaping a rich harvest of dollars from their victims. Everybody must be vaccinated; it is the law; and it does not matter whether any person has any reasonable objections or not; he must be vaccinated and pay the man of medicine for injecting the virus into his blood. Vaccination has been shown in our columns to be deleterious to health on too many occasions to need further arguments on that side at this time. Compulsory vaccination is not only destructive to health, but it is also an encroachment upon the sacred rights of every individual citizen. If the law making it a compulsory matter is sus- tained by the supreme court of the state, then submit to the operation, but see to it that some friend is near to remove the virus by means of warm water, by pressure of the hand, or by cauterizing the wound. Human life is precious and no body of men has the moral (and we believe the legal) right to inject poison into the veins of any individual. Quick consumption, typhoid fever, blood poisoning and other diseases have often followed the injection of vaccine, and in many instances have taken the victims out of existence. Even if the virus is considered absolutely "pure" (?), its introduction into the blood of a healthy person often causes death. Vaccination is a menace to life as well as health, hence it should be stoutly opposed by all who wish to dwell in healthy physical forms while on earth. Smallpox is not so dangerous under the skillful nursing of today as are many other diseases. Its ravages are few, and its sporadic appearance is due to imperfect sanitation and carelessness. It can be dealt with far more successfully than can consumption or diphtheria. The doctors are trying to find a vaccine for both of these diseases. Koch's lymph for consumption and antitoxin for diphtheria, as experiments in vaccination for those diseases, are yet fresh in the VACCINATION THE PRINCE OF FRAUDS 247 minds of our readers. If vaccination is good for smallpox, con- sumption, diphtheria, hydrophobia, etc., by all means extend it to the measles, mumps, scarlatina, pneumonia and all other diseases. "True in one, true in all; false in one, false in all." Either make it a mandatory remedy for all diseases or abolish it altogether. It is a useless and dangerous custom that should at once be abolished for the good of the human family. The following has just been handed me, which was taken from the Buffalo Medical Journal: "Mayor Hixon and the city council of Americus, Georgia, have been wrestling with Christian Science and have set an example which is worthy and might be followed with great benefit to the public at large by more pretentious cities. "Smallpox is an epidemic in Americus, and the council passed an ordinance requiring every person to submit to vaccination. The city physician began the work. The Christian Scientists rebelled, declaring their faith was sufficient proof against the disease, and they were not subject to the ills of ordinary mortals. "There was no arguing over the matter; no long-winded hearings before committees in Buffalo. The city authorities promptly placed the Scientists under arrest. Mayor Hixon assessed fines against them, ranging from $3 to $30 and solitary imprisonment from ten to thirty days each. Five of the most prominent ladies of the city were sen- tenced to ten days' imprisonment and fined $3 each, the mayor leaving it with the police to select the place of confinement. They may be quarantined at their homes. A leading merchant was sentenced to thirty days in the city jail and to pay a fine of $30. "Many other Scientists will be tried and like sentences will be imposed. All are technically charged with disorderly conduct. They have employed counsel and will take the cases to the highest court. The Christian Scientists declare that their religious freedom is being infringed upon and that the city has no power to vaccinate them. They say they will go to jail and rot before they will submit to the virus. "From the way Mayor Hixon has started in, it is safe to say Scientists of Americus, Ga., will be vaccinated." 248 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE From the above it would be safe to say that the strict enforcement of the vaccination law was due to the created prejudice against the Christian Science people, and very likely thousands of others will have to suffer from this damnable poison-vaccine virus. Christian Science is a humbug of great magnitude; not one of its supporters dares to come out in the open and demonstrate what they talk with their mouth. But let that be as it may, they do not do one-hundredth part the harm that does this gigantic fraud-the medical profession. Some day the people of Americus, Georgia, will find out their error. If there was any honesty in the medical pro- fession, and they could be relied upon, such frauds as Christian Science, faith cures, etc., would die a natural death. The above act by the authorities of the city can only be equaled in India, where through their religious but erroneous faith will flock hundreds of thousands to the river Ganges (which might be called a filthy cesspool) to drink its filthy and polluted waters to cleanse them spiritually and prepare them for heaven. LEARNING THE LAWS OF NATURE. Nature has no test acts; if you disobey her laws through ignor- ance your punishment is just as severe and sharp as if it had been done with wilful disobedience. Then according to this, nature's laws are really compulsory laws; she actually compells us to obey her laws or suffer the penalty that is laid down by her for each disobedience. As exacting as nature is in her punishment for disobeying her laws, she is on the contrary just as benevolent and generous, and scatters with as free a hand the rewards to those who obey her laws. The penalty for disobeying nature is sickness in one or more of its various forms, ac- cording to the crime committed, and often, as in criminal law, the pun- ishment lasts during your life time, while others again with good be- havior and obedience to nature, she shortens your original sentence when by showing that you are willing to give your assistance in repair- ing the damage incurred by violation of her laws; but gives you strict warning that her punishment shall be much more severe for the same act the next time, and in spite of the punishment already received you insist on committing these crimes against nature, a life sentence will be the result, which means that the disease you eventually con- tracted by the numerous violations of nature is incurable, and that you must suffer her final penalty until death relieves your sufferings. From the standpoint of health and long life, and the standpoint of disease and suffering, no kind of education can be considered complete if it does not educate in the natural laws, which prepares a man to escape the great evils that arise by disobedience to nature's laws. This education will train him not only to appreciate but to obey, and thereby gain the reward which nature scatters with as free a hand as she is se- vere in dealing out her penalties. The benevolence and justice in the Creator's or natural laws is shown by the fact that all living creatures, man included, are endowed with what is termed a natural instinct to obey nature. All animals fol- low nature exclusively by instinct, but man's instinct is perverted by his 249 250 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE artificial surroundings created by his intellect and energy. These sur- roundings have grown to such an extent that the human brain is kept continually active and often excited by these artificial surroundings, among which are the social, political and judicial laws, and we must recognize the truth that the struggle for existence in these various conflicts, which are the first results in producing our artificial laws, social, political, etc., is a serious one. In these conflicts our natural in- stincts for the obedience of nature is almost entirely lost, and we are governed largely, if not entirely, by these artificially made laws. If these artificial laws are obeyed and by this obedience should be con- trary to nature's laws, what is the result? It certainly must bring sickness, suffering and death. For instance the artificial law says your child must be vaccinated; natural law says that vaccine is only a pus, consequently poison; a name given to a substance which when analyzed proves to be pus or destroyed animal tissue, just as tissue is destroyed by a boil, and forms matter or pus. We carefully prevent any pus being absorbed into the system from the boil, for if we do we know blood poisoning takes place and death may be the result. But be- cause some self-constituted authority conceived a theory, without any knowledge of natural laws, that pus from a cow's udder injected into man would prevent smallpox, we accept and follow the theory. The pus from the cow's udder is of the same nature, only more poisonous than the pus from the boil on the neck. Inject the same quantity of each, and the pus called vaccine virus for vaccination will kill more quickly. Here is a conflict between an artificial law and a natural law, and whole nations have suffered and had their constitutions ruined so that it will take several generations to entirely recover the injury to the human race. This same rule holds good in many of the social laws. By some self-constituted authority, in order to create some sen- timent in their favor, or perhaps for the gain of money, starts some new idea which stimulates the intellect, but regardless of the satisfac- tion it gives the intellect it proves damaging to the health and constitu- tion of the individual. It may be in the manner foods are prepared; it may be in the manner of dress, such as the abuse of the corset, etc., or the over-exertion of the child's brain, thereby draining its physical constitution, and causing a premature death; just.from violation of a natural law, and to please perhaps a social law the child must be put LEARNING THE LAWS OF NATURE 251 through a certain amount of studies in order to stand socially equal within their particular circle. Do we not see violation of nature all around us every day and the result of nearly all the misery and suffer- ing and the ruining of the constitutions of civilized races by the crea- tion of social and civil laws which are contrary to the natural laws and by their enforcement the whole race suffers? None can dispute the existence of these conditions and no one will dispute the fact that most of these artificial laws were made in good faith and to be beneficial. They are made by the best educated men of a nation, but their education was not in harmony with nature, hence the laws created by them are injurious to health and the constitution of a nation. Then the question answers itself, that no education can be consid- ered complete unless this education harmonizes with nature's laws, and no civil or social laws can be called just laws unless they harmonize with nature's laws. Therefore, the first and distinctive education should be to study nature; that man who is trained, educated in youth, so that his body is the ready servant of his will and nature and thus does with pleasure and ease all the work that such a body is capable of doing with such an intellect, which is clear and logical with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, always ready to be turned to any kind of work, is really educated. Such a mind, stored with knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one which is not stunted but full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to obey a vigorous will and a ser- vant to a true and tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty and art in nature and to hate what is contrary to nature's laws, and lastly to respect others as well as himself, such a one and no other has a good and right education, for such is as completely as a man can be in harmony with nature. He will make the best of her and she (nature) will ever be his beneficent mother, and they will get along together, his reward being health, happiness and a long life. Where is such an education to be had ? Where in our medical col- leges or universities can there be an approximation to it ? In these we have only piece-meal knowledge, mixed with false theories, which are incompatible with nature, making this worse than if never attempted. 252 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE While a student at a medical college I took the stand that the two main studies to make a thorough physician were not taught in any college in the world and these two studies were the study of the natural laws and human nature and their relation to each other, when I was quietly told that I was there to attend college and not to run it. If the physician is not even taught what should be taught every child in the land, in every school and university, how can such a man be fit to treat any ailment of the human body, when their ailment is nothing more than a violation of its laws in some form, when he knows nothing of these laws? We use the term nothing advisedly, because a little knowledge combined with a false theory may be even more injurious than no knowledge. When humanity will return to nature, attend her university of knowl- edge and learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them, then we can really talk of great and successful men in this world. The rest of mankind pick up just enough knowledge in this world to get through without much discredit, for the mass of the public are not able to discern the enormous amount of mistakes made by these few by vio- lating nature and how much they even have shortened their lives in proportion to the allotment given them by nature. Then again there are those who will not learn, and those nature plucks (nature's "pluck" means to be exterminated, that is, death). This shows plainly that nature's education is a compulsory education, but nature passed her compulsory laws long ago. They may to the ignorant seem harsh, but they are not, and on the contrary are benevolent and just, and we must learn them and adapt ourselves to them, for nature's legislature ad- journed after framing her laws in the beginning and she will not likely convene again until the day of judgment. Here we have a certainty. Once understood these laws of nature can be utilized for your benefit as long as life lasts. But you may be elected to your state legislature in which you must take your share of responsibility in making laws which may prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men, women and children of the United States. We have laws on probably every statute in the different states that are a menace, yes, a curse, to every com- munity as to their health, such as vaccination laws, and quarantine laws regarding contagiousness of disease. The laws were framed be- cause the framers accepted the dictates of so-called authorities who LEARNING THE LAWS OF NATURE 253 themselves knew nothing of the methods in which nature does her work. The education of the young to the workings of nature will discipline their mental powers, which will be of more importance in their future daily life than any other, because it will give them the power of seeing things as they are without paying any attention to some self-made authority. They will be able with such an education to arrive at accur- ate conclusions from the particular facts they know of natural laws. The great power and influence that association has over every one is admitted by all, and if the simple and visible experience of nature were only rightly impressed upon the minds of children by teachers and par- ents alike, as they grow older they would hear everyone agree on mat- ters pertaining to health just as now all agree that twice two is four. The laws of breathing and their influence upon the body should be un- derstood ; the influence of the sun upon the purifying of the impurities in the air by its rays; that all our epidemics can be traced directly in that a long, continuous season of damp, cloudy and so-called dreary weather is a forerunner of epidemics; that directly and indirectly nearly all these diseases that become epidemics, such as smallpox, diphtheria, yellow fever, etc., can be traced to sufficient or insufficient sun's rays to destroy and change to their original elements the debris and filth, so to speak, that has been created on earth by man or by the natural proc- esses of death and decay. Epidemics in a school room are usually due to the same cause. There are processes of disorganizing and split- ting up elements in the air that are absolutely necessary in order to have what is called pure air, and this process cannot take place without the rays of the sun, the sun being the main factor in determining whether or not we shall have an epidemic. This wonderful purifier of the earth is entirely left out in our large works on Hygiene, at least in the four different works in my possession. Dr. Rohe's work, one of the latest, of nearly six hundred pages and twenty-three chapters, beginning with air to lastly on quarantine, written expressly as a text book for col- leges, has no chapter on the value of the sun's rays. This one fact condemns all medical writings and teachings. It must not here be un- derstood that in claiming that the sun was the main factor in having or not having an epidemic of disease that these diseases cannot be avoided; they can be and much easier than to avoid a common cold. 254 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE This is putting it strong, but in the proper place we will make the claim good; all it needs is a little education in plain simple laws, and in order to understand them you need not necessarily be a classical scholar; you need not know all about pathagenic microbes or any other; you need not be a physician; in fact you need only understand a few simple prin- ciples, their meaning and effects, that lay before your eyes every day, as plain as the noon day sun. The time will come, before the next cen- tury has passed its first decade, when the American people will quote as the stock example that the teaching of the medical profession dur- ing the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the most stolid stu- pidity that ever existed during the Christian era, considering all things equal, because nothing has done so much to ruin the constitutions of nations as the false education inculcated upon the minds of the people to which they adhere with such tenacity, because they think it is scien- tific; nay, more, because they placed confidence in a power that is corrupt and has no opposition. This medical profession has and is continually crying the wonders they are doing for humanity, but disease is on the increase, especially those that attack a weak constitution. These are consumption, cancer, tumors, etc. What has brought on this ruination of our constitution ? False education and sometimes no education; false education in the use of drugs, and drugs are ruining the constitutions of millions every'year. By continuous advertising, by printed matter, and by the profession, the wonders that drugs are doing! They are doing wonders. All the wars and all the other unfavorable conditions to health do not begin to do the harm that the present use of drugs and medicine do. Wars and other conditions will kill many, but will not ruin the constitutions of those remaining. If there is a nation whose future depends upon right knowledge and education and the intelligent apprehension of and obedience to the laws of nature, it is our nation. As the constitution of a people so is the strength of that nation. As the constitutions of people deteriorate, so do the moral and social, as well as the govern- ment deteriorate. Let us pause and see if this serious statement is true, and if true, let us look the truth squarely in the face. Our nation is practically one Hundred and fifty years old; the orig- inal settlers of this country were the cream of other nations, at least LEARNING THE LAWS OF NATURE 255 so far as their constitutions were concerned. The strongest and hard- iest people from the rural districts of other nations is what composed the immigrants to this country. Compare at least three-fourths of the present generation as direct descendants of those sturdy, hardy people of a hundred or more years ago, then go back to those same little vil- lages, as in Germany, Scotland, Ireland, England, etc., where these people immigrated from and see the difference in constitution between their present generation and ours. They have practically held their own; a doctor is rarely needed among them; their constitutional and ancestral traits are held up to their usual standard in some instances. Let us go no further than our own recollections and see the difference in the constitutions of the present and those of only two or three generations ago. In this calculation the large cities should be left out. Consumption is becoming as prevalent in the country as in the smaller towns and cities, when it should be almost an unheard of thing in these places. This state of affairs is not going to be changed by chasing microbes and ruining the constitution by injecting animal poison, "Never." It can only be done by right education; education that will show them plainly that the trouble lies at their own door, due to abuses of natural laws that are within them and about them; that it is largely our own fault and often that of imposters who take advantage of our ignorance and ruin constitutions for the sake of making money. We must edu- cate the people so they can protect themselves from broadcloth im- posters. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE. You are a sick person every night of your life. If this were not true it would be unnecessary to go to bed to sleep, for sleep would not be needed. The difference between a person going to bed tired and a patient sick with typhoid fever, etc., is only in degree. These sentences are new but nevertheless true. If you want to know and understand the cause of all diseases you must begin to learn the beginning of things, how things make things make themselves. This is all accomplished by the combining of the elements of nature in cer- tain proportions under certain conditions; by this law of nature the human being is formed or evolved; by this same law of nature all diseases are formed or evolved. By this law birth, growth and death take place; we call it the law of organization and disorganization. When the death of any vegetable or animal takes place the process of disorganization begins- and continues until it has disorganized the dead matter back to its primitive elements, which then and then only are again in a fit state to be taken up by other animal or vegetable life, to nourish and sustain its existence, or to form new life under suitable conditions. And it is while this animal or vegetable mat- ter is undergoing this stage of disorganization or decomposition back to its primitive elements, that it is dangerous to health and life. In order to have a sure and solid starting point as to the cause of disease always remember the following sentence. Every element in the composition of the animal and vegetable kingdom must, after death and disorganization of any part or whole of a plant or living being has taken place, disorganize back to its primitive or natural state and be taken up by or formed into new living animal or vege- table life before it can be taken up into the human body as nourish- ment. There is one element that is king in all organized matter. What is this one element? It is the element oxygen. This ele- ment is the potter that moulds and shapes the clay, so to speak; it is the force, power and organizer of all that exists. To not be mis- 256 THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 257 understood, oxygen, like steam, has in itself no force, but placed under certain conditions both are powerful forces. It is this element oxygen that gives life and activity to every cell of the body; take away this element everything becomes lifeless; nay, take away this oxygen from the blood and everything within the body is lifeless. It is oxygen that makes it possible to make the blood flow throughout the body; draw-away the blood from any part and death of the part takes place in a short time. And in proportion as the blood is nor- mally charged through the lungs with oxygen, just in that propor- tion is the power of the body; and in just this proportion is the body able to resist outside influences of the atmosphere. (All other func- tions being normal.) As already stated, there is a continual throw- ing out into the air from the surface of the earth of disorganizing matter which is split up by the sun, air and winds, and taken up by vegetable life; so is the body continually throwing off dead disor- ganized matter, of a similar nature, that must be taken up by the sun and winds and split up into its original elements so it can be appropriated by vegetable life. All the zymotic disease, such as diph- theria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., besides all other fevers and in- flammations, are only an extraordinary effort of the body to throw off poisons that have formed by a combination of this disorganizing or waste matter which has accumulated within the body through the influence of the outside or atmospheric influences or excessive pro- ductions within the body, or the combined influence of both. In other words you did not live so as to get up well every morning. These are all well known laws of nature, well known to scientists and physiologists, and these laws-never vary and never will. At one time the scientific world was on the right road as to the cause of disease, but most of the principles have been lost sight of by the so-called scientific dirt that the medical profession has thrown over them, because if these simple methods of nature were kept before the public eye it would kill the medical business and close up most of the diploma mills. If then nothing can be taken into the body in a state of disor- ganization (decomposition) without danger of producing harm, is it not plain that putting into the body any disorganizing matter 258 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE from a sore of an animal (called vaccine or vaccination) must be dangerous? Is it not plain again if a sick person is throwing off through the skin dead or disorganized matter in extraordinarily large quantities that it should be given extraordinary opportunities to get out into the winds and sun to be split up and taken up by vegetable life the same as other disorganizing matter in the world does? And as soon as this poison leaves the body and comes in contact with the air and sun it immediately becomes something else. Does this abso- lute law demonstrate that quarantine is injurious? Does-this absolute law of nature demonstrate that disease cannot possibly be contagious ? Does not this well known law positively prove that the opposite course should be pursued ? Does it not positively show that when any disease exists extraordinary efforts should be made to have the rays of the sun and winds circulate through the house? And when these facili- ties are deficient as few people as possible should be in the house, in order not to use up the oxygen in the room by breathing; this is very necessary for purifying purposes and for the breathing of the patient. The human body is formed and made of about sixteen of these natural elements, in certain proportions and certain combinations, but the proportions differ in each individual, and it is this difference that makes the different temperaments, constitutions and races. All things equal it is easy to see that if the external conditions in which we live should be unfavorable to a certain degree, and acting upon all these different individuals who are rarely in perfect condition, and that when these external or atmospheric conditions produce any unfavorable action upon these different human conditions, the results on each are likely to be very different in degrees. In other words we have many different conditions produced from one and the same cause, and these different kinds of conditions are called different kinds of diseases. In one person this condition will produce a cold in the head; in another a sore throat; in another lung fever, and in another rheumatism, etc. On the other hand we have unfavorable conditions existing within the body; in fact very few people keep their system in a perfect condition from one day to another. As already stated, no two persons being alike, these internal conditions alone will pro- duce different diseases in different persons, just by the same law that THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 259 the external conditions will produce different diseases. But more often is disease caused by the action and combination of both the in- ternal and external conditions, and added to this our mode of liv- ing, work and state of mind have their influence in developing condi- tions that are called disease. In short all diseases without an excep- tion are caused by this law of organization and disorganization of these elements of nature under certain conditions and circumstances. To know and understand this law is to know and understand the cause of disease, and this without the knowledge or consent of any nation of microbes. To live a life according as nature demands, we go to bed sick every evening and should arise well and happy in the morning, but how many people in this country, or perhaps in any other, get up well every morning? Children as a rule are sicker at night than adults, but also have more recuperative powers. What do we mean by saying that we are sick every night ? Simply that disease is noth- ing more nor less than an accumulation of poison or waste matter within the system, combined with lost nervous energy. The organs which are for the purpose of eliminating the waste products of the body are taxed, by overwork, mental or physical, beyond their bal- anced power, or the retention of waste matter within the system may be caused by the action or influence of the air upon the body, or from something poisonous, that is taken into the system which disturbed or clogged its normal functions. (By something poisonous we mean any animal or vegetable matter undergoing the process of disorgani- zation or decomposition.) The body is a complex living furnace, burning up, so to speak, fuel or food to nourish and to create for it life and existence, and the smoke, ashes and clinkers are carried off through the sewer organs, the skin, kidneys, lungs, etc.; and anything that will, from any external or internal influence, pro- duce an abnormal retention, or form an abnormal compound in the system, of or in combination with these ashes, smoke or clinkers, or if we should take into the system similar poisons, such as may be contained in water and food or which themselves may be in a decom- posed or disorganizing state, or should otherwise contain any decom- posed animal or vegetable substances, are the causes of all the zymotic 260 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE or as commonly called blood diseases, such as typhoid fever, yel- low fever, smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. While we are awake the body uses up more energy than it pro- duces and creates more waste than it eliminates, but during normal sleep creates more energy than it uses up. This is nature's method of curing the body that is sick every night, therefore it ought to be plain as the noonday sun that every person should sleep enough each night to resupply the body its energy lost during the day, and elimi- nate the accumulation of excessive waste matter, and recuperate lost nervous energy. Therefore we should and must regulate our labor in accordance with this law or suffer the consequences. The systems of children have a double function to perform in order to make up for the growth as well as the nourishment of the body, thereby creating more waste, hence are more sick in the evening; they become stupid, tired and sleepy early, therefore need more food and more sleep than the adult, hence the child needs more activity of its organs and functions and naturally are more active. I*t is for this reason that the breathing and circulation of the blood is so much faster in the child. How plainly all this shows that we are only an organism that is nicely adapted to exist in our particular surroundings, if we only do not abuse these just and perfect laws of nature. This also explains why the new-born child should sleep most of the time; its growth and development is never so fast as in the first year of life. Nature and all of her laws do not know, nor does she recognize any such conditions as what the conscious man calls disease. All is a continual change, a continual organization and disorganization with- in the body, according to our conditions and surroundings; all this is due to the inherent power that the natural elements have for unit- ing or disuniting with one another under different conditions and circumstances. For instance, two elements under certain conditions form water, and by just changing the temperature of this water we have ice, snow or steam, etc. Water when combined with some other element or combination of elements gives us another and altogether different combination, and so on through the list of everything that exists. The human body is a complex combination and organization of THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 261 its constituent elements which are continually changing in one way or another, and probably no change is exactly alike in any two persons in any one hour of the day, any more than we can find two persons who are exactly alike, or any more than we find two persons living, thinking, acting, eating, or working alike. But remember that the natural laws which govern and control all these hundreds of millions of human beings, of which no two are alike, and the different ele- ments of which all these millions of beings are composed of are alike; they only differ in their proportion, their complexity, and in their surroundings. All the changes that take place in each one of these human beings, whether for good or evil, whether for health or disease, whether life or death, whether for race or sex, are all due to three great causes. First: The effect produced by our external surroundings, such as air, sun, heat, cold, etc., upon the functions of the body, such as the skin, nervous system, and the circulation of the blood. Second: The effect produced by substances taken into the sys- tem, such as foods, drinks, poisons, etc., or the retentions of your own body's waste productions, and often it is the combination of retained waste matter with wholesome or unwholesome substances taken into the system. Third: The change produced upon our system by our own indi- vidual actions and those things effecting us through our senses or by the actions of others, such as insufficient rest, mental worry, and irritability, over eating, wrong eating, accidents, etc. All diseases of whatever kind that humanity is heir to are due to one or the other of these three general causes alone, or in the combination of one with the other, or perhaps more often by the combined three together; that is, more often than any other that all three take a hand in producing what is termed disease. They are absolutely the cause of typhoid fever, yellow fever and smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, erysipelas, chickenpox and all other forms of fevers, also all forms of nervous diseases. Does this not appear reasonable to any thinking mind? This is not our opinion or be- lief, but it is just what nature demonstrates in every single instance and it is just what any one can observe if he will study and observe 262 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE nature's manifestations, which are visible to the eye, and for all practical purposes and for the general public it is all that is neces- sary to learn and observe in order to know how to preserve health and life. When this is done the rest can be left to science to discover how the elements of nature by inherent law produce the varied action, by their atomic and molecular changes, which result in these different conditions called life, health, disease or death. In fact everything that the eye can perceive is only the visible expressions of the atomic and molecular actions of nature's elements, and this same law pro- duces life, health and all disease. But what does medical history and our present teachers tell us the causes of disease are? For about fourteen hundred years disease was due to bad spirits, devils, witches, and jews. The largest part of humanity still hold to some of these ideas, and now, in the clos- ing year of the so-called "grandest century" of time, the medical profession say diseases are due to and are caused and spread by varied forms of microbes, mosquitoes, flies, rats, etc.; verily this is a wonderful progress, but mighty little improvement. Humanity has not yet learned the A B C's of the relation that the sun, atmosphere or air has upon health or disease. No epidemic of disease ever existed on the face of the earth when certain unfavor* able atmospheric conditions did not exist, and that these conditions usually existed some weeks, sometimes several months before an out- break of an epidemic of disease. Mind you that these conditions of the air are not usually the whole cause of an epidemic, but are only the exciting cause, for if the condition of the air alone were the cause very few people would escape. But there is no doubt that very often it occurs that those naturally very weak in constitution may not be able, or it may not be even possible, that they can resist even the atmospheric conditions. But we more often find that those constitutionally strong and vigorous are the very first to be attacked? Why is this so? Because these strong and vigorous persons have been gradually accumulating waste matter within their system by not getting up well every morning, and are really consciously or un- consciously sick, and only need the exciting cause produced by some unfavorable action of an unfavorable condition of the air upon the THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 263 body externally, and by an insufficient amount of oxygen taken into the blood to produce a serious condition. Local conditions may also assist in bringing about these unfavorable conditions of the system, which we generally call disease, but this condition that we usually call disease, is really the effort of nature to cure herself; the real disease ex- isted from the time that excess of nervous energies lost and an excess of waste matter begins to accumulate in the body, but when this loss of nervous energy and accumulation of waste matter reaches a certain stage, nature takes the helm in her own hand and arises to the occasion and starts up a fever or begins to throw the poison upon the surface of the body, and we call it smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, etc., but when the deeper seated glands of the body are clogged instead of the skin glands, we will have typhoid fever or some of the other various forms of fever, which are practically alike, and only differ in degree. This is also the identical condition that so often exists when a per- son feels overworked and takes a long rest and gets well before any exciting cause produces the condition which we commonly call dis- ease, but, as before stated, is nature's extraordinary method of curing herself. Every thought, every move of the body, exhausts energy, but worry and excitement exhaust energy faster than anything else. As near as can be demonstrated by experience, one hour of worry and fret- ting will exhaust the nervous system as much as a whole day's work with a pleasant and cheerful mind. Does it not suggest itself to the reader that it is absolutely certain that if you live, sleep and work so as to get up well every morning, that it is almost impossible to take any form of these so-called contagious diseases? What are these atmos- pheric conditions that are the exciting causes of an epidemic ? A contin- ual damp or moist atmosphere usually coming from the east, without much sunlight; this damp or moist air may be either warm or cold and its effect will be according. If this condition should be general throughout the middle hemisphere, we will find, as a general rule, epidemics will occur, and begin in the east and travel westward. During seasons while much vegetable decomposition is going on, as in the spring or fall of the year, and there should be very little bright sunlight, it ought to be plain that the impurity of the air must increase; again, if this air should be stagnant or move slowly, 264 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the danger would be still greater, because motion of the air dis- tributes and helps to purify it. But let us get the good effect of thunder, lightning, and the purifying powers of the sun's rays, and the air becomes changed from a moist to a dry and wholesome one, and in a short time the epidemic of disease becomes less and less, and during all this time the health officers and doctors will claim during the first weeks or months as to how they have fought to stamp out the epidemic, although claiming that in spite of their efforts the disease is spreading; but when the disease has finally sub- sided, because the conditions that were the exciting cause have changed, then these doctors or health officers begin to crow and howl in order to get the credit, and how by their false and hypocritical cry that they did finally succeed in stamping out the disease, and all due to their increased vigilance of isolation, quarantine, or vaccination. As we have in our own country so many different kinds of disease and so many different diseases in different countries and climates, we must only study the slight differences that exist in the people of different climates and the slight differences of the atmosphere con- ditions in different climates and the differences in food, and we have the answer as to why each climate, to a certain degree, has what in name are called different diseases, such as yellow fever in the south, the plague in India, or smallpox in the middle hemisphere. These are extreme conditions, but the law in each is the same. You are sick every night when going to bed and should be per- fectly well every morning. The thought contained in this sentence is the foundation upon which to build the law of health and the cause of almost all diseases that the human being is afflicted with. The outgrowth from these sentences for the welfare of mankind can- not be estimated. In the future they will be on the lips of every teacher, on the lips of every father and mother, and, perchance, on the lips of every conscientious doctor. The teacher will be able to easily understand what causes the outbreak of an epidemic in the schools and can thus prevent it. The father and mother will easily know what is the cause of disease, and thereby as easily prevent it. The people at large will easily know how to detect them when out- side or surrounding conditions are favorable to cause any of the THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 265 epidemic diseases, such as scarlet fever, measles, la grippe, smallpox, yellow fever, etc. The people will also know what causes these diseases when only endemic or local. We will be able to know why strong and apparently healthy looking children so often take the dis- ease and the weakly and delicate ones escape. We will also see plainly why we have for so many centuries been misled, and why we have so honestly believed that disease was contagious, and by this foolish belief inaugurated the injurious quarantine laws, where if infection is true and there is no question but that it is true, quar- antine would tend to increase the spread of disease. We also see plainly that if disease was really contagious that quarantine would still make it more contagious, and also would increase the danger where conditions exist in which infection is possible (we make a marked distinction between contagion and infection) ; that in what- ever light we look at it, strict quarantine is absolutely false, wrong and murderous. With the enlightenment and the education of the pub- lic of the falsity of these principles so long believed it will be easy to teach all people the cause of disease and its simple method of pre- vention. Most important of all, we will be able to class health and disease as a science based upon laws as accurate, and with much more ease, than astronomy or chemistry now do. Impericism, super- stition and guess work will be a thing of the past. We will be able to judge who is a skilful physician and who is not; we will know who is by nature well adapted to be a good physician as we now know who by nature is a good musician, artist, orator, etc. The good physician will be known by the application of his talents and knowl- edge, and his success will depend thereon, and not be, as now, that the nice man, the sleek talker, the confidance man, the trickster, the schemer, or the man who hangs his soul over the front pew on Sunday to catch the credulous the rest of the week will get the busi- ness; it will be the man who has the knowledge and skill and the best judgment to apply it in each case. We will then have the lat- ter as a rule and not as the exception to seek the medical profession as a life vocation; it will be the thinker, the philosophical mind, the conscientious man. Then that fecund mother of dogmatism, that has for centuries been breeding so many false assumptions, and mostly 266 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE for the money and notoriety there was in it, will be replaced by the plain unassuming man who follows the dictates of nature. To her laws we will bow with reverence and obedience and if we do not we must suffer, as she has no pets and under no circumstances will she show distinction or partiality to any one. Let us see what this mother of nature has to say about the cause of disease. Organization and disorganization of the eternal existing ele- ments is the paramount law by which everything in the universe, living or dead, is formed. This law of organization and disorgani- zation is made possible by the inherent power of combining by affin- ity and attraction of the elements of which everything that exists in nature is composed. Remembering then that all changes, without an exception, in this great universe are caused by and through this law that pervades the whole domain of nature, and these principles concern alike every department of science, yes, every department of human thought, it opens up the beclouded mysteries of medicine and the causes of disease. Therefore its truth or falseness, its acceptance or rejection, is no trifling matter. On the contrary it affects pro- foundly the foundation of all medical philosophy and practically the whole domain of thought. It will change our whole attitude towards nature. It knocks the props out from under the present medical structure and crumbles it to pieces. This may seem a startling prop- osition, but we intend to make it good. This law of organization and disorganization governs everything in all nature, whether it be the human body, the animal, the vegetable or mineral kingdom; in other words a reciprocal relation exists in everything. The human body is a system of co-related parts, but again this body is as closely related to the various systems or surrounding conditions as each organ or function of the body is co-related to each other. This being true, it must also be true that these systems or surrounding conditions outside the body must proportionately influence the con- ditions and functions inside the body; and this is accomplished by this reciprocal and united relation that each has to the other. In fact, if it were not for the conditions outside of the body it would be impossible for a living body to exist; then is it not clear that THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 267 these outside conditions, or rather systems of conditions, such as the air, sun, heat, cold, thunder and lightning, etc., must have a powerful influence upon our body? Our very existence depends upon them, and the condition of our body largely depends upon them; by the condi- tions of the body we mean the conditions called life, health and dis- ease. In short the human body in health is a condition of continuous organization and disorganization; disease is a condition of organization and disorganization; and death is a condition produced by organization and disorganization. All these changes of health, disease, and death are produced by the influence of our surroundings upon the functions of the body, and by the influence of what is taken into the body, or by the combined influence of both, under this law of organization and disorganization. To learn and understand how to practically apply and adapt ourselves to these three reasonable and simple propositions or influences, and how by their actions and reactions they produce equilibrium and stability of the body; or how by their inherent law of organization and disorganization they produce life, health, disease or death, is the chit and tap-root of this whole subject; they are the principles and laws upon which nature and all she produces is founded and all human power will never be able to change them one iota. Then why not begin to study them in preference to all else ? Why not make them your bosom friend and stop putting faith in the most rotten, most deceiving, most injurious and murderous organization on the face of the earth, when weighed in the scales of justice? The first proposition: the influence of our surroundings upon the body, would refer to various conditions of the atmosphere upon the functions of the body through its external surface or skin and upon the blood through the lungs, such as heat, cold, damp or moist air, and those influences that affect us through our senses. It is estimated that ordinarily the pressure of the air upon our body is over two thousand pounds to the square foot, or fifteen pounds to the square inch. Is not this enormous? Does it not strongly bring out the thought that if there was not an equally strong force inside of the body that our body would immediately go to pieces as if struck by a large and powerful torpedo? On the other hand, if it were not for this powerful air pressure upon the outside of 268 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE our body the force within us would blow us to atoms. It is very evident then that it is these forces outside and inside of the body, when well balanced, help to keep up the normal and healthy equilib- rium and stability of the body. "The law of balance and proportion is the Alpha and Omega of all that exists." The influence of what is taken into the body, such as food and drink in the stomach and air through the lungs, these combined furnish the body with the elements necessary for its growth and nourishment and create energy and power for the performing of the functions of the organs of the whole body. Besides all this it maintains the force or energy neces- sary to keep an equilibrium with these influences and forces outside of the body under ordinary conditions. The life and health of the body depend upon the normal co-operation between these two forces, and anything that will sufficiently change so as to disturb or influ- ence the performing of the healthy and normal functions of the body, whether from within or without, is called abnormal or dis- ease; sometimes these changes are so slight that we are not able to recognize them; these unrecognized abnormal changs are often brought back to normal without our being aware of it. Again, they may go on for months or years with or without warning, the person paying no attention to them until some great change is produced by a sudden cold or excitement, or unwholesome meal, or sudden atmos- pheric changes, and especially change of location and also changes in our mode of work and method of living. These abnormal changes are called disease, and it may or may not be possible to bring them back to their normal condition of health of the body. To bring out plainly how these changes called disease are produced by the various influences inside and outside of the body, we will first consider the various kinds of conditions into which they are capable of organ- izing and disorganizing themselves. Everyone will admit that there are no two persons just exactly alike. Everyone will also admit that no two persons eat, drink,' breathe, work, act or sleep exactly alike. If it were not for this, fact that every person is by birth different in his constitution, temper- aments and mentality, and again each being different in their mode of living, it would be easy to lay down an exact rule, but as it is, THE'GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 269 the rule and law to be applied will be about the same, only differing in degree as applied to each person. Again, if we will take for exam- ple a hundred thousand persons living in a city, as differing in com- plexion, as differing in the color and kind of hair, as differing in their employment, as differing in their mental and physical characteristics, and this difference being as great as can possibly be found, and feed these one hundred thousand persons all upon exactly the same kind of food and drink, would not this food and drink be organized, dis- organized and reorganized by the processes of digestion and nutrition and attracted to and produce as many different forms and parts as there are differences in these hundred thousand people? This food would produce black skin and curly hair in the negro, red hair and reddish skin in "Pat" or any other of the same color; in others, blondes and brunettes, while in some others it would produce in proportion more muscles than brain, or more brain than muscle; in fact, if all the different conditions produced by the organization and disorganization of this one food and drink in these one hundred thou- sand people could be technically analyzed it would astonish any one in the figures; but bear in mind that the law is practically the same in each of these hundreds of thousands of conditions produced by this one food and drink. Again, in giving this same food to a sheep it would nourish the sheep and produce wool; if fed to a hog it would produce pork and bristles, but this law or organization and disorganization remains ever the same. For a moment let us consider another form of conditions pro- duced by this same food and drink, in these same one hundred thou- sand persons, and that is the waste matter produced. In the negro the excretions from the skin and kidneys would be different in their compounds from those in the white man. The waste matter of the brain worker would be different from those in the man laboring with his muscles. In the growing child they would be, as a rule, much different and more abundant than in the adult; again they would differ in the young adult from those in old age; again they would be different in the fat and the lean person; different again in the one who breathes poor air all day and night from the one who must of necessity breathe poor in the daytime but good pure air at 270 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE night; also different in the one who breathes air good enough to exist day and night. In any way we may look at it there is a dif- ference in these hundred thousand individuals fed on the same food and drink, and by further investigation we find these individuals are very different in their hours of sleep; some sleep enough, others not enough; some work too much, others not enough; some abuse the social laws, others the sexual laws, etc. A small percentage go to bed sick and get up well in the morning; the others rarely get up well in the morning, thus not recuperating the lost energy of the previous day, besides retaining an abnormal amount of waste matter, thus showing an innumerable number of varied conditions. These people are in apparent good health from day to day and year to year, but perhaps nine-tenths or more of them are more or less sick from nature's standpoint, but in spite of this there has not been any epi- demic of disease among these hundred thousand people, and all due to the favorable conditions of the atmosphere and other surrounding conditions. Gradually and unconsciously a change comes in the conditions of the air. We will suppose that it is late in the fall of the year; the weather becomes changeable, rainy, then damp, then chilly, raw; no sunshine, no thunder and lightning, and especially no sun pene- trating the small sleeping rooms and tenement houses; added to this the air is stagnant; it does not move with its usual velocity. What will be the result? Let observation and experience answer. Let thought be once directed in this direction and we will have no more trouble to know how to educate the public as to what causes epidemics. In four, six or eight weeks we will hear of scarlet fever and measles here and there among the children of these hundred thousand peo- ple. If these conditions of the air continue any length of time, the number of cases would increase so rapidly that it would be called an epidemic, and if the winter is followed by damp, cold weather, of a severe enough type to check sufficiently the elimination of urea and uric acid, combined with certain other forms of waste matter from the system, smallpox will follow; or if these atmospheric conditions described begin severe and steady enough, smallpox may be found among the first cases. Why scarlet fever, measles or smallpox more THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 271 than diphtheria, typhoid fever, etc. ? Because these two classes of disease are each of a distinct type, each type differing only slightly in degree and combinations of their poisons. Scarlet fever and measles are found among children at most any season of the year, because children have a more acid condition of the system than the adult, on account of the more rapid changes that are needed for growth, while this same condition is far greater in the adult in win- ter than in summer and exists more in the robust than in the deli- cate. Therefore smallpox exists among the robust more than among the delicate, and more in those whose kidneys are overtaxed in elim- inating the uric acid, and who perhaps, do not have functional capac- ity in proportion to the size of the body. In a word then, small- pox is caused by the excessive production or retention in the system of urea and uric acid to a high degree, combined with other waste matter, such as the carbon compounds, and any condition, whether from food or the air or both combined, that will produce this systemic condition is liable to produce smallpox, and usually this happens during cold, damp weather. It is almost an impossibility to develop smallpox where the air is continually dry and moving and where plenty of sunshine exists. We usually find an epidemic of smallpox to begin in cities lying near large bodies of water, and the more nearly surrounded by water the city is the more apt it is to begin in that city. Take the history of Boston as an instance. England is another, and often the disease will not spread to the interior of the country wherein it exists, but when it does the slaughter of humanity is generally immense; all history will confirm this fact. But as this peculiar damp, moist, raw and cold atmosphere usually comes from the east, smallpox usually begins in the east and travels westward. This easily explains why these epidemics so often exist in one country and not in another. Diphtheria is absolutely a filth disease. This may at first seem startling to those who take extraordinary pains to keep clean but still have had deaths from diphtheria in the family, but there is very often a vast difference between what nature calls cleanliness and what people call cleanliness; so does nature call filth what people call cleanliness. We see a great many children who are called dirty and 272 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE filthy, but who, from nature's standpoint, are clean; on the other hand we see children who look primp and clean but who are dirty and filthy from nature's standpoint. This error of misunderstand- ing nature as to her meaning of cleanliness costs the lives of hun- dreds of thousands every year. It is what nature calls a dirty and filthy system is what we must study and learn to understand, so that we can easily know the causes of disease, and by understanding their cause we will know how to prevent disease. We cannot too often remind the reader to bear in mind the sources and methods by which these poisons are taken into the system and retained and pro- duce disease. Poor and decomposed foods and drinks will poison the system, but good food and drinks, with impure and pent up air, will poison them much faster. These two will produce diphtheria and typhoid fever as a rule, while the retention of urea and uric poisons, combined with others, together with the action upon the skin and nervous system of certain kinds of atmospheric conditions, will produce smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, etc., while added to these worry and fretting will alone produce typhoid fever by the reten- tion of natural poisons or waste matters. Excessive mental work or study alone will often produce scarlet fever and measles, by exces- sive accumulations of the waste matter of the system, it more often takes this and certain moist, damp or stagnant air to assist in pro- ducing the disease. Again it will take these conditions all combined to produce either of the diseases. We must not forget that where the air is moist or very hot, or otherwise impure, that much less of this life giving element (oxy- gen) is taken up in the blood as compared to the amount that is taken up when the air is dry and cool, and that this lowers the power of all the organs and functions of the body. This is always a double injury to the body. First, the loss of good oxygen, and second, the retention of this poison, carbonic acid gas and other waste matter. We may have warm days, the air being humid and the nights cool and damp, and, as in the case of our army, sleeping upon the damp ground, the food not being sufficient, or poor in quality, and this accompanied by too much active exercise during the day. This re- sults in creating and retaining an excessive quantity of urea and THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 273 uric acid, and the result is that the body becomes sluggish and dis- turbed, and thus smallpox or similar diseases are liable to develop. In the above instance the effect of the air upon the functions of the body and the excessive exercise are the predominating causes, while in typhoid fever and similar diseases, bad food and drink are the predominating causes. Always bear in mind that when we speak of the eruptive diseases, such as smallpox, etc., we mean that the erup- tion is only the effort of nature to cure herself by throwing upon the surface the uric acid and carbonaceous poisons of the system. It will suggest itself to the reader that during a season when epi- demics of disease exist, we should live a more easy going life, sleep more than usual and breathe the very best air possible and breathe oftener, because the condition of the air during epidemics of disease does not give up to the system enough of the life giving power (oxygen), therefore the system should not be overtaxed by work, worry or any other excess beyond the ability to get up as well in the morning as possible, which means a clean system, and thus avoid the accumulations within the system of these poisons that develop scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, etc. But according to your particular vocation, environments and constitutional weak- nesses, you are just as liable to develop during these peculiar atmos- pheric conditions any other form of disease, such as belong to the inflammatory kind; lung fever, la grippe, brain fever, etc. We re- peat again, live during a season that is favorable to produce epi- demic diseases so as to get up well every morning and be very much more careful to unfavorable exposures, keep plenty of reserve energy by sleeping more and working less, avoid mental irritation and eat moderately of plain food. Nature shows no distinctions; she will make you obey her or kill you in the attempt. No better proof can be presented than the existing conditions of our soldiers now in the Philippine Islands. The fact is that the authorities are ashamed to report the truth in regard to the large amount of smallpox cases among the soldiers, likely on account of the soldiers having been so scientifically protected and reprotected by this pet and prince of murderous frauds, "vaccination." One of the first questions the reader will ask is, how is it possi- 274 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ble that all these different diseases which are given hundreds of dif- ferent scientific names by the medical profession, and described in so many different ways that the description would fill dozens of large volumes? The second question that will be asked is how is it pos- sible that all these hundreds of so-called different diseases can pos- sibly be due to only three causes? The third question which will be asked will undoubtedly be as to the sanity of the author. Never- theless it is positively true that the theory so strongly held that con- tagion, quarantine and vaccination are causes and preventions of dis- ease is a fraud, a deception, an imposition and murderous. Further, these so-called fundamental principles upon which the cause and the prevention of disease to-day are practically based are only a means of increasing the spread of diseases instead of preventing them. The first and second questions are easily answered, and based upon the same law that can be easily observed in feeding milk to a hundred different people of different colors, races, sexes, temperaments, etc. Under all these different conditions this same milk will produce hun- dreds, yes thousands, of different conditions, such as black skin, brown skin, red skin, curly hair, red hair, black hair, blonde and brown hair, besides nourishing hundreds of different organs and functions of the body. Again feed this same milk to a hundred different kinds of ani- mals and we get as many different kinds of effects; in birds many kinds of feathers will be produced; in animals various kinds of wool, and in others numerous kinds of hide and hair. In all these vari- ous conditions we have the normal or healthy action of the atmos- phere. This absolute law and the principle involved no one will dispute. Then if, milk alone combined with the action of the air upon the body of man and animal will produce so many hundreds, yes thousands, of different conditions, we would respectfully ask, does not this same law become still more complex, when considered in connection with the various kinds of foods that all these different kinds of the human race and numerous kinds of animals eat and live upon ? Does not the answer to the question seem easy to the reader ? If pure food and pure air will produce so many thousands of differ- ent conditions that are called healthy and normal conditions, is it not clear that poor food and impure air will produce hundreds of dif- THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 275 ferent conditions that are abnormal, or as they are commonly called, disease? Now reversing the above by changing it to impure air and pure food would it not be able to change them again in a little different kind of condition, that is abnormal, and termed dis- ease? Further, is it not a well known and a well established fact that certain kinds of conditions of the air, when acting upon the surface of skin of the body, will either produce a healthy action of the body or that these same conditions of the air may seriously dis- turb or entirely obstruct one or more of the functions of the body, according to the conditions of the body at that particular time ? If we will add to these hundreds of conditions called disease, those that can be produced within the body by the combination and action of improper food and the action of the moist, damp, hot or cold air upon the skin, and thus) affecting the nerves and the circulation of the blood through the skin, thereby influencing the general circu- lation of the blood by contracting or closing the pores and also con- tracting these millions of fine capillary blood vessels, impeding natural blood circulation in the skin, this condition makes it impossible for the inner forces of the body to resist the outer influences of the air upon the body. It is this power of the outer influences of the air over the inner forces of a delicate or weak person whether this weak- ness is due to their natural constitution; whether it be during con- valescing from some disease or whether the weakness is due to some chronic trouble, or whether the person's inner forces are brought be- low par by mental disturbances, such as worry, grief, overwork, or the want of sleep, the want of food to nourish the body, overeating, etc. Any of these or in combinations will be liable to produce an effect from a common cold or sore throat to lung or brain fever, or any of the inflammatory diseases, and if an abnormal amount of waste matter should have accumulated for some time the effect of this outer influence of the air will surely start up one of the various forms of fever or one of the eruptive diseases, or it will affect that part or organ which has the least resistance, and it will be the weaker part or organ at that time to resist these outer forces of the atmos- pheric air, and if this organ should be the lungs consumption may result, etc. The above conditions of the system will often occur 276 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE under the normal conditions of the air or climate in which we live. Yes, it is by the action of the ordinary, or what would be commonly called healthy conditions of the atmosphere, that hundreds of dif- ferent kinds of conditions can be produced which are called disease, and known by as many different names. Why does this normal air produce so many different conditions? Because its action and con- tact is upon just so many kinds of different conditions in different parts and upon different bodies that cannot resist at that particular time the influence of the healthy or pure air. This influence of the external forces upon the body are sometimes only temporary; for instance, the influence upon a healthy person attending a funeral is well known, and usually the effect is most marked upon the mour- ners, and has often been the means of strengthening the foolish the- ory of contagion because the action and the law by which these con- ditions are brought about are not understood. Some of the friends of the mourners should see to it that some means be applied to keep up an active skin circulation, perhaps by a sponge bath and rubbing the skin, or give them some stimulating drink to bridge them over these trying hours and this would often prevent a serious illness, or, as often occurs, a second or third funeral. The cause of yellow fever and how to prevent it has not only baffled the brains of individuals, but whole nations, and it is now no nearer solution than centuries ago. Why has yellow fever so baffled science ? Simply this, simply because one plain physiological truth is not known. What is this physiological truth? The knowledge of the power that circulates the blood and nothing else. This one fact that (which the writer was the first person to demonstrate) the ele- ment which is instrumental in creating the force that circulates the blood throughout the system is received from the air through the lungs is the key, chit and tap root to demonstrate as plainly as that twice two is four, as to what is the cause of yellow fever. The writer is free to acknowledge that he has never seen a case of yellow fever, but we are willing to bind ourselves to go to state prison the rest of our days and live on bread and water if we are wrong in the prin- ciples and the law that we are going to give as the cause of this dreaded disease of the tropics. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 277 The first and main cause is the lack of oxygen in the blood, the want of sufficient oxygen from the air; this means the want of suf- ficient power to run this human machine shop. We have seen in another chapter that the blood in the arteries contains about twenty- three per cent of oxygen and the blood in the veins about fifteen per cent; this shows that about eight per cent is used in combustion or the nourishment of the body; at the same time this natural proc- ess makes the dark venous blood negative and the arterial positive, and gives the venous blood sufficient force to be attracted along its course to the lungs. But let this air in these hot climates become such as to reduce this supply of oxygen in the arterial blood from twenty- three per cent down to ten, twelve, or fourteen per cent, and since six or eight per cent of this is used up in nutrition, it is as plain as the noonday sun that there will be a sluggishness in the blood; that it will be almost impossible to pass as it must through the liver and perform its needed function of this organ in creating and secret- ing the bile, which is held in the circulation and thrown out upon the skin, causing the yellow appearance of the patient, from which arises the name yellow fever. But the reader must bear in mind that this condition of the atmosphere alone may cause sufficient sluggish- ness of the system to produce yellow fever upon certain constitu- tions, but like our epidemics in the north, in most cases there is a combination of causes; for instance, a man's constitution may be able, with the proper care, to escape, but he overeats; perhaps in being a glutton at only one meal, combined with the already existing sluggishness of the circulation of the blood, might overtax the sys- tem, and the conditions of the air, to create the obstructions of the functions of the system or it may be by a hard day's work, which would assist in bringing about the above described systemic con- ditions. Yellow fever usually breaks out near the coast, and the sudden coolness and dampness of the night air contracts the pores of the skin, causing the skin to retain the solid matter, while the skin has been too relaxed during the day while eliminating the vapory matter, which greatly assists in clogging up the glands, and this has much to do in producing the conditions of the system which is termed yellow fever. So like all other diseases it can be produced 278 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE by the atmospheric condition alone or in combination with the exist- ing local conditions acting upon the existing conditions of the body. So we see that the law is identical in the South as in the North, only the form of organization and disorganization of the elements dif- fer according to the differences of surroundings. Anyone devot- ing a little reasoning to this law can easily see how any mental excite- ment or anxiety would produce the proper condition of the body to develop yellow fever, where if this same mind had been passive or cheerful it would have escaped the disease. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the panic and excitement produced by the damnable and false contagious craze, bred and inculcated in the South, either purposely or through ignorance is caused by self-made authori- ties who have no knowledge of the laws of human physiology and the effects of existing surroundings upon the individual. To prevent yellow fever in the South the same law should be followed that is necessary to prevent epidemics in the North. Authorities should keep the general local conditions pure. The families should be taught and required to keep their houses pure, and most of all the individual should be taught how to keep his system as pure as pos- sible; that is, get up well as possible every morning under the exist- ing atmospheric conditions until they return to what is termed nor- mal in those climates, or get away where better conditions exist. The individual should first of all keep a passive and cheerful mental state of the mind or brain, sleep more, eat very moderately of plain, nourish- ing food, and increase the breathing, in order to relieve the system of carbonic acid and charge the blood with as much Oxygen as pos- sible under those trying conditions of the air which exist during an epidemic of yellow fever; this latter is the most important. Many a mother will take me to task when I say that the doctors are murderers, are ruiners to the constitutions of millions, and are degenerating the vitality of the race. How many will say that they know Dr. So and So saved the life of my child when it had scarlet fever, when the child lay there four or eight weeks between life and death and how hard he worked to save it and finally did save its life, with perhaps a running ear, or sore eyes, or, perhaps, partly blind? But all these praises fall flat when it is known that no case THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 279 of scarlet fever will last more than from four to ten days if properly nursed and no medicine given. When these facts are understood this mother will know that it was the treatment of her child by this doc- tor, whom she so loudly praised, that kept her child between life and death for so many weeks. We do not claim that all cases treated by doctors run such a bad course as this, and thousands of them do, but we do claim that none of them get well any faster than they would if no medicine were given and they were well nursed, which only means to keep their skin moist or in a mild perspiration in order to keep the eruption out, which is only nature's method of getting rid of the poison that has accumulated up to such propor- tions as to arouse the system to her extraordinary method of throw- ing it off. But it must not be understood that medicine in many cases is of no avail; on the contrary medicine properly selected and properly administered will often do much good and help even to shorten the duration of sickness above mentioned several days, but nearly all the treatments used by the old and dominant schools of medicine are injurious and dangerous. Unless the public will awaken to the fact and take active interest and study the effect of these few and very simple and well known laws and conditions, and learn that they alone produce disease of all kinds, it is as certain as it is certain that the sun shines that the constitutions of most of the people living at the present time will be more or less deteriorated and many entirely ruined by the gentle- manly confidence methods of the medical profession. It is simply and purely a confidence game. Nowhere is deception and fraud committed with such ruinous and murderous results to our nation as in the drugging fraternity, who for generations have gradually mis- led the public mind, under the pretense of making wonderful and marvelous cures. Then are we not right in including this murder- ous gang as one of the great causes of disease, if not the greatest of all causes? For anything that will debilitate the constitution of any individual makes this person just that much more susceptible to disease and just that much more easily affected by these general changes in the atmosphere and also more susceptible to local condi- tions. Perhaps the greatest wrong of all is that this incessant drug- 280 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ging must result in the deteriorating or lowering of the constitutions of those yet to be born. We are continually crying about national prosperity, national honor, etc., but we rarely hear a word about the prosperity of the physical constitutions of our nation. Have we stated a fundamental truth? Is not the physical constitution of a nation its greatest blessing and the greatest factor in national pros- perity? Those fathers and mothers who have endowed us with a gift so infinitely precious as life, together with a good and well propor- tioned constitution, and this under a government where we can en- joy and accomplish, are deserving of the highest veneration, love and honor. O ye that are the recipients of this marvelous and price- less gift should exult, clutch and prize your being; compared with it all else is vanity of vanities. No one has ever inherited so vast a fortune as those endowed with a good and well-balanced consti- tution, yet none are quite as poor or utterly destitute as those who do not possess it. Are not those peasants immeasurably rich in whom a good constitution abounds? Are not those princes pitiably poor whose life functions are feeble? Then can there be a greater crime committed by anyone than by those who, under the pretense of science, under the pretense of being a benefactor, under the pre- tense of a noble and honorable profession, under the pretense of be- ing a friend, under the pretense of being a Christian, funnels drugs down your throat which the scoundrels know you do not need, and cuts, scrapes or removes healthy organs for the filthy lucre and reputation to be gained under the present state of public sentiment and public confidence? These are almost daily occurrences in any locality, and is the same everywhere; the greater the reputation of the physician the more of it he does, and anyone who will even warn or advise, and actually prove to these credulous believers the error they are being led into, a rebuke is in most cases your reward. They have confidence in what their physician says, and believe no one else, while but few will ever be thankful for the timely advice. Why is this so? Because the public have no correct first princi- ples to guide them, therefore they approve only those principles which are falsely created. All education and practices for good constitu- 281 THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE. tions and the good health of a nation must grow out of right funda- mental principles. These fundamental principles must be in har- mony with nature. This involves the correct analysis of these laws, and this is just what our modern education lacks, and must con- tinue to lack so long as the public puts confidence in an organiza- tion of which at least three-fourths, if not nine-tenths, of its teach- ings and practices are deception, a* murderous fraud, and most of it purposely so, and the rest of it is due to ignorance. Does not per- sonal self interest imperiously command every human being to ascer- tain with absolute certainty whether or no these statements are real facts? The intelligent, the observing, know them to be true, know that they are not a scarecrow or a nursery melody. Is not, then, each member of the whole human family under the most sacred obligations to gain, with whatever capacity he may possess, what knowledge he can to ascertain whether the truth of our accusations does really exist? Is it not your bounden duty to ascertain for your- self, your family and their generations yet to be born, whether vacci- nation is murderous, a fraud purposely and designedly held before the public because it is popular and believed to be beneficial, just for the money there is in it? Is it not your bounden duty to ascer- tain if quarantine is false, and whether or not it helps to produce the spread of diseases? Is it not your bounden duty to ascer- tain that the theory of disease being contagious is an absolute phy- sical impossibility? Is it not your bounden duty to ascertain that if the theory that germs or microbes produce disease is false, that the treatment based upon this theory must be very injurious to the constitutions of mankind? You need no scientific knowledge to fulfill this duty. A little observation and the study of the visible manifestations of natural law and close attention to those frauds who promulgate these ideas is all that is needed. Millions say they do not see how these theories can be true, but because all leading doctors say so it must be so. Everyone with good reasoning faculties, who will apply them to these subjects, must condemn them, and if the laws that govern all in nature are studied the absolute and positive proofs demonstrate for all time that these so-called fundamental prin- ciples upon which the cause and prevention of disease is now based 282 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE are false, dangerous and ruining to the life and the constitutions of humanity. On the other hand the doctor or layman who believes that the theories of contagion, quarantine, vaccination and the germ theory as a cause of disease are right, and conscientiously stand by them, should be honestly met and honestly answered. Such persons are deserving of the highest respect and should be met by the most candid and demonstrative arguments. Knock off these shackles of antiquity, superstition, fads and dis- honesty that have existed for the past two thousand years, only differ- ing in form during the different centuries, as to what produces disease, and then let the world become a unit upon the three sentences at the head of this chapter, and making them the first essential in all educa- tional institutions, the world would in a few generations, if these three laws are understood and followed, revel in health and physical enjoy- ment. Of course the first essential for this enjoyment is to be born right, to have a good constitution, with organs well balanced and well pro- portioned to the rest of the body. Such a constitution is usually termed an iron or steel constitution, and if they live out their allotted time, which very few do, they would live to be 125 to 150 years old. Then comes what might be called oak or hickory constitutions, that will live to the age of 80 to 100 years; the basswood and pine consti- tutions may be classed from 55 to 75 years. Very few would fall below these ages if born reasonably well, yet we have a fine and delicate class of shrubbery that blooms and carries away the prize for beauty and refinement for a few years, then fades and decays like the rose in autumn. These are often well balanced constitutions, only differing in their quality. But let us ask how many people are born with a well-balanced constitution? Probably 95 per cent are not well proportioned and each one of these differs from the other, besides each differing in the mode of living and working. These facts, which no one will dispute, answer every question that can possibly be asked or undoubtedly will be asked. It seems almost impossible that the thousands of different ailments and diseases that humanity is afflicted with in the different climates of the world should be due to only three great causes, but it is all as absolutely true as 283 THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE it is true that two parts of hydrogen gas and one of oxygen form water, but if we take two parts of hydrogen and two of oxygen we have a poison called peroxide of hydrogen. Just as we form two hun- dred thousand words from twenty-four letters by arranging these let- ters into different groups, just so do these dozen or fifteen elements of nature, when formed into different groups, produce all these thou- sands of different conditions called health and disease, and this same law of arrangement of these elements, or, as we have elsewhere termed it, the organization and reorganization of these elements, health is restored and disease and death produced. If all this could not be proven by known and absolute laws of the natural elements it could be easily proven by observation of well-known facts. For instance, among the animals and savages we find but very few kinds of disease. Why is this so? Because they propagate their species and kind quite evenly; all live in about the same way; they do not, like civilized man, live in almost as many ways as there are different individuals; they do not exercise one particular organ to its full capacity, and even beyond, at the expense of all the rest for the sake of the almighty dollar or for the imagined "glory of fame" in politics, in religion, in business, in scholarship, in society, in dress, tight lacing, etc. To answer this same question again, do we not find that among civilized people that those who are born with well-balanced organs and body and live a well-balanced life, that they live to a good old age and are very rarely, if ever, sick?-although nearly all of these well-balanced people do double and treble the work that others do, but exercise all functions evenly instead of exercising only one or two of the organs to excess, and if well mated by nature in marriage their children enjoy the same natural privileges until one or the other, through changes, conditions and inducements, are brought to taste the vanities and ambi- tions of the civilized man to excel his neighbor, when he is not really adapted for it, and by the continual exercise of some one of his mental or physical organs to such a high degree that the least exposure excites or inflames these overworked organs, which if they had been kept working in a balanced manner just as much could probably have been accomplished besides saving a long siege of sickness if not his life, when otherwise he would have lived thirty, forty or fifty years longer, 284 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and all this because he overtaxed his stomach and kidneys by excessive eating, drinking or otherwise dissipating to just gratify an organ of the brain that had become overexcited, produced by unnatural habits and pleasures created by a people not inclined either through ignorance or wrong education to follow the dictates of nature, which must be followed or we will suffer or die as our punishment. Another law is that nature adapts each race to the climate and conditions it exists in. In warm climates we find, as a rule, larger lungs and chests in proportion to the body than in temperate climates, while in a cold climate we find the digestive organs larger and more powerful than in the warm climate. Compare the Esquimaux with the Filipinos or with the negro of Africa. All this nature has so nicely arranged, if men would not abuse them by wrong living, especially in the abuse of sexual laws, which only civilized man abuses. Nearly every case of summer complaint, dysentery, cholera, etc., is due to eating foods that are greasy and fat, because the system does not get oxygen enough from the hot air in summer to give power to the organs of digestion and the rest of the body to digest their food. Therefore we must repeat that the oxygen of the air is the power that gives force and energy to every organ of the body, the less oxygen the weaker every organ and function of the body. Avoid fatty foods in summer and eat sparingly of what foods you eat and do not work to overtax the system. In hot weather we have but little steam power, therefore must not give the machinery of the body much to do; if we do, the organ which is the weakest or the one which is overtaxed will become clogged or its functions arrested. Give your children the purest air possible, day and night; in summer time plain food at regu- lar hours, and not fats; plenty of sleep; do not let them overtire at play or study, and if born reasonably healthy they will escape those diseases that carry off millions every year. A whole volume could not possibly tell you more about the cause of the diseases of childhood in summertime. That germs produce these diseases, as now taught, is a fraud and deception from first to last. If you always bear in mind that your blood can not circulate good unless you breathe good air you will never commit the error of letting any of the family sleep where it can not be had as good as it is out doors; it is the power THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 285 and life of every minute part of the body. Remember this and you will stop making the blunders that humanity has made for two thousand years. Why do so many of our strongest and most healthy men die at fifty and fifty-five years from apoplexy and paralysis who ought to have lived thirty to forty years longer? Only because they exercise one set of organs continually, the brain and the nervous system, hardly ever giving them a chance to rest. They often brag how they have done it for twenty or thirty years, but forgetting that continual fric- tion wears and that under this strain the final result is not some func- tional disturbance that can recuperate but is a smash-up that can not be repaired; the brain and the nervous system is worn out and all the other sound organs die with it before they have lived out much more than half of their natural existence, and all just because their vanity caused them to desire to outclass their neighbor in dollars and cents. Jay Gould is a splendid example; the late M. Lehman of Chicago Fair Store fame is another. Neither of these men lived much more than half of the natural endowment of life allotted to them by nature, because they determined to outclass everyone in their line. Thousands of such cases could be recorded, and there are as many more who break down a certain organ of the body, thus killing the whole body by high living, excessive eating and drinking, out- classing their neighbor in that line. Bright's disease of the kidneys is usually its consequence. School children and students, perhaps more than any other class, are continually overdrawing the strength that is needed to build up the physical body to the proper standard, and no other fad or fraud is much more injurious to health than is our present educational system. It is filled with senseless fads that are shortening the lives of the present generation and is adding but little to the practical and useful training of our youth. When these school children and students have completed their school work, 90 per cent of them have had their physical strength lowered and are capable of doing less physical work. Their studies should have been limited to the reserve energy remaining after supplying the body needed strength for growth and development, and when our educational sys- tem is made to conform to proper physical conditions we will have fewer broken-down constitutions and greater length of life. Just look 286 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE around anywhere and see what these children are. They are physic- ally wrecked goslings, stuffed and crammed for ten or twelve years way beyond their physical capacity with Greek and hog Latin and a whole lot of clap-trap which is no earthly use to nine-tenths of them. Our educational institutions are run to give the best financial success to them instead of giving the best education to the student. The waste of all health and future physical condition is not considered; and if this is true, then their ignorance of nature's laws, which really ought to be the chit and taproot of all education, is most lamentable. A large percentage of students do not get up in the morning in as good condition as they ought to be before going to bed the night before, then wonder they can't remember what they read, or worse, that so many drift into consumption or become nervous wrecks before twenty-five from the overtaxing of some of the functions of body at the expense of others. A student should be taught to work and work systematically, but should be continually warned of this and that they ought to know, but as a rule do not, that to work beyond their capacity was not to get up well every morning but was only wasted energy and by it nothing gained, except to sow the seed for future disease if not at present. Let us for a moment apply this law of ''going to bed sick at night and getting up well in the morning" to the general laboring class and its relations to the employer. About fifty thousand people own more than one-half of all the wealth between two oceans, and more than 90 per cent of the rest of the 80,000,000 are slaves de facto. We have miles of costly palaces, a grand parade of soldiery and ships; in some unnecessary directions wealth is poured out in foolish pageantry and affectation, which is developing into a gilded halo of decay; our literature is yellow; the medical profession is rotten to the core; the voices heard from the pulpit have a strong tinge of jaundice; too many members of our society are puppets who imagine that their bodies have the taint of the impure blood that once flowed through the arteries of corrupt or barbarous kings. With these conditions staring us in the face, can we wonder that the constitutions descended from our once glorious ancestors are already rank with decadence and constitutional disease THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 287 which presents an odor of decay? There is not, nor can there be, an antiseptic germicide known to science that will prevent this physical putri faction. These conditions exist both among the employers and employes. As a general statement it is true that each have a distinct type of disease. Is this due to the pernicious activity of a horned monster inherent in the human heart, or shall we call it the power of the Devil, who is continually at war with the truth? Which is the father of the falsehood. It is really this: It is our own active personality combined with a vicious principle, due to the greed for the almighty golden calf on the one hand and the honest effort for existence on the other, without any regard as to the effect upon our health or physical well-being; due mostly to ignorance, often to care- lessness of the effect of these natural surroundings upon our natural bodily activity; each have been creating, either for gold or grub, or to obtain some idea or simple praise, and they have overdrawn their physical bank account and we suffer accordingly. Conceding that all this is honorable, why can it not all be accomplished and all at the same time be acting and working in harmony with the laws of their physical being, and so all gaining a hundredfold more benefit by first gratifying their ambitions, second, by holding or improving their natural given powers and perpetuating them upon future generations. How can this greatest of all great accomplishments of the human race be fulfilled ? By simply knowing how to work and live during the day so that this body of yours which is sick every night will get up well every morning, then each insisting that all written or unwritten laws be based and regulated upon these simple natural and absolute laws. Then there would be no need of strikes, labor organizations, riots, etc.; there would be no need of the nervous physical wrecks among employ- ers and business and professional men that now exists. There would be no need of sending out into the world a lot of tootsie-wootsie and patent complexions, reeking full of constitutional weaknesses that will, under an ordinary March wind, fade into consumption or other dis- eases due to the action of even what may be termed normal atmospheric conditions, but acting upon abnormally begotten constitutional weak- nesses. If the one fact could be established in the minds of the public 288 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE that there are only a few causes that produce the thousands of differ- ent conditions called by as many thousands of different kinds of dis- eases, the problem of health and disease would become a simple one. All will admit this fact in regard to colds producing disease. Place five thousand people under the same surroundings in a cold air and we find many coming down with inflammatory rheumatism; in others it will aggravate a chronic tendency to this same disease; many will take lung fever; others sore throats of the various and different forms; others will take bronchitis of many different degrees; some will take on the form of la grippe, and others will have some bowel complaint, diarrhoea, etc. A few may take on the form of brain fever, or spinal inflammation, while perhaps two-thirds of these five thousand will escape unharmed; all this from the same identical cause-cold-and the cause of so many different kinds of diseases in so many healthy persons, under the same surroundings, is because this cold acted upon so many different conditions; that is, no two of these five thousand people were alike in their systemic conditions, constitutions, mental state, etc., therefore the results must be as stated. This is an absolute law. But this is not all. We have another class of diseases produced from cold; it is the class of diseases that affect the functions of the system gradually, thus checking the eliminating functions or sewers of the body. This is unusually raw, damp or moist weather, and this kind of air does not give up oxygen into the blood through the lungs as dry cold air does. This dowers the internal forces just that much and gives this cold damp air just that much more power to act exter-> nally upon the skin and contract its pores, thus retaining much more waste matter and also obstructing nervous functions within the system, and its effect upon the health of the individual will be in proportion as the difference in the resistance between these external forces of the air and the internal forces of the body, always remembering to make allowances for the various differences in the actual and not the apparent health. True, the difference in their natural or constitutional differ- ences and especially their local surroundings and methods of living or working must all be taken into account. Does it not appear as clear as the noonday sun that any kind of cold air must act differently, or, rather, more favorably, upon those people that get up perfectly THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 289 well every morning than upon those that do not? Again, this same cold air must have a different influence upon the body in the evening after working all day, or when very tired, than it would in the morning, when the system is, or at least should be, well. The same identical causes produce the blood diseases, such as smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., but the method in which this condition of the air, whether local or general, affects the system is different; we say different-perhaps it is more proper to say different in degree, in the above-named diseases (blood diseases) ; the action or effect is more upon the blood by not 'purifying it enough and not relieving the blood of their poisons through the lungs, and secondly, by not charging the blood with oxygen. This is what, as we have often repeated, makes all functions of the body sluggish, thus gradually obstructing the glandular functions, and it is the degree of these several causes that finally forms the compound or poison which produces one or the other of these diseases, and it is in just the proportion and degree of these conditions that makes it possible that one of these diseases or epidemics will predominate or take the lead, as in these epidemics all of these diseases exist in a greater or less degree, but one of them being in the lead according to the degree that the conditions exist which have so often been explained throughout this book. Does not a little reflec- tion bring to your mind the accuracy of this statement? Does it not show that even if the law by which all these things take place could be demonstrated would it be sufficient evidence to show that all these diseases are produced from one and the same cause, only differing in degree and in the activity of the then existing conditions ? Just exactly, and by the same law, that if you take the five or six leading colors you can, by mixing them up in different proportions, produce hundreds of different shades, and give them hundreds of different names. But all of these hundreds of shades were produced by a few causes (colors), but by using one of the colors in predominance or in larger proportion this predominant color will appear and be visible as the predominant feature. Could we make it more plain that these diseases are all produced by the few causes mentioned? The beauty of it all is that it is an absolute law of nature, and have we not made it clear that our statement in another part that if the public once knew how simple 290 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the whole cause of disease is to understand that the physicians would be the most melancholy lot on the face of the earth and that there would be no need of one physician where there are now ten practicing ? Is it not, then, a disgrace to an intelligent public to be ignorant of these laws? Is it not a disgrace that they are not taught to every child in the land? Would it not be a disgrace to employ a teacher in a school that is not entirely conversant with and competent to teach these simple laws that can be learned and understood as easily as it is for a child to learn the A B C's ? Do not be content in reading them over and by just reading them over once only partially understand them; but reread them, study, and learn to understand them; make them a part of yourself, become interested in the subject, for the benefit of yourself, your family and your neighbors. Will you do it? The changes in the practice of medicine remind one of the changes in religion in the fifteenth century, when Luther denied and defied the one-man infallibility, in a voice that still echoes down the ages, a potent force still battling for the right, but what he secured for him- self he refused to those who followed. An infallible book took the place of the infallible man. Homeopathy was the Luther of the medical reformation. The abuses previous to this reformation that were fought and finally vanquished were many, such as bleeding and blistering, the poisoning of the system with mercury and the enormous doses of medicine given; but the right of private judgment, the boon of indi- vidual liberty, was still not secured, because the recognition of home- opathy rests upon the acceptance of their great law of cure. Deny this and you are excluded from fellowship in allopathy and homeopathy alike. The right of private judgment is denied. Both shout authority for truth and not the truth for authority, as in the religious world. Rome stands for the infallibility of the church, and creed-bound Prot- estantism for the infallibility of a book, while a clear-eyed, great-souled saving remnant, with malice toward none and caring for all, are serenely and confidently battling for freedom, fellowship, character and religion; but in the medical world allopathy as voiced by the American Association stands for the infallibility of its organization and strives to monopolize public favor by calling to its support the THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASE 291 strong arm of the law; homeopathy walls itself in and the rest of the profession out by its dogma of similia similibus curantur; while a third school, that call themselves eclectics, claim for all the untram- meled right of private judgment in all matters medical. So far good and well. This sounds very good on paper, but when we examine the foundation of this new structure we find it built upon the same foundation that the two dominant schools rest on, viz., the germ theory as a cause of disease; vaccination as a preventive of smallpox; horse juice (antitoxin) as a preventive and cure of diphtheria; the theory of contagion as a spreader of disease, and quarantine as a preventive of spreading disease; but if all the ghosts that have been sent to heaven and hades by these five monstrous humbugs and frauds would organize themselves into Boxers their number would be so great that it would be an easier task to send the whole medical fra- ternity of the world to the bottom of the ocean than it would be for the Boxers in China to drive our representatives and missionaries without any protection out of Pekin. We have often been amused when listening to the expression of individuals from different schools of medicine about the broadness of their views and the liberality of their methods, and to observe the actual bigotry of their views, the intense undercurrent of antipathy which they often entertain toward those who do not believe as they do. Physicians as a class are all too narrow in their sentiments toward each other. They are too jealous, selfish and uncharitable and devote most of their time to scheming against each other at the expense of a poor, suffering patient, when they should of all others entertain the broadest charity toward each other and should be entirely uninfluenced by prejudice, then with such a clear view they would be able to more fully analyze the visible manifestations of nature, which are only the expressions of their atomic and molecular actions. This unbiased and unselfish mind is far more necessary and essential than would at first appear, because a man, as a general rule, thinks about this or that mainly as he himself is. Nearly all look at things through glasses colored like themselves and an acquisitive man looks and judges all things, politics, business, science, etc., simply in the light of dollars. 292 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Kind people look upon things from the standpoint of public benefit; aristocratic people from that of popularity; reasoning people from that of philosophy; conscientious people from that of abstract right and duty; matter-of-fact persons' from that of experiments, etc., and always the wish is father of the thought. HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE. "THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN." We are often solemnly assured that the world is steadily growing wiser, better and more progressive; on the other hand I think all will agree that this is an age of artificiality; that there is very little left that is genuine, except a gold dollar, the microbe and the com- plexion of the ladies-and the genuineness of the latter has occasion- ally been disputed. The cheerful optimist, alias the medical college professor, is forever prating of the wonderful progress in the science of medicine and the prevention of disease. But despite this optimistic cackle anent the march of medical science, disease is rapidly on the increase and it is beginning to dawn upon the thinking public that there is something radically wrong. There is no lack of remedies; the drug stores are full of panaceas accompanied by a sure cure blown into each bottle. Strange that all these Catholicons who pretend to prevent and cure all earthly ills do not inaugurate a microbe trust to prevent their invasion of so much territory, in order to at least improve the deplorable condition of the people while gratifying their pecuniary greed, for the true test of man's charity is not how much he gives to others but how little he reserves for himself. But drawing a salary of five to ten thousand a year as health officer and in return giving nothing to the public but a small syringe full of horse juice injected under the skin to cure disease and a tube of pus vaccine to prevent disease and practically lock up in the house the healthy with the sick to prevent them from taking into the system the steam power of all animal life, pure oxygen, then call a man a kicker or professionally unethical because he wages uncompromising war upon these methods that are murdering or at least wrecking the constitutions of millions that generations can not wipe out. Would it not have been better for the world if these pious frauds who are short on brains and long on gall had been educated in a mule pen and given straw diplomas? 293 294 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Then he might at least be a success in comparative ethnology and put on style with a pair of number twelves with copper toes and write philosophical lectures, give good advice to the ladies and kick the tenderloin of any man who intimated that the world could get along without him. It is said that the shortest route to the heart of the average person is through his pocket, but the shortest route to the grave, or at least to being badly crippled up while you are on the road, is to keep on swallowing the average doctor's stuff, and when your purchases of drugs become as regular and as necessary as the breakfast toddy of an old toper and your last shekels are rattling in the pockets of these sanctimonious frauds, then they are ready to clasp you to their bosoms and say, "I will shield thee from the troubles and sorrows of the world and issue you a free transport to heaven," and with a sign that would give the shaking palsy to a drove of dromedaries, "Well done, thou faithful servant, eternal peace is thine." Then with a Lord's will sermon, the beautiful song of a quartette, a few days of "Oh, it is too bad that Miss So-an-So had to die so young," and all quiet down to business again. But most of these contemptible bipedal animals (doctors) are as ready as ever to assist the willing and unwilling victim that imagines he has and possibly may have some slight functional disturbance and if it is possible to make the victim believe that he has some dangerous malady, especially if lots of shekels are in sight; then all the care and kindness that medical science has invented under a pretense of curing a disease which they never had when finally ruined in constitution or killed by the scientific care and drugs, until at last, in the language of their best, all human skill was exhausted, but to no avail; whereas if these great little doc- tors would have devoted a little time beforehand to acquiring a little knowledge of natural law they could, provided they would honestly apply this knowledge for the benefit of the people, save thousands if not millions of precious youths annually among the rich and poor. No one can distinguish between the ashes of a youthful senator and the pauper's dust over which the birds hum and worms crawl but which once lived and were loved. We busy ourselves about the style of a suit, and much about some one else's business; we dispute about our faiths and supersti- HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 295 tions and plan new follies; we all struggle for wealth so we can flaunt a petty pride in the faces of our fellows and win the envy and applause of fools; we quarrel about our political creeds and religious cults as though it made any difference whether we worshiped at the shrine of Jupiter or in the temples of Jehovah in order to live and enjoy three, four or five score of years, but the laws that endow the human race to enjoy and live to its fullest capacity of time are laws that never change and never will, and they lay before us, for all practical purposes, as plain as the noonday sun. To understand how to apply these laws in harmony with your being is the knowledge we want, and it is the only knowledge, when rightly applied, that will prevent disease. The prevention of disease should be the first step toward all education; we may disagree in matters of government, or in religion, but in matters of prevention of disease we must be and act in harmony with nature and then, and then only, should we think alike, act alike. Fashions, pride, selfishness, all must be put aside, and we must all be harmonious upon this one paramount question, for nature will make no distinctions between rich and poor, between ignorant or classics, between the saint or culprit; it is all the same to her, whether among sumptuous courts, chanting priests or tearful penitents. You must be in harmony with the mandates of this king, the laws of nature. For several hundred years we have occasionally heard something said here and there about natural law, but take all the literature of the medical profession and no two words are so rarely seen as the two words natural law. Occasionally some one will say disease is a violation of nature's laws, but disease is not a violation of a natural law. Disease is a natural law, just as health is a natural law. Death itself is a natural law; the lightning that strikes you dead or burns your home is a natural law; the earthquake that buries a city and its inhabitants is a natural law; further, these unwelcome visitations of nature are nothing under heaven but the organization and action of the same identical elements or forces that give us the beautiful winds and sunshine. Health and life are only the organization of these elements under certain conditions and counter organizations producing different conditions, and we are most always by our own actions par- tially or wholly to blame for many changes and conditions produced 296 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE by this law of organization and disorganization of these elements into conditions which we term disease or health, life or death. To make this clear is to make prevention of disease clear. We beg the reader to pardon us if we should detail and make many little explanations that to some would appear unnecessary and superfluous, but we con- sider the substance of this chapter of stupendous importance to man- kind now living and to all yet to be born. But at the same time there is not a chapter in this volume that does not more or less refer and give important information as to how to prevent disease. Thousands if not millions of pages have been written upon this subject, some of it being good but mixed with so much slop spewed forth by writers that it can provoke but a contemptuous pity rather than excite the anger of intelligent people, although it must be admitted that a few at least were honestly written, but by those holding erroneous opinions. In considering the methods of preventing disease we have to con- sider the same things or conditions that cause disease; in fact we are only considering the same things or conditions that give us health and life. The first thing to consider are those conditions that give us life and finally birth; second, we have to consider the conditions that give life, growth and development after birth. All things being equal, anything formed by the natural processes of nature will have the power of living in or enduring its surroundings just in proportion to the quality of the material of which it is made and the perfectness of the balance of all its parts. The same statement will apply to anything made by man. To illustrate, a man makes fifty machines, all of the same kind of material, all equally proportioned in their parts and in the quality of each part. If all these machines are used and taken care of alike, all would last about the same length of time, but if these fifty machines are owned by fifty different men, each using and taking care of them differently, we would find their length of existence to differ very greatly. Some would be injured by hard usage, others by being exposed to the sun, rain or cold, and others by both abuses. Now if the limit of the usefulness of these machines, with proper care and usage, was twenty-five years, would not these machines, if misused, wear out in perhaps five years, some eight years, some in ten, fifteen or twenty years ? But suppose these fifty machines HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 297 were made up of all kinds of different material, some made of steel, some iron, some hickory, some pine, but each perfect and well balanced and proportioned in each of their parts and all used to perform the same kind of work, how long would the pine machine last beside that of the steel? Although in appearance very little, if any, difference could be noticed in the two machines, the iron and hickory machines would hold out a good period but would not last like the steel machine. This, of course, under the same conditions; but suppose the steel machine was roughly used by its owner, because it was steel and thought it could not be broken, he would greatly shorten its years of usefulness. On the other hand, if the owner of the hickory machine is intelligent enough to know the material of which it is made and that it would last as long or nearly as long as the steel one if he used it according to its strength, by this he could make it last as long as the steel one would with hard usage. Again, supposing the life of the steel machine, with proper use and care, was one hundred years, and the iron one eighty years, the hickory one sixty-five years, and the pine at twenty-five years, the life of these machines could be shortened in just the proportion they would be abused or poorly taken care of. If this were all it would be easy to make calculations and perhaps easy to learn how each machine could live out its natural or allotted time, but the hardest and most difficult problem is to come. Suppose that these machines are made at the factory with recklessness and regardless of any law or proportion, so that some will have one or more weak parts, some weak in their main or vital parts, some weak in less impor- tant parts, and in some the parts be perfect in the quality of the material but not well proportioned to the size of the other parts of the machine. To illustrate this last principle in the human being would be to select a man of two hundred pounds, well proportioned, and with a pair of lungs just as good in quality as the other parts of the body but too small in their proportions. These same lungs would be a first-class pair in a well proportioned man of one hundred and forty pounds, and it ought to be plain that if the two-hundred-pound man were to use his body in proportion to its size and strength, that the lungs, being one of the main organs necessary to life and existence, would suffer and break down, while the rest of the body would have 298 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE vitality enough to last twenty, thirty or forty years longer. But the lungs were broken down by being taxed for years beyond their capac- ity to supply the demands of this large body, and of course the body must die with the lungs. But if these same lungs had been in the one-hundred-and-forty-pound man and the two-hundred-pound man had had the same quality of lungs, but in proportion with the rest of the body, this would have made both men of equally good material and equally well balanced, and each could use their powers to their full capacity and each live the same length of time, all things being equal. The remedy for the two-hundred-pound man with the small lungs is to live only up to the capacity of these lungs. It can then be readily seen that in the before-mentioned fifty machines, made by reckless manufacturers, the differences could be carried out to an indefinite number, and their different uses afterwards by the purchaser could be carried out in as many more indefinite proportions. Have we not defined a law that must appeal to every thinking mind? But it is only a mechanical law subject to changes and usages by man, although as a rule this mechanical law is applied quite accurately. The manufacturing of machinery is done by skilled men with orders to do their work perfect, to put in good material and to proportion everything about the machine, so it can for a certain length of time for which it is made perform the work, provided its purchaser will take proper care of the machine and use it only for such work as it is intended. But when we apply these principles to natural law, and especially to man, what do we find? All is chaos, all is recklessness, in spite of the fact that this law has never been varied, has been and always will be the same. Man seems, even in this enlightened day, to have no more conception of the natural laws by which his life and health are gov- erned than has a mule of the glories of the morning. Notwithstanding the many beneficial principles that have been brought out from time to time by men who have devoted their lives to benefit mankind, disease is on the increase, and it seems that had the Lord himself had the laws governing health typewritten and stamped with the seal of a notary public and had delivered them in person they would pay no attention to them. But it must also be admitted that a large propor- HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 299 tion of the human family are craving for this very knowledge, and what little has been demonstrated to be good has been soon covered up or at least garbled in mysterious language and construed by the medical profession in so many different ways that it has made matters worse than if all had been left to the natural instinct of man. The life of the wild animal and the savage demonstrates this to be true. That our education and so-called civilization is false in the eye of natural law can not be denied. From what has so far been said here and in other chapters it is almost unnecessary to say that in order to live a long life in good health the first and most essential of all things is to be made right, to be made of good material and to have all the parts of the human machine well proportioned without any flaws or weaknesses; this is called the perfect constitution of man. We should at least all have a steel or hickory constitution, instead of a constitution of pine or basswood, as, we are sorry to state, is the rule and not the exception in the present growing generation, and in order that these last-named can live out a reasonable period of existence upon this earth they must be handled with care and right side up, for with any rough usage or surroundings that would not the least affect the good constitution disease is sure to overtake them. Is this a true picture of our present generation, or is it not? If it were not for the superior advantages this country has of not being so thickly populated, and having better surroundings in matters of hygiene than is found in most other countries, how much different our statistics of the average life would show, although statistics are placed before us which show that we live longer than did the people of centuries ago. This is true, if the statistics are correct, but if we were placed in the same conditions that most people of this world were placed centuries ago we would drop off like flies on a frosty night. This shows how misleading statistics are, and it is this sort of statistics the medical humbugs put before us to show what a blessing their murderous science has been to humanity. To be made right, to be born physically and mentally perfect, is, then, the first essential principle. To know how these natural elements or natural laws make things make themselves, and how and under what 300 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE conditions these laws do make things right, and how and when they make things wrong; in other words, how a man can be born with a good, well-balanced steel or hickory constitution, but as we have cov- ered this ground so fully in the chapters on sexual science and con- sumption we take up the human machine as we now generally find it after birth in this closing year of the nineteenth century. We find this human manufacturing establishment run at the present time by reckless managers, by unskilful and reckless workmen who pay no attention to how a human machine is turned out. They care not whether one part is of steel, another more important organ of pine, whether other organs have flaws, or whether they are well propor- tioned; they care not what kind of material they use, but is it not a fact that when these human machines (babies) are turned out they all seem to look about alike? But when put out to the weather and all the other conditions in which we live the varnish and the finish soon wears off of these babies. They begin to show the poor material they are made of and the many flaws and disproportions of the parts of the body. Some have flaws of the nervous system; in some the entire nervous system is of poor material; some have weak lungs and of poor material; others have good lungs but not in proportion in size with the rest of the body; others have a flaw of the stomach or kidneys; in others the sewer organs, especially the glandular sys- tem, that is so important in elimination of waste matter, are not in proportion to the rest of the body; in short, very few human beings are well proportioned in all their parts, especially in civilized countries, but in the savage and uncivilized countries the differences are not so strongly marked. But last, and not least, how are these recklessly made human machines used and taken care of after birth ? This is the all-important question, for upon that depends the matter of how long they are going to last or live without a break-down, which means disease, or how quickly they become of no use and death overtakes them. But we know that if a man buys a machine and has a good knowledge of its qualities, so that he can detect a flaw or weakness in it, he will likely, unless he is very careless, have this weakness replaced by a stronger and more sound part, and knowing the material it is made from HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 301 will use and take care of it accordingly and thus make it last its allotted time. The object of these pages is to show how to correct these weak- nesses in our children and how to detect what kind of a constitution they have, and how to improve or enlarge an organ that is small, how a weak or small organ can be brought up to the standard of the rest of the body, or nearly so; how the whole body is improved; and, lastly, how to take care of this body so that it can live out its allotted time according to its constitution. The mechanical machine is kept together by bolts, nails, screws, etc., fed with oil, sheltered from storms, etc. The human machine is formed by the organization of its constituent elements according to their inherent power given them by their Creator under certain condi- tions. The human machine is nourished and kept together by food, drink and the action of the air upon the blood when taken in through the lungs and the effect of the air and sun upon the external surface of the body. We are continually being cautioned by our sancti- monious brethren as to what to eat and drink and what not to eat and when not to eat. They also tell us that to prevent disease we must obey nature's laws, but do they tell us how to obey these laws and what to do in order to obey them? They tell us that impure air is not healthy, but do they tell us what impure air is, and in what way impure air is or becomes injurious? They tell us that we should eat good, wholesome food. Do they tell us what good, wholesome food is and how it becomes unwholesome or is dangerous to health? Do they tell us that the good food we eat today and which gives us health will produce disease and even death tomorrow, and do they explain why this is so? If a teacher should tell a child it should combine certain letters and words to form an address, does this teach the child anything? Must not this child learn how and by what law it is accomplished? In other words, must it not learn the laws of language? They also tell you to keep warm so as not to take cold, but do not explain what nature means by keeping warm. Keeping warm, as people generally understand it, is often what actually produces what is termed a cold. Anything to be effective must be understood as nature demands it 302 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE should be understood and carried out and to prevent disease it must be so carried out or you must suffer the consequences. If there is one particular point above all others, and if we were to select one that above all others which should be indelibly impressed upon the mind of the reader, or if we were to select one point in this volume as being of the most value to be understood in order to prevent disease, it would be to know the effect of the different kinds or conditions of the atmosphere in which you live upon the nerves of the skin and upon the blood, and how they affect and thus disturb the functions and fluids of the system. This state ment 'is essentially new but of more importance than all else, because this particular and important law has not been understood and even very little recognized, except in those dis- eases commonly called a cold. The ignorance of the profession in not knowing nor accepting the fact that from the air is mainly received the power that circulates the blood. So also is the air one of the principal, if not the main, powers of the body, due to its action upon the nervous system through the external surface of the body. And no doubt the rays of the sun have much to do in regulating these functions and it is the ignorance of these two main and essential points that has kept the cause and prevention of disease in the dark and left all to assumption and guess work. Does not this seem clear and reasonable to the reader, after reflection and thought? I do not mean only such diseases as come from colds, such as lung fever, etc., but I mean those dreadful diseases that make you feel as though you had seen a microbe, then look down and blush, then look up to sigh; it caught you napping, and you're gone; you begin to realize that the clinchpin has slipped from your logic, the devilish bug has probably made you drunken with the music of her voice, and you freeze to this scientific folly like a granger to his nickel-plated watch in a camp meeting crowd, and you finally wake up with smallpox, diphtheria, yel- low fever, or some other epizootic. Yes, the main cause of an epidemic of these diseases is due to the action of the air upon the nerves of the skin and the blood through the lungs under different temperatures and under different conditions and surroundings and upon the then present condition of the body. It should never be forgotten that we usually have a long term of damp or moist air of different tempera- HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 303 tures, with very little or no sunlight, preceding one of these epidemics of the blood diseases, either local or general. Let me make myself more clear by stating it in this way, that one of the main forces which control and affect that part of the nervous system which controls the functions of the skin and all functions of the body directly tributary to the skin is the external air, just as the air is the main force to affect and accomplish the circulation of the blood through the lungs. If once these two most important points are understood, and their rela- tions to each other and their good and bad effects upon the health of the body under the many different conditions of the air in which we are placed every year and during a lifetime, and how we can avoid the injurious consequences upon the normal or even weakened func- tions of the body under these varying atmospheric conditions, is to know how to prevent disease. That the air does form by this double influence of the air an internal or positive force through the lungs and a negative external force through the nerves by the way of the skin, the two together completing the circuit of the two forces of the life of the body, the blood and nerve forces, I have unquestionably demonstrated. How long will it take medical science to accept this simple law and base its teachings upon it? It will depend somewhat upon the amount of pressure those outside of the profession, whether scientific men or other intelligent laymen, will insist that they must look to these natural forces and their method of causing healthy and unhealthy conditions; in other words, conditions that are called health or disease. Past history will bear me out in the statement that the medical profession has never without effective opposition from the public advanced very much in the prevention and even in the treat- ment of disease, except when forced to do so by the laymen, or old grannies, as they are often called, because whenever they do it affects their pocketbooks, but they will keep up the oil of pretense until their "cussedness" is uncovered by the public. We said in another chapter that the world did not yet know its A B C's as to the effect of air and light upon the body in health or in disease, but that it has an effect is not disputed, but it has never been classified. Let us take for an illustration the terrible epidemic of la grippe in 1889; this epidemic was due entirely to a certain kind 304 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE of damp, moist and cool air acting upon the nervous system, mostly by the way of the skin, although the blood will also suffer more or less in a damp or moist air. But the medical profession, on account of their ignorance of physical or natural law, is still hunting for the microbe of this disease. But why does this action of the air upon the nervous system produce la grippe when I have claimed that at other times it will be a smallpox or some other epidemic? It is because the action upon the nerves is the most predominant, while in the other case the predominant action would be upon the blood, hence slower. So we see that this one distinctive feature, whether the slowness or quickness of the action of the air will be upon the blood or nerves, will be largely responsible for the epidemic being la grippe or a blood disease. A man would start out in the morning apparently well and in a few hours would be taken home reeking all over with pain. The external force was too great for the internal, causing contraction and thus obstruction of nervous force, on identically the same principle and law that gives us what is commonly called a cold; it only differs in the degree of its action. The way to prevent this disease is to keep the internal forces of the body equally balanced with the external, so as to withstand these external forces of the air. The first and main thing to do is to get up well every morning, that is, to prevent using up all the energy that the body is able to create, so as to reserve sufficient internal energy to resist this external force, which for a time exists and causes these epidemics. The same moderation should be carried out in regard to kind and quality of food eaten. A prac- tical proof of this is that invalids that stay in the house in an even temperature and do not work or fret escape, while the strong man who is working hard, whether mentally or physically, and using up his energy so that he has no reserve on hand, or especially if he over- draws his physical bank account, comes down with la grippe. Then we have another class who are physically so poorly made up that they can not withstand some of these conditions of the air and all care would not prevent them from coming down with disease; their pine or shrubbery constitution can not resist these forces. This is simply the survival of the fittest, and they can only blame their ances- tors for not endowing them with a hickory or iron constitution. For, HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 305 given either of these kinds of constitutions, and then living so as to get up well every morning, no conditions have existed in any country during the past two thousand years where the people living at that time could not have avoided any of the epidemic diseases, whether plague, cholera or smallpox, etc. We know that one set of rays of light will affect one substance and another set of rays affect another substance; by this same law does one condition of the air predominate in affecting certain functions of the body and another condition of the air affect another, all things being equal. If as much time and study were devoted to the effects of the atmosphere, especially such as stagnant or slow-moving air, damp or moist, with or without the sun's rays, and the effect of these conditions of the air upon the human body and its various functions, as is devoted to the weather bureau every day, we would soon be as readily informed when certain territories were liable to have a term of damp, raw, cloudy, slow-moving air without much sunlight or thunder and lightning. It would soon give the public an idea, and more than that it would keep the subject before them, which of itself would stimulate them toward taking steps to have the system in a normal condition and should prevent them from taking disease. This would do more to prevent disease than anything that has ever been attempted. It would educate better than by any other method, except in the school room by competent teachers, because so many different phases of natural law would be explained over and over again that people would gradually, and even unconsciously, become acquainted with these different conditions of the air and their effects, and look for such reports, and would look for them as they now do for the weather reports. For instance, suppose that during the next three or four months the movement of the air should be gradually slow, mixed with drizzling rains and freezing and thawing; or hot days, with cold, damp nights, the sun seldom shining and when it does it will not be brilliant, having very little penetrating force; combine with this poor air all the affluvia from vaults, sewers and vegetable matter, to say nothing of all that is eliminated from all the lungs and skins of human beings and animals; under these conditions all this injurious matter will stay near the surface of the earth because 306 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE this heavy and damp air does not move with any degree of speed, there are no sun's rays to split up this matter and separate it into its primitive elements, so that the proper elements can be each taken up by vegetable and animal life, which means what? That the oxy- gen, or whatever name you may give this force or steam power of all animal life, has by these conditions of the air been partly cut off, and to keep the human machinery in good running order under these con- ditions you must cut off its labors, mentally and physically. Suppose the conditions were reported as the weather conditions now are, would it not stimulate an interest in general matters relating to health and disease and work a revolution in the personal care of the body ? Think this over and see if it does not appeal to your reason. The above described conditions are familiar to every observing person and a little reflection will bring to your mind that some form of epidemic disease has always existed under these conditions, either local or general, in moderate or in severe form. What is to be done to prevent disease under these circumstances? To put it in one sentence, keep a balance between the internal forces or energy of the body and the external or atmospheric forces. How is this to be accomplished? By living in such a manner as not to use up very much energy of the body, because the air can not supply nearly as much oxygen to the body for the reason that the affluvia or impurities in the air have taken it up. Because of this the blood is poorly charged, the poisons or waste matter are not eliminated, and if much mental or physical work is done, creating still more waste matter, some portion of the system becomes clogged and lays the foundation of disease. Worry- ing and fretting uses up more energy of the body than any kind of work, hence persons thus afflicted are very liable to come down; school children that are active or those sleeping in small and close rooms will have an over-retention of their own poison and are thus usually the first to take such diseases as are classed as epidemics. Suppose you have a machine that, when running and performing the work up to its full capacity, required ten-horse power to run it, but when kept running, but not performing any work, it took only three- horse power. What would be the result if the fires were left to run down so that but five-horse power of steam could be furnished? Is HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 307 it not reasonable to expect that if the machine was kept performing its full quota of work that it would clog up somewhere for the want of power, and more so if the machine was much neglected and not kept clean during the time it had full ten-horse power to run it? But if the machine, while there was only five-horse power to run it, would have been allowed to do only the amount of work equal to the power furnished, it would not have become injured or clogged up. But if forced to do the work which it could do with ten-horse power with the power run down to five-horse power it becomes clogged up and by this clogging perhaps broke or injured some of its parts, which in the end cost the owner of the machine many times more than if he had not been so greedy to turn out the same amount of work with five-horse power that he could turn out easily with ten-horse power and with no injury to the machine. Just this identical principle that we have applied to the mechan- ical machine under a mechanical law applies to the human machine under a natural law. It would ordinarily be hard to tell just what part of the mechanical machine would be clogged up or break unless the machinist, by experience and other knowledge of the machinery, knows which part under the described circumstances would be liable to injury; even if he had no such knowledge, but had the common sense to know that he ought not to run the machine at full capacity when he only had half the power required, then he would be safe and run no risk of any accident. The mechanical machine is, so to speak, sick every night and ought to be cleaned and oiled so as to be in fine shape the next morning, but we all know that these things are more or less neglected, especially when there is heavy work ahead. So with the human machine which goes to bed sick every night and should get up well every morning, but all will admit this is neglected more among the human machines than among the mechanical ones. This element, oxygen, from the air is directly and indirectly the whole power of the human machine and as the natural or full capacity of its workings are interfered with, just in this proportion is the power and working capacity of this human machine interfered with. Adapt yourself to these natural conditions as they arise; nature will not bow to you, you must bow to her. In applying these rules it 308 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE must be remembered that the capacity and power of each human machine is different. Where one person might be likened to one-horse power others would be equal to ten times the amount of work and without injury. The human machine is more flexible than the mechanical, which the very nature of things demands. The power that governs the force that runs the human machine is very changeable and is not as steady as the force that runs the mechanical; therefore is the human machine so constructed as to be able to adapt itself to the changes that take place in the atmosphere. It is only because of the false training and false notions that we have concerning the human machine that makes it refuse to adapt itself to this natural power and that causes it to clog up or break down and be in the condition which we call disease, for animals and the savage adapt themselves to this power by instinct, hence are seldom or never sick. This natural law or power by which the human machine or body is governed man can not change, so we must take its actions and manifestations as they are and always have been, abide by them, and obey them, or else suffer the consequences. From what has already been said it is clear that the human body must at least be furnished with enough power to keep it performing its functions normally when doing no labor or die, and when it does not receive power enough to run to its full capacity without injury the labor that it performs must be brought down to balance with the amount of energy or power supplied. Of course it must here be understood that the proper pro- portion of food must be taken into consideration when comparing the effects of different conditions of the air in supplying the requisite power to the body. In short, when the supply of power (oxygen from the air) is shortened the food supply must be cut off in proportion. It needs no argument, then, to show that work and worry must be also stopped in the proper proportion. Of course there are some exceptionally strong persons who never overwork and have reserve energy for these occasions, but that is no argument against the law involved under these conditions of the air that are so universally abused in this world and which so favor the producing of disease in most people. HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 309 Every physician who is a supporter of bugs, horse juice and buck serum, if he has as much observation as a stupid alligator knows that diphtheria is found, almost without exception, among the strong and robust-looking children, and that most of the delicate children escape. This is because a delicate child will take the form of some of the more rapid-developing diseases, such as the various forms of bowel complaints, and all may be from the same cause. Diphtheria is found, almost without an exception, where air is pent up, in foul buildings that are located so as to be almost impossible to get cir- culation of air, and if the sun's rays have no opportunity to penetrate such a building or room it produces a similar condition to that existing in a closed cellar. At the same time I have found mansions and other pleasant-appearing homes where the air was almost as foul as in a cellar or in the slums of a city, and in my experience never knew it to fail that diphtheria or scarlet fever, etc., did not sooner or later occur in families living in such surroundings. On the prairie lands, like in the state of Dakota, where the air is dry and almost always moving rapidly, these diseases as an epidemic never occur, but of course even here occasionally a family will keep the rooms so close as to create foulness of the air within the house. It is just simply an impossibility to have an epidemic of diphtheria and smallpox if you will live in a dry atmosphere. But do not forget that local cases can be produced by overwork, wrong eating, followed by taking a cold. Do not sleep in rooms where the sun's rays can not penetrate during the day and the best outside air circulate through them. Scrubbing or cleaning floors, or in any rooms in the house that are not quickly dried by the sun or local heat, will create a foul and damp air in the room that will dampen all the clothes and will from day to day create and throw off a poisonous vapor, but is over- looked because it can not be noticed as when the whole room is damp. Greasy or dirty clothes should not be allowed to hang long where no sun rays can reach them or where no dry air circulates. Remember that strong and healthy children are both growing and nourishing their bodies and that they create a larger amount of waste matter within their systems than do adults, therefore they must also eliminate more, and if they breathe air that does not give up its oxygen to the 310 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE blood it prevents the eliminating of the poisons through the lungs. In other words, the fires of life, which is the steam power, is lowered, and by the lowering of this systemic power the eliminating functions and powers of the skin are lowered and weakened. The strong chil- dren can stand these conditions longer than delicate ones, but when they do come down the disease is usually more fatal and they die more quickly than the delicate ones; this seems strange, but when you study the laws governing the human body it is simple. I never have seen a case of diphtheria in a child with a delicate constitution, although certain conditions can make it possible. No two human beings are exactly alike, and so also are these combinations of elements that form the poisons never found in the same proportions in different children, nor is the air alike in different localities, so rarely do we find two children in which the disease is exactly of the same degree in each. To discuss all these little points would take ten or fifteen volumes and would be of no value to the public. The main thing is to know the law or conditions that will produce a disease. We know that fires are not produced by exactly the same causes, but that the dynamic or natural laws that produce them are similar. So it is with the production of disease. Diphtheria is almost without an exception due to foul, pent-up air with a fairly damp and warm temperature; while smallpox and scarlet fever are due to a cold and moist air acting upon local conditions or directly upon the body, the latter having a more severe action upon the skin and nervous system, preventing the elimination of urea and uric acid, while the former has a more relaxing effect and by its sluggishness causes clogging of the mucous or other glands. That we are correct in' our views of the powerful influence of the air upon the functions of the body and also that this action is different under different conditions of the air and different condi- tions of the body is proven by demonstrated physiology. First, that the sweat glands are subject to the influence of the nerves, as are also the salivary glands. Second, the sweat glands have their nervous connection with the spinal chord corresponding with the nerves of general sensation and motor innervation. They are reflex and can be operated when the spinal chord is severed from the brain, and they are also controlled by mental conditions. The number of these minute HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 311 glands is estimated at two and a half millions, giving a secretory sur- face of nearly 1,080 square meters. Then again, in general glands are stimulated to action by the direct contact and pressure of the substances they operate with, that is, the influences of the external and internal forces also reflexly act through nervous stimulation com- ing from other organs with which they are in working relationship. We may put it in this way, that diphtheria, like typhoid fever poisons, are more of the nature of alkaline compounds, while scarlet fever, measles and smallpox poisons have more of the nature of acid com- pounds. Perhaps it would not be amiss to state here that there is nothing like an acid to neutralize the poisons of typhoid fever or diphtheria. If you will take dilute muriatic acid in from two to ten-drop doses, according to age and conditions, and given in plenty of water, it will be worth more to prevent the rapid and deadly multi- plying of poisons in the system than all the treatments that were invented by the medical germ and microbe frauds. Let me prove my assertion, because to accuse such an honored organization of being a fraud should be backed up by strong evidence. For this horse juice or antitoxin, as it is scientifically called, the people are charged from three to twenty dollars a dose, when really the carbolic acid in which it is kept or preserved is the only thing that possibly can benefit the child and no doubt in some cases does, when the horse juice poison is not too strong, and a number of physicians have demonstrated that they have better results with the carbolic acid alone than with the antitoxin, although some other acid that is practically harmless is far ahead of carbolic acid. The one could be furnished from three to twenty cents for a whole month's treatment, where the poisonous and often deadly mixture is from three to twenty dollars a dose. If this is not murderous hypocrisy where do you find it? We can prove that this is done wilfully and knowingly. To get back to our subject of prevention of disease, let us con- sider the school room. To show clearly what the present ideas regard- ing the spread and the prevention of epidemic diseases in the schools are we here quote in part the report of the Association of State and Provincial Boards of Health of North America in the Medical Review of Reviews for September, 1900: "Shall the schools be closed when 312 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE a contagious disease appears?" It was the unanimous opinion of the conference that it is seldom necessary to close a school under such circumstances. We quote further: "We have always contended that the precautions against the spread of contagious diseases should consist in the systematic and persistent medical inspection of the pupils and teachers. Such inspection can only be thoroughly done at the school house where the very first evi- dence of disease will be much more readily detected than when the children are left to the supervision of parents who know nothing of the nature of the aetiology (cause) of disease as the application of the simplest principles of sanitary science. "The spread of disease is very seldom from an infected school room, but very often from an infected pupil or teacher, the condition of the latter, strange as it may appear, being very infrequently the subject of medical inspection." The above quotation may be splendid English and may sound very scientific to the reader, but read it over twice, then apply your reasoning faculties, and if the Chinese boxers ever made any statements that are more absurd or more devoid of common sense than the above quotation is inconsistent with any natural law, so far as preventing disease is concerned, then every word we have written ought to be burned and the writer sent to an insane asylum. This intelligent association recommend the persistent inspection of the pupils and teachers. Further, they say, "The spread of disease is very seldom from infected school rooms, but very often from infected pupil or teacher." The latter, strange as it may appear, is very infre- quently the subject of medical inspection. Won't these attractive school marms please give us the reason why they are inspected so infrequently? Will these great men answer how they can tell by inspection of a child that it is diseased, even if it is so full of retained poison that it would only take twenty-four hours more to show in the throat that it has diphtheria, which at that stage would be the beginning of nature to get rid of the systemic poison, in other words, the system of the child has begun to cure itself? When the general atmospheric conditions are such as we have described in the chapter on the cause of these diseases, especially should HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 313 the disease be very prevalent, it is plain to see that the safest thing to do would be to close the schools. Why ? Because it would give the children an opportunity to be out in the air and keep them from studying and from worrying over their studies. This uses up much nervous energy and increases the accumulation of waste matter in their system and the impure or stagnant conditions of the air in the school prevents a perfect elimination of the poisons, which is due partially or wholly to the out- side atmospheric conditions, these combining with the poisonous exhala- tions of so many children in one room must produce serious results. The same precaution should be taken by the parents regarding their sleeping rooms, and they should be especially careful not to overfeed the children and should avoid fatty foods, as well as foods baked or fried in grease. The effects are similar to a furnace when a large amount of fuel is used with but little air draught; there will be the more ashes, smoke and clinkers, and just so it is with the human system. This is an ab- solute natural law, and to keep the human air draught, the human fuel and the elimination of the smoke, ashes and clinkers balanced in their proper proportion is the way to prevent these blood diseases. Good, pure air and poor food are not nearly so dangerous as the best of food with air breathed that is impure, damp or moist. Teachers and parents alike should understand this law and both use good judgment in applying these principles according to the make-up or constitution of each child. Much care along these lines may be necessary with one child and not with another, but, as so often directed, see that the children are not overworked beyond their capacity of getting up well every morning. This sentence is the grandest truth ever put in words. If your child is more delicate than your neighbor's child, parent nor teacher should ever insist on the delicate one keeping up with the strong or stimulate it to do so; if need be, only send it to school one hour each half day. Following this rule in my own family we feel sure that we have saved the health and life of one. The vanity and pride of parents have cost the lives of thousands of darlings that might now be enjoying life and health. Of all else, study the capacity and power of endurance of your own children and feed and work them accordingly. Remember, when the air is muggy, moist and damp, and very little sunlight exists, that no person should eat and work much, especially those that have 314 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE delicate or sensitive constitutions. The same rule holds good in very hot weather; in both instances the oxygen of the air is limited and very much less in proportion as compared with clear, cold weather, and the same amount and kind of good food taken under these heated condi- tions of the air may be the cause of disease, while the same food in a cool atmosphere would not injure them, in fact, be good for them. This is why so many of the strongest children so often come down with disease; these children have a good appetite but insufficient oxygen to readily burn it up, the internal forces being weakened by the external, thus checking and clogging the systemic functions, and the deed is done. Again, we bring the prevention of disease at your feet; you must learn to live under what are called civilized conditions and at the same time live in harmony with the natural laws as they exist in your own sur- roundings, which the wild animal and the savage does by instinct. The latter works and sleeps out doors, while civilized man sleeps and works mostly indoors. Each human being needs a certain number of cubic feet of air which will give up to the blood a certain amount of oxygen to charge the blood for the nourishment of the body and give good circulating power to the blood; this makes a very necessary suggestion that school rooms, sleeping rooms, and working rooms should not be overcrowded beyond the capacity of continuously supplying the needed amount of oxygen to supply the inmates of these school, sleep- ing and working apartments. If our health officers and law makers were only one-quarter as sincere in the prevention of disease as they pretend to be they would never allow such buildings to be built and people to live in such places as the masses live in the large cities. "Never." This pretense, deception and hypocrisy is only for gratify- ing the money shark and not to promote the health of the people. No one should be allowed to build a house, and no one should be allowed to live in it, in which there cannot be circulation of air day or night. The value of pure air has been preached a good many years, but that it is the main power that influences every function of the body by its action upon the blood through the lungs and by its action upon external surface of the body will be a surprise to most everyone, but still the evidence has always laid plainly before us. To illustrate it: you take a cold, have a cough, accompanied with HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 315 thick, yellow mucous discharge from the throat, which is the secre- tions from the mucous glands; this process is identical with diphtheria, with the exception that in the one case the system was not gradually overclogged with accumulations of waste matter, while in the case of diphtheria the system has for weeks been accumulating poisons by processes so often explained and the accumulation of their own waste matter, which is of a more viscid and virulent nature than the former. This is also the reason why some children with diphtheria often die very quickly where the throat has shown but very little or no erup- tion. We hope that in the several chapters in which we have touched so fully upon the conditions and the natural laws by which these diseases are produced, we have made it clear to the reader that the law is so similar in all cases that no one need any more be in doubt as to what causes these diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., and how easily they can be prevented. But should a child of yours that is going to school come down with any of these diseases, and you have others at home, do not get frightened by the threats of the health officer and let him lock up the rest of them in the house. Keep the rest of the family out doors where they can have all the fresh air they can get; keep the room in which the sick one lies clean and full of circulating fresh air and we will guarantee that none of the rest will take the disease as the result of the other case, nor can it be spread to anyone else by the father in going to his work. Insist by all honorable means upon these points, and if the health officers will persist in their murderous methods, then use all the force neces- sary to protect your family. The reader must bear in mind that the rules and laws for preventing all these epidemic diseases are the same; that when you prevent one you prevent them all; they only differ in degree. You prevent lung fever, sore throat, tonsilitis, quinsy, bronchitis, and often rheumatism, inflammation of the bowels, etc., by preventing the taking of a cold, for if you prevent taking the cold you prevent taking any of the above named diseases; it will depend upon the conditions of your system at the time you are exposed to the cold or to your particular temperament, or constitution, etc. It may de- pend upon which one of your organs is the weakest or the most 316 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE susceptible; however, most people are already cognizant that this is true. But the world has never before realized that the same identical law, the same identical principle, is the cause of these epidemic dis- eases. And there are few people who realize that there is just one difference in the diseases that we commonly say come from a cold and those so much dreaded diseases, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever; the former diseases are suddenly produced, while in the blood diseases, such as smallpox, diphtheria, etc., the condition of the at- mosphere is slowly affecting the system and obstructing the system by an accumulation of its own waste, because of an insufficient quantity or poor quality of oxygen; this causes all the functions of the body to become sluggish, prevents elimination of waste matter, and gradu- ally the system becomes obstructed in its functions to such an extent that it develops one or the other of these diseases, depending largely upon your surroundings and your present tendency to disease or your natural weaknesses. When we have an epidemic of lung fever we also have many people suffering from other diseases produced by a cold. When we have an epidemic of la grippe we also have many cases of lung fever, sore throat, etc. During all epidemics we nearly always find that these two classes of disease exist in a greater or less degree, and that one or the other disease predominates. When diph- theria is epidemic we find many of the milder cases of these blood diseases, such as scarlet fever, measles, chickenpox, etc., but do not find, as a rule, many cases of diphtheria during an epidemic of scarlet fever and measles, because the conditions that produced the latter are milder than those that produced the former. A little reflection will bring to the mind of the reader the truthfulness of this statement. It is these little differences of actions, temperature and composition of the air, and their action combined with local conditions that cause at one time an epidemic of lung fever, at another la grippe and at another one of smallpox, etc., but the general conditions of the air that are favorable for producing epidemics anyone with eyes to see can de- tect. We have made these points so clear in the several chapters, and illustrated them in so many ways, that no one ought any more to be in doubt as to the cause of epidemics and how to prevent them. In local cases always look about your own premises and your own sys- HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 317 temic condition for the cause, except where some of the family are working in surroundings that will cause the formation and accumu- lations of their own poisons in the system by the action of the im- purities and the action of the temperature of the surrounding atmos- phere or from physical or mental overwork combined, being partic- ular to include fretting and worry. So can children in the school room form the same conditions in their system by overwork or fretting, combined with the impurities of the atmosphere in the school room. Remember, that you do not take impurities from the air into the system through the lungs, but that impure or poor air prevents the system from eliminating its own poisons. Pardon the frequent repe- tition of this statement, but the trend of the public mind has been diverted and trained in the other direction for so many generations that it will to many be difficult to reason from any other standpoint. Why does sanitation in our large cities, such as cleaning the cities in general, improving the sewerage and water system, prevent, in a measure, if not often entirely, the general prevalence of these epi- demics ? Because, when we have this slow and sluggish movement of the air that is damp and very little existing sunlight, the evaporation of these impurities into the air would make it just that much worse, and with impure water the epidemic would be more widely spread and more severe. We also know that impure water alone has perhaps caused the most severe epidemics that ever existed. Except in un- usual cases we now find these diseases mostly where the local conditions are bad, food and drink perhaps no better. The persons who take disease under these conditions are usually of strong constitutions, but their systems are hardly ever in normal conditions, that is, they never get up well in the morning but get along fairly well until some exciting cause produced by the influence of the atmospheric conditions forces the accumulations of the system to a high pitch to develop one or the other of these diseases. This state of affairs clearly demonstrates that most of these diseases are caused by the combined influence of the conditions of yourself, your home and surroundings. Keeping the normal health below par only needs the atmospheric influence to pro- duce the diphtheria or smallpox, in fact, any disease and often the local conditions or eating and drinking something that has an ab- 318 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE normal effect, alone are sufficient to give the exciting cause. This ac- counts for the single cases occasionally found. What is to be done to prevent these diseases rarely occurring in a community? I say rarely, because I doubt if there will not always be someone in this world that will be sufficiently careless and reckless with themselves and their local surroundings to develop disease. It can be done only by education and discussion, keeping before the people the three great principles that are the cause of these and nearly all other diseases. When they do occur in a family someone that is honest and sincere and conversant enough with this matter should show this family where the mistake was, show them that they themselves are to blame; not by simply saying so, but demonstrate it to them, which in nearly all cases can be done, and not by some de ''or that has to make a living from these unfortunates; it is all bosh that a man is going to rob his own trunk. Organizations should be formed in every town or city and in every ward. Lectures and discussions should be given by some competent person on the laws and principles laid down in this work until they shall finally be taught in every school, so as to make them a second nature to us all, just like the A B C's become second nature to the individual. These principles and laws are so simple of compre- hension that health officers need not be physicians. I never knew a health officer yet, and to their eternal shame be it said, who was not as corrupt as if he was under the directions of the devil, whether real or abstract, and their actions would often make an angel weep. We have shown as clearly as the noonday sun that the theory that diseases are contagious is a fraud and delusion, that quarantine is worse, that vaccination and horse juice is murderous, that microbes or germs are beneficial and harmless. If we have not made it clear in this work in words we can demonstrate their truthfulness if given an opportunity, for nature never lies. So, all there is to be done is for the health officers to show and teach the public how simple it is to pre- vent these epidemic diseases, teaching them the causes, and to search out these families and localities that are living in those conditions that are liable to produce diphtheria or scarlet fever, etc.; see that laws are enacted to prevent buildings being erected which cannot be kept pure with circulating air and general cleanliness. The coming gener- HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 319 ation should be as well acquainted from their school days up with every law and principle that will cause disease and how to prevent them as they are now acquainted with reading and writing. Secondly, they should be just as thoroughly educated at the proper ages that the abuses of the sexual and marriage laws is the first and one of the main causes of all the misery and suffering, especially that they are the main cause of our weaknesses in constitution in whole or in part. That all things being equal we can only live in proportion to the timber we are made up of; if we have a twenty year constitution, twenty years is our limit; if we have a fifty year constitution, fifty years is our limit; a hundred year constitution, one hundred years is our limit, and so on, and from this period of years, whether our constitution be made up of the one material or the other, will be deducted just as many days or years as this abuse of the constitution by ourselves and our surroundings may be responsible for. Man will never be wise enough to cheat nature. There are forty- eleven different brands of saving grace, and each warranted genuine by these pretentious medical purists, who are so deplorably ignorant of nature and God that they cannot tell a foolish fad from a codfish. We have contended and proven by the well-known laws of nature that everything in this world is formed, changed or evolved by the organization and reorganization of the elements, under certain con- ditions. The inherent action of these elements are the laws of nature. The length of life of all that exists is in proportion to the complexity of the organization of these elements. Cancer is due and caused by the identical law. Cancer is usually produced by a continual determination of blood to a part of the body, which is usually a mucous membrane; this is caused by continual irritation, and may be either from internal or external causes; this, when the conditions are favorable, begins to gradually form new cells, which are not of the complexity of the human cells; this produces a growth composed of these peculiar cells, which, because of their pecu- liar appearance and form under the microscope are known as cancer cells. Now, this growth called cancer, unless it should from its size obstruct vital functions, will never kill anybody. Then what is it that kills the patient suffering with cancer? It is the death of this new 320 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE growth, nothing else; it has lived out its entire length of life and dies; disorganization takes place, which means the formation of pus or mat- ter; the absorption of this dead and disorganizing matter into the blood is what kills. We often find people that have tumors or ab- normal growths in some part of the body that does not obstruct any vital function for years, but with no harm to life or health, because the tumor does not die. Diabetes and Bright's disease are becoming so common in the civilized world that it is appalling, and it is most always found among the excessive eaters and drinkers. Diabetes exists mostly among those that use wine and beer to excess, and who take very little physical exercise, while Bright's disease exists mostly among what is called high livers; living on foods that are changed and mixed too much; that is, foods that are, by their composition and mode of cooking, rendered entirely different from their natural state. These rich dishes appeal strongly to the palate, and these people eat to excess. In other words, they eat beyond the actual need of the body. This excess of food gradually creates molecular change within the system, and just how has not so far been discovered, but for practical purposes is not neces- sary to know. To prevent these diseases is simply to not eat and drink beyond the needs of the system; this ought to be simple enough. Medical men will write a whole volume or more upon these two diseases, and it is all so confusing and superfluous that it would blas- pheme all the saints in the calendar and still not give any direct in- formation. The members of the medical profession are great word painters; no other writers have created so many absurd theories and made them appear so plausible and for hundreds of years deceived millions of abler men than themselves. They are great polemics but no philosophers, and by their sophistry deceive the world-and them- selves. One of the first essentials for preventing disease is to eat the proper kind of food and to properly masticate it, and as the practical subject of food is so simple we will incorporate it here instead of in a separate chapter. Many people even mourn or regret that they can't live as some other people do who have plenty of money with which to satisfy their palate, when really they ought to rejoice in the fact that their circumstances forces them to eat what nature intended they 321 HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE should, in order to have health. The question of food for man is very simple. The main thing to know is which are the most nourishing foods, and fortunately, as nature does all things well, the most nourish- ing food is that which is most easily digested. Those foods that con- tain the most nutritious matter are fresh pork, salt pork, beans, corn meal, rice, mutton, flour and the vegetables and fruits. The only un- fortunate thing is that the best of the nourishment contained in wheat is fed to cattle or hogs, because of the fashionable process that man has invented of making flour out of wheat. Those who live largely on bread could work more and live much longer if public sentiment would force the mills back to the old-fashioned flour. Corn meal has nearly five times the heat producing properties of oat meal. By exer- cising good judgment and living largely on the above named foods, delicate children and adults could improve their physical conditions far beyond their expectations. Oysters is one of the least nourishing foods eaten; fish are almost as worthless, except mackerel; beefsteak contains very little nourishment compared with the others named; the shoulder of mutton stands high on the list. Candies that are pure are good for children, as they are great heat and energy producers, but, as in everything else, there is a limit to their usefulness. The value of milk is generally known, but scientific nonsense has gradually taken away a large percentage of its value, as it has of flour. Sterilizing and pasturizing milk, in order to kill the harmless bugs, is doing much harm; milk ought to be used like all other foods, and that as near as possible as nature has made it. Laws to prevent the adulterations of milk, or selling it after it becomes rancid from long standing, are all good, but this humbug that consumption, etc., are spread by milk is an ignorance of natural law equal to the Hindoo superstition. Having made these few remarks about milk it comes quite appropriate to here say something as to how to prevent these epidemics among children, such as they are subject to during the hot months of summer. These diseases of the hot summer months, by whatever name they are called, are all of the same nature, differing only in degree, just as the laws that will prevent smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, are practically alike, but differing in degree. We have here the old furnace story over again. Poor air and good food in a poor human furnace means 322 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE a poor or weak burning fire, and is almost a dead certainty to produce dysentery or kindred diseases. Poor air and poor food in a strong and good human furnace for any length of time is for a certainty going to develop these complaints in very hot weather. But those fortunate enough to have a good cool air, even if the food should not be the best, unless their constitution is very delicate, are almost sure to get through the summer without any sickness. Here again see that the air is practi- cally the main or exciting cause of these diseases. Hot air expands so much that the blood is not charged with the amount of needed oxygen; the human machine is running below par and cannot even give power enough to the digestive organs to digest good food, much less poor food. What's to be done? Give your children the best, coolest air possible. In the cities take them to parks, lake or river, but have them keep quiet; do not let them tire themselves; feed them lightly and regularly, and avoid greasy and fatty foods. Nursing children are generally safe if reasonable attention is given them to breathe pure, fresh air. If any mother should ask me how she can learn to know how to treat or handle her children to prevent them from taking disease, I would answer by telling her to watch how the fire in her cook stove acted when all of a sudden the air draught would be materially cut off when burning good fuel, and how it acted when burning poor fuel; this would tell her exactly what was going on in the organs of digestion in children during a hot spell of weather. I would also tell her that if she wanted a reasonably good fire during the time that the air draught was materially cut off to use dry, light burning fuel and not stuff the stove too full and she would get along reasonably well until the good air draught was restored. You should follow this same identical process and principle with your children during hot weather. Use dry, light and easy burning food, and not too much of it, and try and get them in surroundings where they can breathe as good air as possible; keep them out doors in the shade and a little breeze if possible. Everybody has, or at least ought to have, observed that medicines are of no avail unless proper surroundings are furnished in some way. Another important point I wish to call attention to is where, as it often occurs, we have a short spell of real hot weather, say one or two HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 323 weeks, where there had previously been no warm weather; under these circumstances we find but little, if any, of these diseases, but if the hot weather should suddenly change to very cool, especially if warm days and very cool nights should follow, this is the time when many children in either rich or poor families are suddenly taken sick with dysentery and like diseases and die like flies on a frosty night. It is these conditions that perplex the people, and the question is continu- ally asked, "Why is it, doctor, that my children went through this very hot spell of weather in fairly good condition, but now in this nice, cool weather, my children, and thousands of others all over the city, come down with these summer diseases and the death rate is so large?" Of course, the doctors nowadays can readily answer such a question; it is some microbe that is in the air and has been taken into the system, and some germicide must be given to kill these little devils, but it was the Lord's will that they become so numerous that human skill could not kill them all and thus your little darling had to become an angel. When you find a season like the one described, be still more on your guard, because during the hot spell which the children bridged over used up more than their reserve energy and the internal forces, blood and nerves, have been lowered below their normal standard, and then all of a sudden comes this cold air, especially at night, which is usually raw or moist, and its action upon the external surface of the body over- balances the internal, thus checking the already lowered internal func- tions. By the same law and under the same principle we find many adults that often when exposed to cold take on a form of dysentery. The descriptions given above are the identical same conditions that produce yellow fever; they only differ in degree. It must begin to seem a little monotonous to the reader for us to state so often that all these acute diseases, such as dysentery, in- flammation of the bowels, rheumatism, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, yellow fever, cholera, and the plague, etc., are due to one and the same causes, and can be prevented by learning to under- stand and apply the simple problem as to how the many different con- ditions of the air, whether local or general, by their specific actions upon different parts and different conditions of the body from the various and numerous conditions that are possible. We must learn 324 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE whether these numerous and varied bodily conditions that are always in our midst exist in a strong or weak constitution; whether these ac- tions of the air are upon the weak parts of a generally weak constitu- tion ; or whether it is the action of even good, healthy air upon a con- stitution whose normal standard has been lowered by overwork, mentally or physically, including fretting and worrying, or from over- eating, wrong eating, or dissipation, or whether the above same con- ditions are upon a naturally weak constitution. These are the reasons that the same causes produce so many varied conditions called by so many different, misleading names. But it is all as true and as accurate as the rising of the sun, always was, and always will be so, and the civilized world must adapt itself to these laws of nature, which no man can change, or else suffer the consequences. Fashions, notions, pride, vanity, all must bow to these divine laws. As already stated, the wild animal and the savage does it by in- stinct ; the civilized man must do it by being educated in the workings of these laws. It is all very simple, like the alphabet in which there are but few letters, but the combinations of these letters are many thousands, and so is the alphabet of nature composed of a few letters (the elements), but their combinations are many thousands, and it is this that has confused mankind for so many thousand years; like learning to read, it looks hard at first sight, but all can learn, and do learn; so it is with reading nature; it looks hard on the surface, but is just as easy as it is to learn to read a book. The alphabet of nature and its combinations that are formed from these few elements or letters of nature, under proper conditions, are the cause of all that we term different conditions of health and different conditions called disease. All must be learned, taught and explained to the child over and over like the A B C's, so that as it grows older it can recognize at a glance what any condition formed by nature's alphabet is and what it means, just as the child gradually learns to know at a glance what any combinations of the letters are and what they mean. A text-book in the form of questions and answers no larger than a first reader would cover every point thoroughly and comprehensively, and we expect in a short time to furnish the schools with just such a book. It will give the student the key to all sciences, HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE 325 besides comprehending all his own physical conditions and his sur- roundings in all its phases as easily as he comprehends the meaning of a sentence, paragraph or the contents of a whole volume. What think you, reader, have we made a beginning for the foundation of the great- est desires of mankind ? Are you not craving for this simple knowledge of nature ? Are you not all dazed with the present confusion that exists as though all were chaos, when really all in nature is harmony and perfect law? We are being stuffed with much that is termed knowl- edge, but too much of it is baselessly false, and we are taught very little wisdom. STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES. We are not compelled to carry all our faults and defects to our graves. That old adage "Practice makes perfect," is especially true of the exercise of all our feelings, passions, tastes, moral sentiments-, in- tellectual faculties, the lungs, stomach, and in fact the whole mind as well as the body. Since exercise and culture so wonderfully increase the muscles and physical capacities, why cannot the organ and functions of the lungs and brain be equally improved ? They can be to a remark- able and surprising degree. Facts by tens of thousands, without one to oppose them, prove incontestably that the more a faculty of mind or brain is exercised, the larger the organ becomes and the less it is used the smaller, and the larger the organ of the brain, the greater the pleasure taken in its exercise; and the more the lungs are exercised and expanded and not overdone, the larger and stronger they become, and then the tendency is to continual action, which would naturally reincrease its size and activity, while the smaller an organ is the less pleasure is taken in its action. For instance, the more kindness a person possesses the more inclined he is to exercise kindness. The larger the talent for music the more music will out; the more destruc- tive you are the more inclined to destroy, even love to murder or torture. One is inclined to be hopeful to excess; another who is the opposite, melancholy and downhearted, and sees no pleasure in any- thing. Another could not tell a lie even to save his life, while for another it would be almost equally hard to tell the truth. It can be plainly seen that in these persons of opposite extremes, the same things and surroundings would be viewed from a different standpoint, both wondering why the other sees them in such opposite light; in other words, we do not always see things as they are, but as we are. These extreme tendencies of the brain produce even more misery and disease than extreme muscular action; yet this tendency to extremes, when it is inclined to injure yourself, either in health, socially or otherwise, can be counteracted, and the power of any required faculty or passion can 326 STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 327 be increased or diminished at pleasure. So we see a person with large lungs inclined to use them to extremes, as such a person takes pleasure in running and all kinds of athletic exercise that demands great action of the lungs, and the smaller the lungs the less inclined they are to use them; this law is universal. If you are ruining your health, shortening your life, losing your social and moral ties by drinking, lustful propensities, etc., it gener- ally shows an excess of the animal propensities over the higher or moral; where if you exercise the weak moral faculties of the mind and let the others lie dormant, little by little a proportionate balance will be found between the two extremes, just as the more we use the tools the more dexterous we become in their use, where by disuse we grow more awkward. The difference we observe between the talents of great men and common ones is as much, if not more, due to culture as to their natural gifts. Nature makes some of it, but cultivation causes more. Natural gifts, however great, accomplish little unless disciplined. Moderate mental or physical talents persistently cultivated work well, and often do persons with such talents run away ahead of splendid natural ability, because it is not cultivated. Natural talents we do not ignore, yet greatness requires natural capacities well cultivated. But every intellectual faculty, every moral virtue, even every animal propensity, by culture can be strengthened beyond our highest expectations. All kinds of memory are strengthened by their culture; if you must have an errand done, give it to one who does many errands per day or otherwise it will probably be forgotten. The more we are praised or the more we indulge in fashionable displays, the more we are carried away with them, and vice versa. The more money the miser makes the more he loves it, while the wants of a spendthrift increase with his expenditures. The more one acts the better his acting, and the less the poorer. Our entire educational system is based on this condition and precedent that use strengthens. The more we read, study, think, or speak, the more naturally and skil- fully we do either, and the less of either the reverse is true. Extraordinarily talented children of both sexes are more liable to die young than those more coarsely organized, because of the un- 328 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE balanced condition of brain over muscular and vital power. Many of those who take our first college prizes and appointments die or become invalids soon after they graduate because they study, study, day and night, year in and year out, keeping their brain on the stretch, for- getting in their ambition to think about exercising their lungs, as well as forgetting to use their muscles, which are naturally weak, and thereby widening the breach of disproportion; where if more attention were paid to the muscular system and lungs and less to the brain, a good balance could be established and kept up; then an immense amount of work, far exceeding the amount under the former condi- tion, could be accomplished in the future, besides having the pleasure of good health and long life, instead of impaired health, blighted prospects and premature death. This law applies equally to all the other organs; the lungs especi- ally can be enlarged and strengthened by culture and exercise more readily and faster than any other organ of the body; this fact has been demonstrated over and over again by those who have exercised their lungs especially to fit themselves for running, bicycle riding, etc., where great lung power is necessary. This fact that the lungs increase in size and strength faster than any other organ, comes as it were, as a great relief to the situation, as they cannot be repaired after their breakdown or suppuration has once taken place, which again shows the benevolent design of nature. The stomach is governed by the same law; so is the skin, and in fact, the whole body. Those who are so very particular about what they eat usually have weak stomachs; those who want good digestive powers must tax them and not favor them, yet not abuse them. Ex- posing the system to colds fortifies it against them; those children that are guarded so tenderly, and where so much care is taken lest they take cold, catch cold ten times where children do once among the poor "barefooted and ragged out in all weather and wet through in all rains," who seldom, if ever, take cold or sickness by running, jumping and bounding, thereby keeping active circulation to the skin, which is the power that resists all external exposures. Those primp, extra- cared-for, well-dressed and ridden-in-a-carriage youngsters, with all the bundling and care, do not have skin circulation, and hence no STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 329 resistance to disease, that is, the skin pores easily contract from external air pressure or cold. Why do not doctors teach these simple natural lessons ? Are they, too, ignorant, careless or dishonest ? I think they must be the former, or they would let the innocent microbe alone. Nature in restoring this balance whenever it is impaired, proves the necessity for it; those children born with too much head for their body instinctively race and tear around continually, but do not like to study, because exercise tends to restore this balance, which study would prevent. Children often outgrow this or that ailment if na- ture is allowed or assisted to establish a nice balance between the weak and strong traits or organs by keeping the weak points in the lead; at the same time we must be careful not to overdo them; that is, increasing and improving any of our functions, increases all. Inac- tion weakens and dwarfs; nothing paralyzes functions or diminishes organs so rapidly or effectually as not to use them. Idleness will as surely clothe a man with feebleness and disease as well as in rags, as proper work and proper breathing will enlarge and strengthen the muscles and lungs, just as sitting around and doing nothing renders them weak and flabby, and easily inclined to disease. Nothing will hurt the stomach more than giving it nothing to do. That is as bad as overdoing; all functions of the body need and must have proper and vigorous exercise. The dainty, weak and feeble mortal, unable to walk a block or climb a flight of stairs, and "Oh! I can't; it makes me so tired," deserves no sympathy unless they be disabled by accident or something unavoidable, because proper exercise would soon restore the health to most of them, while everlastingly funneling down drugs is more apt to increase the debility, as well as increase the doctor's in- come (provided you pay him). But nothing can be plainer than this law, that right exercise strengthens all organs and their functions, and its personal application to our own individual health becomes as important as you value your health. Each should inquire, if he puts any value on the life of his family or himself, which of his or their organs are weak; so that by strengthening he can improve the efficiency of the others. No other knowledge is more important, nor is ignorance on any other subject more fatal. Hence, learning how to cultivate these weak organs takes the first step toward success, health and happiness. 330 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE The mind is governed by this same law of proportionate action among its different faculties and propensities, and all exercise as well as defects and weaknesses mar or severely injure the character and conduct. An excess of the animal propensities over the moral faculties tends to put us on a level with the animal, while a great predominance of the higher moral faculties over the lower makes one too good for his own welfare, and naturally those good, innocent, harmless people are good game for the unscrupulous to prey upon, because they lack ex- ecutive force in proportion as they are good; hence we should not be so good as to be good for nothing, nor should we be so selfish as to overrule goodness, but let us be selfish enough to provide well for our personal wants, yet moral enough not to wrong others. Insanity in its most common form is due largely to the excess of one or more faculties over the other. A miser who died in the State of Pennsylvania last year, although worth a fortune, would buy off his children with a penny to go to bed without their supper and then steal the penny away from them while they were asleep. Was he or his children as happy as if his love for money and children had been about equally balanced ? Another was so penurious that he had let his only daughter live in destitution, and finally in the poorhouse, although he was worth twenty thousand dollars. Some are so avaricious for money that they would sit up nights to watch it and count it; others will live on soiled foods, decom- posed vegetables and the like, which they get for very little or nothing, and thereby develop disease, misery and death, just from this excessive love of money. But this illustrates the principle and results where both excessive and deficient organs of the brain exist. Take a man or woman with small hope but who is very cautious and at the same time ambitious; what is the result? Unless surroundings are very favorable, and even then the individual will be strongly inclined to continually see things from the dark side, always afraid something wrong is going to hap- pen; mistrusts his friends; if not feeling just right, imagines some terrible disease; doping down something to prevent that dread im- aginary disease, existing only in the brain, kept up by letting the head hang, brooding, etc., where twenty-four hours of good, deep breathing STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 331 of fresh air, to equalize the stagnated circulation and send the blood bounding to the skin; and all this misery is only produced by that faculty of caution with equally small hope. Things are not as you see them, but as you are; such should be determined to say to them- selves, it is all in me and my imagination; stimulate and force your- self to hope; exercise your brain to hope and keep hoping; if your mind says do not, you must not do this, say you will, I know I can, by applying my intellect and good judgment. Nearly every one of our suicides and insane people have these traits of small hope, and a very cautious disposition; this trait is the cause of more chronic diseases (real and imaginary )than any other trait in man; everything, no matter how small, is greatly magnified on the dark side; exercising hope in everything is the only remedy; in a few years the faculty of hope will increase in size by exercise, caution will diminish from dis- use, and a reasonable balance will exist, giving the person more pleasure and health than millions could bestow upon him. The author's experience and suffering from this very trait would fill a volume, until studying human nature and nature's laws, made him see that all for which he was (in his mind) blaming others and the world, was himself; afraid to do or say anything for fear it was wrong, stimulating a brooding disposition; the result was a broken down, nervous system. Funneling down medicine by the gallon for ten years, only increasing the trouble, • from the dozen or more doctors I consulted I learned that I had nearly all the diseases a man could have, which had this really been the case would have been enough to kill a dozen strong men. When I began to study into this matter and let the doctors alone, I took no medicine, and ate what the doctors told me would kill me; followed nature's demands, and two years made a different man of me in health, as well as in mind, and I swore vengeance that when I became a physician to never be guilty of the outrage that exists in what I soon learned was the greatest humbug- ging trust, preying upon the credulity of mankind, that ever existed. Pardon this personal digression. To go back to hope and caution; when we find small cautiousness and large hope combined with love of money, we will see a wild speculator contracting debts beyond his means, and losing all; this 332 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE same person with deficient intellectual faculties, devises poor ways of making money, forever grasping one straw after another only to sink the deeper. Now, if these traits or organs were equally developed he would love money, but not to excess, and lay out good feasible plans and pay up all dues and enjoy both business and money, thus receiving both pleasure and enjoyment to himself and others. This same law of balance holds good in the intellectual faculties. When the perceptive, that is those organs that lie along the eyebrows, are large and those of the upper part of the forehead small, the person will excel in scholarship and talk easily, yet will be superficial and lack thought, judgment and contrivance; whereas, should the lower or per- ceptives be small, and the upper or thinking organs large, he would be theoretical and hypothetical, but having a wretched memory and be unable to command his knowledge or bring his superior reasoning powers into practical use; he would be merely abstract, speculative and always impracticable; and though he knows how to reason, his com- mand of facts is too limited to give him the data requisite to form correct conclusions; whereas, when both are equally developed the perceptives furnish abundant material for the reflectives or thinking organs to work up into correct arguments and sound conclusions, and the two together give general talents and constitute a well-balanced and truly philosophical mind (the body and balance of brain being equally well-balanced), creating sound common sense, correct judg- ment and enlarged views, in place of those warped conclusions, false opinions and abortive efforts, which are the result of the predominance of one over the other; all individual faculties, when both are excessive or small, illustrate this principle. All should learn to know weak from strong traits and strong from poor ones, and by culture, exercise and use increase their function and action, which can be done just as well and by the same law as you increase and strengthen a weak muscle by proper use and exercise. A strong muscle will shrink and become weak by idleness and disuse; so can a large trait or organ be brought in check and made to obey your command by not using or stimulating it, such as a bad and irritable temper, ungovernable sexual passions, a strong disposition to lie or steal, etc.; the excess of these bad traits lead to more misery, sickness and premature deaths than STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 333 all other things combined; hence should be taught early by parents and in school; in fact, these principles well impressed and exercised would save millions of our youths from an early grave, and make good citizens of them. What town or city will be the first to organize, to create sentiment for the spreading, teaching and inculcating of these principles? They are worth more as an education than all other studies; in other words, assist to strengthen the weak points whether physical or mental; the large one will take care of itself. The same can be said of the social faculties, but why enlarge upon a principle, the necessity and value of which are so self-evident, so powerful and universal and so inseparably interwoven with the perfection and happiness of every human being? The moral faculties, when har- moniously developed and exercised, produce moral worth and true piety, which constitute the grace of graces, the crowning excellence of man and woman (as well as the errors and evils of their dispro- portion). Indeed words cannot express their value and importance. Hence, should not parents and teachers in educating the young, when moulding their physical, moral and intellectual characters, and all who seek health, long life and happiness, be guided by their molar star around which all their children's efforts should cluster? Then it is plain that use and disuse increase or decrease any trait or organ of the brain and if every one knows that use and disuse increase or decrease the size and strength of muscle, why should nature's laws be at fault? (To increase or decrease the strength of the organs of the body, such as the stomach, lungs, heart, etc., it can and will if you will only go at it rightly.) First learn to understand how nature does her work, when she will do it right and when wrong. The one gives strength, which means health and long life, besides the pleasure of accomplishing your de- sired ends for the benefit of your family, yourself and perhaps the whole world; every organ of the body, every intellectual gift, all of our social and moral talents and virtues can be improved to an unlimited extent; yea, discipline redoubles the power of the func- tions much more than the size of the organs, because it renders them far more vigorous and enduring, just as muscular culture strength- ens the muscles much more relatively than it enlarges their organs. 334 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE What is it worth then to be able to weaken your faults, and increase your excellencies day by day, all along through life to the highest pinnacle attainable on earth? How great is the pleasure of being able to improve your lands, enlarging your business, etc. Yet how utterly insignificant are all these in comparison with good health. Knowing how to maintain it, lengthens your life twenty, thirty or forty years, even more, and at the same time develops your intellect and beautifies a magnificent spirit-temple, with those bodily and mental materials out of which humanity is composed. Ought we not all shout for joy and praise God that he has rendered it possible, and even provided for unlimited improvement for man- kind to become more and more perfect mentally and physically? But man has abused this great gift and bowed to his sensual ani- mal nature, tearing down instead of building up his physical possi- bilities; imparting to his progeny a weak brain, or a weak stomach, or a weak nervous system; those inheriting these weak organs are nowhere taught how they could improve that weak organ up to an average standard or even beyond, but instead nowadays are taught by the doctors to take some medicine to kill some microbe, and un- less it is killed (the microbe) and put out of the way you are doomed to death. What do I require then to improve and cultivate the health? Your answer is self-knowledge, which is your first step towards self-culture. How much is it worth to you to have or attain good health; how much is it worth to lengthen your life ten or twenty years? How much would some give to only live one year longer? To measure it by dollars, how much would you give? Yet self- degeneration is equally possible; in fact this scale can be run down seemingly much easier; how quick you can shorten your life by a night's debauch, or a terrible cold, or any other constitutional shock. How great is such a loss to shorten your life ten years by simply not knowing a few simple laws that are really as easy to learn as breath- ing? But before doing anything we must know just what requires to be done, then to know how to do it. One single defect in an organ or any part of the body spoils the entire life, its joys and pleasures, and renders life a complete failure. To first know what STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 335 to do to cultivate and improve this or that weakness up to the point of pleasure and enjoyment, and a new lease of life, what is it worth ? To do this we need not wash in the river Jordan, nor walk on a pil- grimage to Jerusalem, but simply to promote every single life pleas- ure. Nature leaves us to improve or neglect them and aid the issues, just as soil will bear the better the better it is tilled. So having placed the self perfecting means at our reach, nature leaves us to enjoy their fruits or to neglect them and embitter every life func- tion. Let those who are careless trifle on; nature will charge up to you every iota of neglect of her laws and will give you credit for self-culture of the body as well as of the brain should not be fitful and such a prize can only be secured by personal effort alone. It cannot be bought nor obtained by proxy, but can be secured only by patient culture. Parents cannot be good or bad, healthy or sick, or happy or miserable for their children, any more than they can eat or breathe for them. But they can give them the incen- tives, by teaching and furnishing them the means for self-develop- ment, just as you can furnish them bread, but unless those children themselves partake personally of this feast that will promote their future health, it will do them no more good than uneaten food. This self-culture of the body as well as of the brain should not be fitful as most of it is; fitful exercise of any kind injures more than it bene- fits. If you want to improve the lungs or stomach, muscles or brain, it must be by steady and gradual improvement up to their full capac- ity; it must be done by aiding cell after cell, just as vegetation does not spring up and ripen in a day, but requires patient culture, and cell after cell it improves until it has come up to full and ripe matu- rity. So does self-growth. To improve the body or any one of its organs or functions more than anything else needs stable, persist- ent, long continued effort; in fact, is the work of a lifetime, like the great towering elm or oak is the work of centuries. So human perfection cannot, like Topsy, spring up in a night, but like the great oak must add daily to itself; and when you become a full developed human being, nurtured by self-culture and age, you are incomparably the most glorious production on the earth. A result thus valuable and grand cannot be accomplished in a day. Nature 336 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE requires time, and in some an effort to become perfect. To become completely self-developed, requires you to begin early in life, add- ing daily to your vitality and talents, as well as to your moral virtues, clear on to old age. Not one of us should be satisfied to retire at night without having improved ourselves, lessened some fault that is injuring our health and our morals; not that we should sow a lifetime in order to reap a harvest at death, but instead sow and reap together, not as many do, sacrificing the prime of their life in amassing a fortune and dying after having required what they wanted to enjoy, where a little knowledge regarding self-improvement and what injures and what benefits, and employing that knowledge, they might have enjoyed the making of the money and the pleasure after it is made. Just as in studying we take intense pleasure in the study itself and ever after in enjoying the knowledge thus pleasurably acquired. So it is with health; the normal action and use of the body is pleasurably and an eternal ordinance of nature; indeed nothing else whatever is so. He is a good paymaster who pays both in and by its doing and after it is done, and then keeps paying over and over again ever afterwards, both now and forever. Yet overwork weakens the brain and the muscles as well as the organs of the body, especially the weaker ones. Too much of a good thing is worse than nothing; many an ambitious man and gifted youth work so hard as to paralyze their brain more or less, there- by preventing their doing much in the future; just as men by over- muscular work forestall disease almost to a certainty. How to pre- vent this misfortune and to improve .instead is the very chit of this subject; effort is not enough; millions are making efforts to keep well and to get well when sick, but it must be the right kind of effort, gained from some reliable source, and this thorough knowl- edge is the only means by which it can be attained. We must learn what organs of the body need cultivating, and which should be restrained; the precise nature and function of each (which other chapters expound) and provoking to action the weak ones by giving them their natural stimuli in a manner and form which are acceptable and avoiding stimulating those that are in STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 337 the excess, as a person with a naturally weak pair of lungs but a large and active brain, should gradually and continually be expand- ing and exercising those weak lungs, but keeping his brain and nerves in check and give the rush and activity of the blood to the lungs and body instead of brain and nerves. If your animal and sensual brain is ruining your health, which its excess will surely do, exercise your higher and nobler man; go in no company that will stimulate those traits, but in society that will stimulate you to admire higher and nobler aspirations. If you have a weak voice, cultivate it by talking and exercising the vocal organs, and keep a check on your bad temper. This excess of our traits or propensities of the brain over the intellectual, produces more disease and misery, excepting the weak lung, than all other causes combined; hence, the great necessity to bring about by cultivation and exercise a balance between our mental characteristics as well as those of the body. They all must be and are in reciprocal relation. What is it worth to be able to avoid disease and other faults, and to increase excellencies day after day all along through life? Our usual measure of value is dollars; suppose just for a base you would value your present health and life to-day at a million dollars; to-morrow it would be worth less because enfeebled by some ail- ment; but by restoring your functional power you would restore that value and by increasing that value now worth a million dollars, ten to twenty per cent, which all can do in a year, will make you worth from one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars more, which is quite a sum, and for which any of us would work a long time. Now by redoubling health power, which can easily be done, most people can keep on improving their health year after year until after middle-life, then retain it to a good old age, and improving the power of the mind in the same proportion; you will then have the best kind of profits; salary or speculations all combined, are but a drop in the bucket, compared with the self-improvement; so the best way to become rich and the fastest is in improving first your health and life capacities. There is nothing we delight in more than in making improvements, whether on the farm or enlarg- ing our business, but your best and what all are so vainly looking 338 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE for and fail to find, yet when once understood is the improvement of health and strength, and is one of the simplest as well as the most profitable things we can do; let us begin to make health and self- improvement our great life business. Then can I not truthfully say that this is a work that shows and teaches humanity the law how to help, lessen or even entirely eradi- cate most diseases, and lessen human imperfection, vices and miseries, and assist in the perfection of that human temple to the highest pin- nacle to be attained on earth? Should not such a work and pros- pect nerve us all to put forth our utmost self-improving effort? We can improve ourselves far beyond anything we now deem possible. Why not begin now and be up and doing, even if not up to the top notch? The next generation will laud and honor us more for it by giving to our offspring the knowledge of how to increase and add the pleasure of twenty to forty years to their lease of life. Is there anything more soul-inspiring to parents than improving as well as giving our children the knowledge to keep on improving their physical health? And the earlier it is applied the greater the harvest it will yield. All parents should literally delight in a labor thus beneficial. You struggle day and night to leave them lots of money and spend freely to give them a scholastic culture, both of which may be injurious, if not the cause of their early death, by omitting the only tried means of improving them; not for the want of affection for your children but from the want of the real knowl- edge. You grope in the darkness of the past and think too much in being in harmony with the present fashion, sometimes when you even know it is or might be injurious to their future welfare. When these divinely made laws, or as they are commonly called, the laws of nature, are known to the world as being simple in their applica- tion and so simple to be learned for all practical purposes and needs of humanity as a child's first lesson in reading; when the world knows that these natural laws were intended to be equally beneficial to all as is the noonday sun, when these things are fully under- stood and comprehended, then health will be easy to acquire and main- tain, and then it will be understood that the knowledge of these laws STRENGTHENING THE ORGANS AND FACULTIES 339 was not made for a few so-called scientists to understand, or as it is too often the case, half understood or even less, and who impose themselves upon the public for mercenary purposes, regardless of the injury it may be to the public, whether it regards their health or the cure of disease, or as applied to even political and, social interest. To promote and awaken individual interest and knowledge of these natural laws pertaining to health, long life and the cause of disease, especially this dreadful mower of blooming humanity, con- sumption, should be the first distinctive end of our education, because it is more simple and easy than any other single study and more bene- ficial than all others combined. To promote an end thus glorious are these pages written. HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH. When we send a child to school to be taught the A B C's, or later on to learn the higher branches of education, we demand, first: that the teacher should understand and be thoroughly acquainted with the subject to be taught, and most of all that the teacher should have the gift and tact to impart this knowledge to his pupils in the plainest and simplest manner. We also know that one of the best methods of teaching is by illustrations and comparisons, thereby impressing the subject taught in an interesting, as well as an instruct- ive, manner to the pupil. The first thing the child is taught is the letters or alphabet; now for all practical purposes it is of no consequence to the teacher or scholar who first invented or constructed these letters; the pupil is simply taught that there are twenty-six letters, and then gradu- ally it is taught that these letters when combined form words, and that from these words sentences are made. From sentences, books; from books libraries; and from these twenty-six letters about forty thou- sand words are composed. Further, that all these words, sentences, books, etc., are formed by putting together these twenty-six letters in different combinations, and that all these combination of words can be changed into different words and different meanings by sim- ply changing the position of the letters of a single word. Again, the meaning can be changed by simply adding other letters to the word, or its meaning can be changed by taking away one or more letters from the word. A few illustrations will make clear the foregoing statements. Take the word God and change the position of the first and last letters we have "dog." Here we have the same three let- ters, only changing their position; we have certainly the greatest change imaginable in the two, and the change in their action is cer- tainly just as great. Take another word M-A-D can be changed to D-A-M; take away 340 HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 341 the D we have the word A-M; add A-M to M-A-D we have madam, and so on through the whole list of the English language thousands upon thousands of different combinations are made, and a little change of a single letter and the real identity and meaning of the word is lost Does not this illustration seem easy to every reader to under- stand? Does it take even an ordinary education to understand it? You will also agree that every person ought to be educated enough in the above named principles of the English language; at least suf- ficiently educated for all practical purposes. Further there would be no dispute of the fact that it would take but a short time for any person to understand and apply it for all practical purposes in life. This being true, is it asking too much for a person to learn the let- ters of nature and know these letters of nature and the various com- binations of natural words that can be formed? And by changing nature's letters we get as great a change by simply changing their position as we made by changing the position of the letters G-O-D to D-O-G, and we will demonstrate in the following pages that it is as easy to learn and understand how nature's letters are changed about in different ways and forms to produce natural words as it is to make changes in the English language. From natural words we get natural sentences; from natural sentences we form natural books, and these books of nature are reformed by nature's letters in a simi- lar form and law as the books formed by man, with this difference, that the law by which nature's books are formed are more accurate and certain, never varying a hair's breadth, and will be for all time to come. We have books on religion, on politics, on philosophy, on chemistry, on history, all by simply changing the place, position and combination of twenty-six letters. Now one of the greatest books in nature's library is man himself; then we have the animal which is another book; the tree another; the plant another; the earth another; sun, moon and stars are other books. Further all these books of nature, which form nature's grand library, are all arranged systematically, and its subject-matter is all linked or correlated to each other. In other words, God's great and grand universe is composed and made up of nature's letters or alphabet. These letters of nature are called elements, of which we have 342 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE about seventy in number. Everything in this universe is composed of these seventy known elements, and perhaps some which are yet unknown, but man himself is composed of only fifteen of these ele- ments and it is with these elements or letters of nature with which we will have mostly to deal with in regard to health, life, disease and death. The chemist has discovered fifteen elements which enter into the formation of the human body, four of which are termed the chief elements, viz., oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon; the other ten are lime, sodium, iron, magnesium, sulphur, phosphorous, potassium, chlo- rine, fluorine, and silican. My experience with most people has been that in speaking to them about disease and how different conditions are produced that cause disease, that it sounds like Greek to them, and that they do not seem to grasp the fact that disease is simply pro- duced by different combinations and organizations of these elements; that in certain combinations they form a poison for the system, which will produce disease; in another combination the same elements form a different poison and we call it another kind of disease, and so on through the list. And again these same elements in certain combina- tions give health and life. This problem seems to perplex the pub- lic so that they think and say that it is impossible for them to under- stand all these perplexities of disease, and they simply say we do not and cannot understand it, and all we can do is to trust in the doctor. We propose to make this so plain in these several chapters that it should actually seem disgraceful to not understand the whole subject. We will admit that so far people have been to a degree excusable, for it has never been put before them in a simple, plain and comprehensible form; in no form, except in a form which in most instances was purposely designed to-deceive them. We will consider in a concise and plain manner what kind of words, sentences, books and libraries these letters of nature, or as they are termed, elements, form. Combinations of these elements are called compounds and these compounds are named according to the number and kind of these elements put together, just as a cer- tain number of letters put together form a word. As oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon are the four chief HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 343 elements of which the human body is composed, so are these same elements the chief ones in all animals, and also in all vegetable life upon this earth. So is air and water composed of three of these same four elements. Here we have all the human beings, all the animals, all forms of vegetable life, from the minutest plant to the greatest oak, all the water and all the air contained in this world; while it would seem that the difference in all these various forms of man, animal, air and water seems great, to the eye, the real differ- ence is very little; they are composed and made up principally of these four chief elements; all the difference practically between an animal and the body of a man, or the body of an oak tree is the dif- ferent proportions in which these elements are combined, just as you can mix four different colors in so many different proportions and get dozens of different shades. It ought to be easy then to compre- hend that this law of proportion of these elements is the one and the only law that makes, one thing different from another; the very slight- est change in the proportion of these elements would change a white man to a negro, a blonde to a brunette, black hair to red hair. A certain amount of change or combinations of these elements in the human body will produce typhoid fever in one person, diphtheria in another, scarlet fever in another, smallpox or yellow fever in another, and so on through the list, and people more often need the com- bined influence of the external surroundings. This law of change or organization of these elements is what makes all changes in the universe; it is this law that forms gold in the mountains; it forms coal, stone, copper, iron, etc. The first element in the list, called oxygen, is found in all sub- stances in nature; it enters into the composition of all animal and vegetable matter and is one of the main and most necessary elements of life in any and all its forms and in all its stages. Carbon is an- other of the most important elements of the animal or human body. It enters into and forms a part of all flesh and of all vegetable mat- ter; of the brain, muscles, fat and bile. It is the main element of coal, wood, wheat and rice, and in fact all grains are composed in great proportions of this element called carbon. Hydrogen, the third of the list, is also a very essential element in the composition of flesh. 344 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Now when we know that the human body is made up of these fifteen elements named, it would appear that all that was necessary was to supply the body, in order to maintain life, with these ele- ments in proper proportion in which they are found in the body. Oh, no, not by any means. Nature has her own way of doing these things and we must understand her, or at least submit to her ways or laws, or we are liable to form a creed or notion of our own, and it is a deplorable fact that most people do have a creed or notion of their own, when really there is but one way. If we were to feed a person with these elements it would soon destroy life, instead of sustaining it; what then is necessary? It is what is called the organization of these elements. These elements are not found in their natural state in the body, not one of them. You may search in vain throughout the body for particles of iron or sodium or sul- phur or any other of the fourteen elements. They are found only in various combinations which go to make up tissues, fluids, bone, muscles and various other structures of the body. These combinations have been definitely ascertained by chemistry. The main combinations of them are as follows: Water, phosphate of lime, sulphate of soda. Fat, phosphate of potash, sulphate" of potash. Albumen, phosphate of soda, peroxide of iron. Salt, phosphate of magnesia, fluoride of lime. Fibrin, carbonate of lime, silica. Gelatin, carbonate of soda. For an example take water. Water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, but giving these two elements separately to take the place of water would not sustain the life of man; they must first be organ- ized together by nature's method to form water. Water is present everywhere in the body. In fact, over three-fourths of the body con- sists of water. This fact alone ought to be sufficient to prove the need of plenty of pure water, and its results if it is not pure, as it is so essential to give form to the tissues and keep many of the above named salts, such as the sulphate of soda, potash, etc., in solution. Under all circumstances and in all conditions then, water is an in- dispensable article to human existence. Water, pure and simple, must HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 345 then of necessity be supplied at all times in abundant quantities. Every article of food we eat contains water and no food is fit to enter the stomach that does not contain water. The different combinations above mentioned are not all evenly distributed throughout the body. Some structures of the body are chiefly of one set of combinations and other structures chiefly of an- other set, etc. For example: (i) All organs, such as the brain and the rest of the nervous sys- tem, which perform intellectual and sensory duties, are composed chiefly of the combinations known as the phosphates. (2) The organ involved in performing actual labor, such as the muscles and tendons, are chiefly composed of combinations contain- ing nitrogen, such as gelatin, albumen and fibrin. (3) Those portions-of the body which are consumed or burnt up to keep up the animal heat are composed chiefly of fats, which means substance, or rather foods, containing carbon, because carbon is the only thing burned, whether in the body or anywhere else. Carbon is what is burned when burning coal, wood or oils. The substances in combinations in the body containing carbon are called carbonates. Most of our foods contain carbon, some in large and some in small quantities. Thus it becomes evident that there must be several classes of foods eaten to supply and maintain the different structures and organs of the body, as well as their actions. By this same law of organization of the different elements into combinations this whole universe is formed and governed, while by their various change and combinations are the means by which all existing phenomenon of the animal, vegetable and mineral king- doms are governed. By the power and force produced in the changing and organiza- tion of these elements all is produced that the eye and skill of man have ever been able to discover or ever will discover. It is the cause of all births, growths and deaths (animal or vegetable) ; it is the- cause of the brightness of the sun, moon and stars; it is the cause of all storms, rain, winds and hurricanes, and the eruption of volcanoes. Again by changing the organization of these elements health and long life is kept up; so also are all forms of disease produced by 346 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE this same law. It is by this law of organization of these elements that suns multiply suns in the infinite universe; by which worlds evolve worlds; by which life upon our globe multiplies itself and mineral crystals produce other mineral crystals, even to the formation and growth of iron, coffee, gold, diamonds and silver; the only funda- mental differences in any of them being in the forming of these elements in different proportion. But here we are concerned only with these elements which go to form the human body and with those that go to nourish the body while life exists and those that exist external to the body and their effects upon the body for good or evil; and again how they effect the individual when taken into the body. Let us ask the ques- tion how and in what form are the fourteen elements of which the human body is composed of, taken into the body? By the food we eat and drink and the air we breathe. This is the only natural way our body is, or at least should be, supplied with its wants and need of these necessary elements. The one is taken by the way of the stomach the other through the lungs. Immediately when food is taken into the stomach, coming in contact with its secretions, reor- ganization of the food takes place; this is called digestion. This re- arrangement of the food separates the material or elements for the nourishing of the body, and the remainder is carried off through the proper channels such as the lungs, kidneys, skin, bowels, etc. A similar process takes place with the air we breathe into the lungs; here as in the stomach, re-organization of this air takes place, separat- ing and rearranging itself so that the oxygen from the air is taken up in the blood; the remainder of the air, called nitrogen, takes up a poison from the blood and it is thus exhaled from the lungs. This double function of the lungs stands in the lead of all others, there- fore should be studied and understood first and the process of diges- tion next. By these two processes of organization and rearrange- ment of these elements contained in the food we eat and the air we breathe, the body is nourished and life kept up. The substance sepa- rated by the process of digestion is taken up into the blood, and when these two meet with the oxygen taken up by breathing and the sub- stance called chyle, another process of organization takes place called HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 347 combustion, and by this process of combustion new cells of life are built up and the old ones are in their disorganized form carried out of the body through their proper channels. Here we have three distinct forms of this law of organization of these elements consid- ered in their normal conditions; this condition normally kept up means the sustaining of health and life of the body to old age. The first form in the process of digestion forms chyle to be taken in the blood, and the residue is carried off by the bowels. The sec- ond form is the process or function of breathing, by which oxygen is taken up in the blood and the residue or poison exhaled by the lungs. The third form is the meeting of the product produced by the first two to nourish the body and the residue of this process, which is called waste matter, is carried off by the skin, lungs and kidneys, etc. These three forms of organization and rearrangement of these elements contained in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe, should be strongly impressed upon the mind of the reader, as just these three important functions or methods of organi- zation in their proper proportion are kept up, health and life to old age are maintained; and as this law of proportion of this elemental organization is interfered with, just so much is health interfered with, life shortened and premature death the result. We come next to the agency of chief importance of what pro- duces these changes or organization and rearrangement of these ele- ments in matter; or in other words, all changes in any vegetable or animal life. It is called chemical affinity. How readily any vege- table or animal substance is modified or changed by other substances coming in contact with them; we see this illustration about us daily. Many of these changes, according to their degree, cause disease or death of the body. Again these changes may be adapted to have the opposite effect, and by these new changes of elements taken into the body, and by their combined action of the external surroundings, poor health can be restored to good health; a delicate child be developed to a strong one. A person born with a weak organ or function can by these changes bring it up to a proper proportion to the rest of the body. It is especially so when a body is placed in favorable and 348 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE permanent relation to these outside conditions of the body. The old balance will be destroyed and a new balance will be established. This is the law of adapting yourself to a certain climate. By these functional disturbances the end will be a re-adjusting of a balance of functions. By this change of the internal and external conditions the origi- nal can only be changed, and if change of conditions can affect a body only by altering its functions, it follows that alterations of functional disturbances the end will be a readjusting of a balance can be ascribed. We often notice that minor changes of function of parents which they undergo from year to year are often influential in the offspring. We see this by the unlikeness that exists between children born to the same parents at different times. This same law of change or variation may go on for years in the body, unnoticed until after middle life it has gradually and unconsciously laid the foundation for thexdevelopment of a cancer or tumor, or some other necessarily fatal disease. On the other hand by this same law under different conditions a gradual and unconscious change may go on and develop an otherwise delicate organism or body into a strong and well-proportioned, as well as long-lived, individual. This law of change to which we have only just called attention is as certain and indisputable as the rising and setting of the sun and can be made as plain to the reader as we have made it plain as to the various changes and combinations that can be made with the letters of the alphabet. While by this same certain rearrangement of the letters of nature these changes and organization can be as detrimental to man as they can be made beneficial. Then how does man learn to use the letter or A B C's to his benefit? Certainly only by being educated how to use them. Then just as certain is it that by education can he know how to use the elements or nature's letters to benefit him, with this difference, that for all practical purposes nature's books are easier than man's A B C's. It is the doctor that in dealing with the public makes it look hard. By the changes that can be made in the organization of the natural ele- ments a good constitution and good health is acquired, and then improper or wrong combination and organization means disease and premature death. HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 349 Then there can be no question that we should consider as the most necessary of all branches of education for ourselves and for our children, and the conditions needed to our healthy and happy existence which we prize so highly, that which teaches us what causes disease and how to avoid it, and to cherish health for ourselves and those who are dear to us, should be studied most diligently. It is our purpose to show that there is a sensible solution of this great problem of health and disease; that when once there is brought to bear upon this question the amount of honest thought, honest in- vestigation, reasoning and common sense that we display in all things in regard to making money, health and long life will be the rule, not the exception. If we would only use the time that we waste in imitating some fashion or fad, which is spread before us to dazzle our eyes and blight our common judgment, the same result would be attained, while by carrying out this fashionable ignorance we blight our constitutions, and bring on disease, as well as convey these same weaknesses to our children and their children often suf- fer more than we did ourselves, while by a little right knowledge the result would be very different and fully satisfactory. I plead for investigation and the acquirement of knowledge of health; I beg for candid thought and truth. As to the reading public, their position is not difficult to under- stand. They are, as it were, hypnotized by the confusion that exists in regard to the causes and the prevention of disease, and are, so far as their ability to think and judge for themselves goes, in a state of chronic catalepsy, and more so when they have, or are even threatened, with any disease. They mistake assertions for proof, theories for science, and hold a high regard for a conglomeration of "highferlutin' " words which explains nothing whatever as to real knowledge. We must learn when to doubt, when to feel certain, when to submit; for as long as you fail in this you fail to under- stand the force of reason and what is real and beneficial knowledge. There are too many people who offend against these three rules, either by accepting everything as evidence for want of knowing what evi- dence is, or by doubting everything for want of knowing when to submit, or by yielding to all sorts of nonsense, which often is inju- 350 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE rious to health, as well as preventing the recovery of health when lost, for the want of knowing when and how to use their judgment. Then let the value of the evidence here presented be estimated by the rules of logic and in the light of reason. We will rely only upon positive evidence, upon demonstration, upon experience, and upon the absolute law of cause and effect, which is the law of na- ture, the law of the universe, therefore the laws created by God, and which are the same to-day, to-morrow and for all future time. If all those who read this book will receive the information it is intended to convey, I am sure they will feel repaid a thousand times as it has been a delightful pleasure to divide with infinite pa- tience and care the truth from the chaff or the gold from the dross, and present the pure and shining truth. If then we want to accomplish anything in this conflict of mis- ery, sickness and premature death raging so fiercely around us, it is imperative that we should provide ourselves with the true means and knowledge to defend any attack, and we should be ever ready, not only to guard the stronghold of the argument, but should like- wise be equipped and ready to meet our enemies who are by the pre- tense of friendship and assistance crowding us with nicely worded falsehoods, with no other purpose than to gulp down our throats some worthless, perhaps injurious, poisons or so-called remedies, for the sake only of the dollars and cents they can by these disreputable means cheat us out of. But it has so far been true that the people are ever ready to lick the hand that smites them. But this will be the beginning of the irresistible conflict between those who can and do not think and those who won't or cannot think, and those who object to everyone who dares reason, act and spread the truth. How to derive from nature, which is our life power, all the pos- sible enjoyments and avoid all possible sufferings, should be the highest aspirations of every man, woman and child, and should throughout life constitute the one great inquiry of every human be- ing. Then the plain and true explanation of these natural laws in health and disease and their application to the happiness and vir- tue of individuals and committees ranks above all other subjects in practical importance, and when known and understood becomes a HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 351 great and unequaled benefit to the human race. It also behooves us to realize that in this age of doubt and intellectual confusion, when the skeptic sees an interrogation point at the end of every proposi- tion, and when uncertainty and misery hovers over so much, it be- hooves us, I repeat, to realize that we must dispel the darkness with which we are surrounded and to relieve the harrowing doubts that exist about disease with which humanity is now so oppressed. Im- portant as it is for us to bear in mind that we live in an age of doubt and disquietude, we must not lose sight of the fact that our lot is cast in an age of dissent and intellectual conflict on account of the many conflicting false theories and facts and mysterious assumptions that are sprung upon us, mainly for the sake of notoriety or mer- cenary consideration. We must then make it clear that we have no pet theory to exploit, nothing sensational to defend, nothing to up- hold that is not clearly consistent with the strictest laws of nature, for these laws have been and will forever be truthful, or in other words, always the same and unchangeable. Our sole aim and pur- pose is to remove misconceptions, to dispel error to explain seem- ing difficulties, to expose error, to eliminate false interpretations, to allay doubt, and all for the purpose of benefiting mankind. This information goes to you freely and conscientiously; wel- come it in your truest principles for the benefit of yourself, your fam- ily and your posterity; for the true knowledge and the simplicity by which this enormous misery and suffering can be eradicated need not yield any laurels to any branch of science. Health is our normal state. To preserve it we are not obliged to do some great thing, nor to go on a painful and costly pilgrim- age, not even to practice the least self-denial, but only not to abuse it. Let nature have h.er perfect work and she will furnish all ready at our hands. It is simply the perfect operation of all her organs and functions which she has taken the utmost pains to secure. Behold the labor she has bestowed to construct the body with a degree of perfection obtainable only by infinite power and skill. Was not this structurable perfection devised expressly to secure corre- sponding perfection of function? Else what is its use? Unless de- ranged or prevented by violated law, every organ wifi go on from 352 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the beginning of life until worn out by extreme old age, and per- form its office with all regularity of the sun, and with a power com- mensurate to any demand compatible with the laws of our being. Allowed their natural play all the organs will go on perpetually to manufacture life, health and happiness, unless their flow is arrested by violating law; will flow on as freely and spontaneously in every human being as the river to its ocean home. When we cut out the confessedly incurable and the self-limited diseases, there is little left for honest work of the doctor. Bear in mind that all diseases are due to a few main causes, and remember that these few simple causes which lie in the power, in fact, must be understood and handled by each individual himself, in order to .prevent disease or improve his own condition or health. These several causes are taking into the system, either in the form of gases, liquid or solid organic matter, that is, any matter that is of vegetable or animal origin; the other is the retention in the system of our secretions of either gas, liquid or solid organic matter. Thirdly the action of the surroundings upon the functions of the body, and which produces epidemics, is the combinations of these separate con- ditions. These simple and easily understood causes are always and in every instance the cause of smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, measles, chickenpox, intermittent and remittent fevers, erysipelas, all forms of blood poisoning from wounds, yellow fever, diphtheria, diarrhoea, and all forms of bowel complaints; add to these the diseases caused from colds, including those directly affecting the nervous system from the mind proper. These four main causes un- derstood by every individual and by him carried out, ninety per cent of all diseases would vanish from the face of the earth. We are by natural law a part and in common rapport with every- thing that exists. Man and animals excrete carbon by the life proc- ess, but consume oxygen, while vegetables imbibe and grow on this carbon, yet exhale oxygen, showing that we each live on the other's leavings. The air needs clearing of those noxious gases which are injurious to human life, generated by man and animal, else in the course of time the whole of it would be vitiated by human and animal effluvia, HOW TO STUDY AND LEARN THE LAWS OF HEALTH 353 just as a room now becomes by being long packed with breathers, when gradual but inevitable suffocation must ensue. Whereas vege- tables thus clear it by absorbing the identical elements cast off by animal life and vice versa. Vegetables, too, but for animal life, would soon absorb so much carbon and excrete so much oxygen as to unfit'the air to sustain any more vegetable growth. By this stroke of divine economy, animal offal makes vegetable food, and the vege- table life makes those animals which eat them give back to the vege- table kingdom all the elements taken from it. To eliminate from the system these above mentioned poisons through their proper channels of the system is the only need or treat- ment of a physician. In the days of ignorance gone by the patient was purged and puked to free the system of the disease, which short- ened the course of measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, etc., and they did succeed in shortening them by killing the patient; at the present time it is done by injecting more animal poison into the patient to lengthen out the disease and create the tendency in future generations to more disease. Is it again ignorance, as of old, or is it for mercenary purpose? We will show positively that it is both. There is a kind of honest ignorance, and just as the child follows the advice of its mother so does the medical student, as a rule, follow the instruction of his teacher. From the walls of the college he goes out instructed to give so many drops of a certain drug to excite the nerves and so many drops of another to quiet them, and so on all the way through his path is laid out, and if his patient goes down and counsel is called, his course is usually com- mended, whether right or wrong. This mostly comes about because so much information is put into the heads of students and too little of the learning of the practical operations of nature. In fact the laws of nature and the relation between the human body and the external nature are not taught in any college in the world. Is it any wonder that no two can agree when put to the test? Is it not clear then that no other subject, to which the intellect of man can be applied, is of such paramount importance to yourself and to all humanity, born and unborn, as to know the cause of diseases and how to prevent them, thereby keeping out of the clutches of doc- 354 the murderous fads in the practice of medicine tors who make a living from their ignorance because they know of your ignorance? Of all the questions in the world none has been evaded so much as the cause of disease, and passion and prejudice have been so en- gendered through these hundreds of different arguments and opin- ions that one or the other has rooted itself so firmly in the minds of their supporters that they become fiercely fanatical as soon as their view is controverted by anyone. We are accustomed to pride ourselves on the fact that we are a conservative people and that we live in a critical age. We boast that no new theory of science, politics or religion can gain confidence, unless it passes through the fiery ordeal and our severest investigation. Each one of us consid- ers himself a kind of intellectual watch dog, and yet with all our conceit every now and then we start and rush in pursuit of will-o- the-wisp theories and hysterically declare something to be true, espe- cially if it pertains to our health or to the treatment of some disease, which after a little calm reflection and study proves to be utterly false. ALL FUNCTIONS MANIFESTED ONLY BY ORGANS. Life's first law, its tap-root condition, that from which emanates most of its other laws, that fundamental and principal means of all functions, is that it manifests itself only through organs. The sun is the organ of the solar light, and the earth of all growth. No form of life is ever put forth by any other means. In fact, life is composed of these two things, primary faculties which originate all functions and those organs by means of which they express themselves. Neither ever exist except in conjunction with the other, but both exist and act together throughout all departments of nature. Each particular function is likewise exercised always and by means of its own organs, never by any other. Each organ is specifically adapted to perform its specific function, but no other. Thus the eyes are precisely adapted to see, but to do nothing else; and all seeing is executed by them. Their peculiar structure renders seeing alone possible to them and all else, except what contributes to sight, impos- sible, while the ears execute the hearing and that alone. No function ever manifested itself except through its own individual organ. But this truth is so perfectly apparent that it needs no proof, for like the sun it's proof itself. All organs and functions are in mutual rapport. Philosophy and fact prove this truth. If man had been created a purely physical being without any mind he could have accomplished nothing, could have enjoyed nothing; or if he had been created a purely spiritual being, without a material organization, this world with all its adaptations for promoting human happiness, the glorious sky over our heads, and the flower-spangled lawns under our feet, the life-giving sun and the health-inspiring breeze, the rains and dews of heaven, and all the fruits, bounties and luxuries of this earth, so far as they concern man, would have been made in vain. But man is created a compound being and all parts are so closely 355 356 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE interrelated that every action and condition of any one exerts a per- fectly reciprocal influence on the others, and thus sympathy between all organs is universal and perfect; this is true, and necessary through- out all nature. So can powerful organs only manifest powerful func- tions, and rapid organs rapid functions, and sick organs must needs cause sick functions. This is true in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom and is necessary as a relation of cause and effect. Our organism is the basis of all our mental and moral functions; it is the very constitution of things that mind can be put forth only in and by its material organs, and is strong or weak, quick or slow as they are; and so are the organs of the body governed by this same organic law, as that a man will walk light or heavy, logy or full, in proportion as his walking organs are either. Bad news at a table when you are enjoying your dinner kills the appetite and is liable to disturb the stomach. RULES FOR PRESERVING AND REGAINING HEALTH. Formulas, or short laconic rules, for attaining results are given in arithmetic and in all the natural sciences. Whatever is gov- erned by laws has these rules. Health is thus governed and has its summary rules, or short but explicit directions, for preserving and regaining this best of all acquisitions. We propose to enrich this part of this volume with a few of them, together with their reasons. (i) Study the science and laws of health. Certain conditions accompany health, which all are sacredly bound to know, in order that they should fulfill and study them that they may know and obey them. Get what aid you can from experience and observation, etc., and then make their summary results a matter of personal inves- tigation and right hard, searching inquiry. All through life you will need to know for your own self what will promote and what impair this sacred treasure in yourself. So post yourself the more, espe- cially since you yourself are the main one to be benefited thereby and the one personally concerned in the matter. (2) Observe the effect of all things and conditions upon your- self, because constitutions differ. Hence what may benefit you, or at least do you no harm, may injure another; what you espe- cially want to know is just what kind of food and the quantity; how much sleep; what kinds of external applications are best for your- self. Experience is your best teacher on this point and if you should make a mistake never allow yourself to be punished twice for the same offense. Learn the first time so as to escape a second suffer- ing; be quick to take the hint. Keep your eyes wide open whenever you do suffer to find out the cause and ever after avoid it. Note your own changes; the neglect of this point produces an immense amount of sickness and death, where otherwise your life might have been prolonged many years, because that which your consti- 357 358 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE tution could weather and turn to good account ten or twenty years ago may break it today; therefore keep well informed as to the requirements of your health market; watch the effect of your work, surroundings and conditions on yourself, so as not to prosecute any which may injure you. If typhoid fever or any other disease breaks out in one or the other of a neighboring family, or especially if several families are attacked, or if it occurs in your own family, step around right lively until you find what caused it; it may be a well containing, by accident or purposely, some decomposed animal or vegetable matter; if there is a dark bedroom in the house that gets little sunshine or fresh air you need generally look no farther; for breathing over and over again, night after night, the same poison- ous gases has loaded down with corruption the systems of those who sleep in it and induced the attack; that is, they get up a little sicker every morning, by retaining and adding a little more poison every day, until the system is clogged up; fever or some other symptom develops and we call it disease; it may be decayed vegetables in the cellar; scan all the surrounding conditions and if they are right look further. The habits of living may be wrong; brooding, grief, or a melancholy state from any cause, is a great producer of these diseases, which cause you to retain your own poisons. Keep circu- lating fresh air in all the rooms of the house, day and night, especially so when sickness is in it. (3) Do something worthy of yourself; work up your constantly accumulating vital forces; inertia is terribly paralytic. Few things are equally so. Have some great notion, some great life object, some mental and physical work on hand worth accomplishing, and if pos- sible something in which you are thoroughly interested so that you really love your work, which is so beneficial to brain and nervous system. On no account be listless. If you have money enough, set up some other object or idol, but if you want more money, set about making it and stick right to it; what is worth doing at all is worth doing well; it is better to wear out than to rust out; nothing is more wholesome than work of some kind. Choose head work or hand work, and the kind of either you like best, but select something and then pitch right in; you will RULES FOR PRESERVING AND REGAINING HEALTH 359 sleep the better, feel the better, be the stronger, live the longer and faster and be in every way better off for working, provided you do not overdo. Keep well rested up and slept out, for remember you are sick every night and should be well every morning. There is little danger of your overdoing, provided you rest up daily. Your clock will not run down if you wind it fully every day. Make it a fixed rule never to begin a day's work until that of the preceding day is squared off, by laying in the next day's stock of nervous energy before you begin its use. By resting till noon, if need be, you can do the more work in the afternoon than if you had worked all day tired, while the latter drives on and injures the constitution; the other method improves it. But impress upon your memory that you need work, play and exercise for both body and brain, but that this work, play and exer- cise added together should constitute only the equivalent of a day's work; not compared with what is a day's work for some one else, but what is a day's work for you. If your physical and mental capacity is twelve hours' work, and by this you can get up a well person every morning, then divide the twelve hours between work, play and exercise. If another person's physical and mental capacity is only eight hours a day and he tries to keep up with you who have the capacity of twelve hours, or if you with your twelve hours' capacity should try and keep up with a man who has the capacity of sixteen hours' work a day and can get up well every morning, then the result can only be serious for the weaker party. You all know what the result is when a machine is kept crowded to its full capacity or beyond. The human machine demands that you must only work it according to its capacity or make you suffer. In other words, your own work must be gauged by your own natural powers of endurance. Your energy exhausted daily should not exceed the energy that your body is able to provide; in fact, should be kept below, so that you have a reserve on hand for emergencies that are almost sure to arise occasionally. (4) Keep your bodily machinery in good running order; as soon as anything gives out stop at once and repair damages. If you keep working on you can expect a wholesale smash-up. Remember the 360 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE importance of this, for life will not go on without all its functions. The better you keep your machinery repaired and in good running order, the more and better work it will do; keep well oiled up, not with medicine but with full breathing of fresh air and proper plain food. (5) Nurture and favor all weak functions or organs; the stronger ones will generally look out for themselves, but weak ones need bal- ancing up by exercise and culture. Be especially careful not to violate nature's law of balance, and be doubly careful not to overtax weak organs. Examine your machinery to see which part or parts is being worked too hard or too steadily, and see to it that the harder it is worked that you give it more time to rest. If your business taxes only your muscles, intersperse study, but if it is all brain work, take daily some exercise, especially if your brain and nerves exceed your muscles by constitution. Nature will have balance or punish you for it. Be especially careful in this law of balance in growing children. Follow nature by eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping when sleepy; in health better take all at one time and not by piecemeal; these instincts were created to be followed; we should see to it that they are not perverted, but should implicitly follow their calls; when they are normal they constitute a perfect guide. Nature's calls are few but loud; hear and attend to them. (6) Supply your system with whatever it requires; nothing it needs is too good for it, while denying its wants saps life at its foundation head. Feed your hard-working organism; not with bread and meat merely, but with breath (fresh air), exercise, sleep and whatever else it requires. Breathing must always be kept in pace with your exertions; never fall behind them; nature must get energy, that is, oxygen, before she can expend it; nothing draws more on the constitution than does working beyond natural breathing. If you must run a long way, or work with all your might, keep your wind; if you have a hard day's work before you, begin leisurely and increase the effort gradually, and slacken off toward the close of the day, being careful not to expose yourself to cold until well rested. All intellectual efforts, public speaking, writing for the press and the labors of a lifetime are governed by this law. Many men throw so RULES FOR PRESERVING AND REGAINING HEALTH 361 much more energy than is needed into the first few years of business as to unfit themselves for sustained effort ever after. By the time they have worked up a business they must leave it. As soon as they get fairly started in life their working power is used up. (7) Avoid sudden changes; habituate yourself gradually to any required change and modifications of your mode of life; if you are accustomed to a sedentary life and you find it necessary to find a more active one for your health, business or pleasure, begin the change slowly and increase it slowly. If you live in a city and you go into the country for a vacation and choose to go into the hay field, work moderately, even lazily, along for a few days or more, until your system can adjust and adapt itself to this physical revolution in your habits. (8) Be doubly careful when about fifty or fifty-five years old; in some people recuperation begins to wane about that age. Self- abuses, if not too severe before that, can be mostly made up, but after that nature demands respite and favors slacking off effort in the afternoon of life as toward the close of day. Favor yourself by working easily and husbanding your strength, and you may work twenty-five years longer, otherwise not. Notice how many men die between the ages of fifty and sixty; so take warning. Still later in life, when nature gives warning that she does not intend to do much more repairing on your organism, be doubly careful to need but little. (9) Avoid all passional excesses through life; things perish by their using; many persons burn out one and all of their passions early in life, so that ever after they have no more pleasures in them; this does not pay; they are all good in their place, but should not be allowed to run at random. This violation of passion sears the nerves; it is the fast trains which wear out railroad stock; all excesses must be paid for at a heavy discount; make no such drafts. Too much pressure congests, strains and paralyzes the organs and func- tions. (10) Be patient, pleasant, cheerful and happy. Fret not thyself for anything or anybody; avoid all the ills you can, and then patiently endure what you can not cure. Nothing so promotes health as 362 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE cheerfulness and serenity of mind, yet nothing wears, corrodes, para- lyzes and shortens life and all its functions as anger, hatred, envy, malice, grudges and vindictiveness. Those who really deserve to be hated are not worth hating and do not deserve the life ammuni- tion fired in hating them. Let nature punish those who wrong you and in time she will do it up brown. All wrong-doing punishes itself; at least don't hurt yourself by indulging in any bad, moody, sorrowful, hateful or other like feelings. If religious faith and resignation will enable you to smother wrath or dispel the blues, cultivate them. As a medicine they are as much better than anything as a dose of calomel is worse, and is not so hard to take, and is an excellent tonic and nervine. I don't mean this long-faced, moody, sanctimonious piety. (n) Make every day a happy holiday. Those who enjoy the most are the best fellows; if your pleasures are in harmony with nature, seize and turn all you touch and all surroundings into occa- sions of enjoyment; lay good, bad and indifferent under contribution and tax everything to promote your happiness. That good, old- fashioned idea of comfort is the great thing; make yourself just as comfortable in mind and body as possible; hope on, ever for the best; this gives you a double enjoyment in everything-once in expect- ing it, another in its fulfillment. Following these few rules and the other directions in this work will keep you well and get you well if sick; none can realize their beau- tiful effects until taught by experience; every reader and practitioner of these doctrines will be immeasurably benefited by following every single one of its directions. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION. Every natural object in this world has received a definite consti- tution, and each in virtue of this constitution acts and exists in a particular way. Let it be a human being, let it be one of the speci- mens of plant life, or any of the mineral objects. The constitution of man, which here interests us particularly, is, like everything in this world, nothing more or less than a complex organized combination of a certain number of the natural elements and in a certain propor- tion and complexity. The complexity and organization of these natural elements in cer- tain proportions is what forms a human being in perfect physical health, and this state of perfection is what would be called the con- stitution of the individual. These definite constitutions of the human, vegetable, mineral and animal we call a natural law, therefore there must be as many natural laws as there are distinct modes of action of substances and beings viewed by themselves. Then, again, all these substances and beings stand in certain relation to each other. For instance man, in fact all animal life, has a very binding and distinct relationship with all vegetable life. The proof of this is that which will give life and power to the human being and other animal life, would destroy vegetable life; and what would destroy vegetable life is the main force of animal existence. Then comes the sun, which stands next insep- arable in relationship to both animal and vegetable life. The sun is king and actually dictates the conditions existing upon the earth, but everything in this universe has a definite relationship to every other thing. In studying and observing this relationship between all substances and beings, we cannot help being convinced of the benevolent design in nature, especially in regard to health and disease. But in connection with this subject it is proper to state that we do not mean to maintain that the world is arranged conclusively on the principle of benevolence, 363 364 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE as the destructive feature of a tornado or earthquake would demon- strate, but it is nevertheless true in those particular conditions that pro- duce disease, and in this respect is in harmony with the whole nature of man. And upon the same principle, as it appears to me, that the reason why vice and misery in this world do not diminish in proportion to the amount of preaching, is because the natural laws are too much over- looked ; in fact, it is doubtful if they are hardly ever considered as hav- ing any relation to practical conduct, when in fact natural law and en- vironments are the chit and taproot of all vice and morality and must be regulated by obedience to this law. Just so it is with disease; every year the number of doctors increase; every year the teachers of medicine do more preaching and claiming wonderful advancement in knowledge that cures and prevents disease; every year hygienic laws are claimed to be improved; every year the student of medicine is held to what is called a stricter and more thor- ough medical education. And every year the diseases are very largely on the increase, particularly those diseases that are due to the constitu- tion of man. As this subject has perhaps never been put in exactly this light, it will be necessary to define the meaning of disease due to the constitution of man. A perfect constitution means a person with the organs and functions of the body durable and equally balanced, the heart, lungs, stomach, etc., being balanced with the endurance of the muscular and bony struc- ture of the body. The brain and nerves should balance with the organs and muscular system; the sewers or organs for carrying and eliminat- ing waste matter must balance with those of waste productions. To un- derstand the importance of those parts of the body which have the especial duty of carrying off the waste product of the system and to not overtax the system so as to produce waste matter beyond the power of these waste carriers, or as they may be called, sewer system of the body, and to prevent their becoming obstructed by any external means, such as the various atmospheric changes. What makes the difference between one man and another ? The same law that makes a difference between a basswood tree and a hickory tree; the difference is in their constitution. They are actually made up of the same kind of material or elements, only the proportions are not the same; sometimes it only THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 365 needs the changing of the position of the elements and its constitution is changed, as in changing iron to steel. But this iron or steel may- have a flaw or weak spot somewhere, thereby making it no stronger than this weak spot, so that any undue exposure or force upon the bar of steel, that would be beyond the endurance of this weak spot, would cause it to break. So it is with the human constitution; there are men of steel, there are men of iron, and there are hickory men, and pine men, and basswood men, etc.; each will have a definite constitution, per- fect in all its parts, each living out a long, useful life, but naturally it must differ in degree. If the pine man tries to accomplish as much as the hickory man, or the man with a steel constitution, he would be likely to injure his constitution, or perhaps ruin it altogether; or if a man with an oak constitution had a flaw, that is a weak organ or any other weakness, and tried to keep up with the perfect oak man, the re- sult would be disastrous. In other words a man is no stronger than his weakest organ or part. A seed from a good oak tree, sound in its constitution, planted in the proper soil, with its requisite environments, will bring forth a good oak tree. The seed then from this tree will also be good, but let this seed be planted in poorer soil than the first, and we have a tree poorer in constitution, other surroundings being equal, hence so much shorter lived and just so much more easily influenced and affected by the sur- roundings and conditions in which it lives than the first. But if the surroundings were also more unfavorable than the first, the danger to develop disease or the shortening of its life would be in- creased just that much more. This only represents the deterioration of a hardy oak in the second generation. What would a few more genera- tions do if the same degree of carelessness should be followed in plant- ing the seed of each generation in poorer soil or rather soil not well adapted to the seed? Would not a gradual degeneration be sure to follow each generation? Would not this degenerated constitution gradually become insufficient to even arrive at maturity ? And, if so, would it be able to resist the ordinary storms and draughts and other natural surroundings that even the ordinary tree must and does sur- vive? But a degenerated oak is not as good as a perfect pine tree, al- though the constitution of the oak in its perfect state is far superior and 366 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE much longer lived than the perfect pine. Place the pine tree under the same unfavorable conditions and we get a more rapid decline in its con- stitution on account of its less power of resistance given by nature in its original constitution. The farmer can have a large stock of horses or other animals, per- fect in their constitution; he can keep up this perfect constitution and long life almost indefinitely, provided he does not interfere with na- ture's demands in regard to their surroundings, foods and parental im- pairments and never be troubled with disease, because he has not in- terfered with nature. But let the farmer study out some new fad which he terms an improvement on the old monotonous method of nature. His dreams and imaginations want a change; he is going to have fine build- ings, fine horse parlors, finer stalls to keep his cows in; keeps them in the stalls and well groomed, slicked up, has his friends come from all over the state to see the finest cattle and horse farm in existence. The pride and envy of others becomes excited and they start out to follow the grand idea of their neighbor; the fad spreads because it is high- toned, it is scientific, you know, but in a few years, perhaps in less time, disease begins to spread among the cattle; doctors are needed, and none to be had, for previous to this fashionable fad, none were needed. Medical colleges are started to turn out veterinary surgeons to stop the stampede of disease, but the diseases increase instead of diminish. The veterinary surgeon says germs have spread among the cattle, producing tuberculosis (consumption) ; the milk of these cows contains germs that will spread the disease among the people; the cows must be killed and those not killed are shorter lived; degeneration takes place; the breed begins to run out, as it is termed. But the farmer who has paid no attention to this germ fad, did not let his gall go to his head and curdle his brain, but followed common sense and experience in accordance with nature, and by this has retained the constitution of his herd, and many have improved their kind in quality by following the old common-sense method of nature, instead of finely kept and parlor- bred cattle of the aristocratic farmer. No one can deny that this is the result, for the past twenty or more years, of the constitutional degeneration and the shortening as well as the debilitating of the con- stitutions of the domestic animal wherein these conditions are found. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 367 But if these artificial improvements had been without interfering with the laws of nature, retaining health and good constitutions, no harm would have resulted. Let us trace this law to man. A century or more ago, a sturdy, healthy, long-lived class of people emigrated to this country, who represented the cream of constitutions from the countries they came from, Germany, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, etc. A few of these people have maintained fairly well in their progeny the health and constitution of their ancestors of a century ago; but how different with a large proportion, especially among those who have been handsomely blessed with this world's goods. This has been done by drawing upon their physical energy to their full endurance and often beyond it, their mental energy predominating, interspersed with mental worry, busi- ness and social excitements. Is it not a well known fact that these chil- dren are usually below their parents in constitution, besides growing up in luxury and fashion which retards so often the development to matur- ity ? The natural constitution which they inherited from their parents, which was below that of their parents, again falls a few points, during growth and development, below what it might have been if given the full sway of nature's opportunities of developing their bodies by an outdoor life, plain food and fresh air, which gives increased lung ac- tion. This in turn gives vigor and power to the blood, which means vigor and power to the body and mind, providing it is not overdone. But instead they are brought up in parlors, colleges, etc.; they grow up with a bright intellect but weakened body. They are married to some young man or woman, who perhaps has suffered physically from the same source and the children of the third generation are weaker than the second; these are brought up tenderly and with care, amid lux- ury and refinement; their lungs and whole constitution are naturally weaker, they take cold easier, suffer physically from long years of school education, become nervous, excitable, complaining more or less, lungs are little exercised and they become narrow chested, but manage to exist and get married. The children of this fourth generation grow up more delicate than the third, some of them dying with consumption before twenty. How many of us are there that cannot trace such a history among some of their relatives or friends, all due to two causes? The one from excessive mental or physical labor of the father or 368 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE mother, or both, thereby exhausting all their energy in that direction, preventing the full development of the germs of life in either parent. If the germ life is weakened by sapping the systemic powers in other directions, such as overwork, the child born of such parents must surely suffer more or less in its constitution from the abuses of this most important natural law. The system has certain functions to per- form and has just so much material to be divided in order to supply each function; if one or more of these are overdrawn, the others must suf- fer. The opportunities offered in this new country have given rise to ambition and energy that would otherwise in a more settled country have been more evenly balanced; this has done so much to injure our constitutions before we were born. This is not an overdrawn picture; it can be seen all around us. How many wealthy people die between the ages of fifty and sixty who ought to have lived twenty or thirty years longer? They should have been satisfied with a half million of dollars instead of ruining their constitution to make it a million of dol- lars, besides the irreparable injury to their offspring begotten during those years, and overdrawing upon the natural resources and supply of physical energy of their body. Thus the seed or germ suffering in its constitution, the child begotten from this seed must suffer in propor- tion, and be an easy prey to disease. This law applies, of course, as well to the laboring man, and it as well applies to the dissipater in lust and drunkenness. In classing disease into dozens upon dozens of unnecessary varieties, and thus classifying them in these numerous forms, the public are so confused, and we may say dazed, that they think it just impossible to have any idea about what produces disease, and the more dazed the public is kept, under the pretense of a wonderful science, the more credit the ignorant physician can get, when his methods have been the ruining of a vigorous constitution, if not the taking of a life, it is kindly and gently laid on the shoulder of the Lord; yes, it was the Lord's will. We must, if fortunate enough to be born with a good and well balanced constitution, lay the blame for the lack of health and strength of our own children at our own feet, and we must lay the cause of our own misery and suffering and the effect of our surroundings largely if not wholly to ourselves. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 369 If any defect in an organ or other part of the body has been im- parted to us, this defect, with the proper knowledge of how the consti- tution of the body may be strengthened, can be improved or entirely overcome by the right training of this defect or weakness. A good supply of pure air is the motive power of the body as truly as steam is the motive power of machinery, and with moderation in living and sufficient amount of exercise, in many cases, no doubt much improve- ment is sure to follow. But is the constitution itself thus strengthened ? Or is only the original vigor inherent in the body made effective? Our general observation and experience on individual cases leads us to the conclusion that the original constitution of a strong or feeble person can be improved in early life to a large degree, but the extent of this improvement is somewhat limited, if not impossible, later in life. But we desire to make it easily understood that there are but really two great classes of disease, one of which has been, in many quarters, on the decrease where hygienic laws have been observed. These are the diseases largely due to conditions outside of the body, influencing the functions and fluids of the system, such as filth, places of living, cer- tain atmospheric conditions and the substances taken into the body as foods, impure water, and lastly, the retention of the waste products of the system. To this class belong all the blood diseases, as the plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. The second class which particularly interests us here and which is surprisingly on the increase, are those due to the constitution of man, and the one that stands in the lead is consumption. The other forms of this class of diseases are also fast on the increase every year, as all forms of tumors and growths, such as cancers, etc., but it is only to be expected as the one increases, all the other diseases that arise from deterioration of the constitution of man must increase propor- tionally. At the present death rate from consumption there must, of the seventy million people living today in the United States, be at least ten million or more die of this disease unless something be done to prevent it, for a cure is impossible. In the census year of 1890, 102,199 deaths are reported as due to consumption. 370 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE To these reported deaths, not less than twenty-five per cent should be added in order to arrive at near the actual number. When this com- putation is made it will be found that the number of deaths in this country, from consumption of the lungs, amounts, when adding the number of those who died from consumption of other portions of the body, to not less than 160,000 to 175,000 of consumption each year in this country. And the higher the scale of civilization and the higher the scale of intelligence, the cleaner and neater the people, the better all hygienic surroundings are, the greater seems to be the death rate from consumption. In great cities, the seats of learning and culture, we find more cases in proportion than in thinly populated country places, but find the disease the least among the people of less refinement and culture. What better evidence do you want to prove that nature will con- tinue to work on in her way and by her law in spite of the efforts of man to abrogate it? and you must obey or suffer. These facts on the surface would make it appear that there was no escape for people from being tortured by disease. On the one hand the dirty and filthy are hampered by a certain class of diseases, and the intelligent, refined, educated are tortured by another, and with them consumption being in the lead. Does this not appear as though there was no escape for man from the torrents of disease? Does it not ap- pear as though there was some supernatural and divine interference and that it was impossible for people to free themselves from the miser- ies which are called disease? But if we will study and consider how man is constituted, we will find that he is subjected all around him to natural and absolute laws, that these laws have been found to be always the same in the past, and will be the same for all ages to come. This means you can take your choice in health or disease. Nature has worked on continuously for ages and never has changed her methods; her laws are unchangeable, and we may say omnipotent. She knows what to do under every circumstance. Foiled in one direction, she finds other means for gaining her ends. Man can no more put a stop to the operations of natural law than he can put a stop to the rising of the sun. And on further investigation we will readily discover that the THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 371 external world has been arranged with wisdom and benevolence for us all, and that we can literally choose between health and disease, a long life or a premature death. Then is it not a disgrace to be sick? Again if we would consider the relations which our appetites and passions have to our body and each to the other, and would but put our thinking cap and our conscience in the lead, we would soon learn how the system can be kept perfectly constituted. How to keep perfect this constitution and how to perpetuate this constitution upon our chil- dren and to spread this knowledge and its practice from generation to generation is the first law of health and the first law to prevent con- sumption. From this knowledge it would soon seem clear to us that this, our nature, is adapted to virtue and health, as the perfect system of a watch is adapted to measure time. If this watch is equally perfect and strong in all its parts, it will by giving it its proper food (wind- ing up) and keeping it clean, run steadily and give pleasure to its wearer until worn out by old age. The absurd, foolish and fraudulent theories that have been sprung upon the innocent and inquiring public during the past quarter of a century, as to what is the cause of this incurable disease, consumption, have had much to do in diverting the public from the true cause, while perhaps their natural instinct and observation might of itself be the means of showing them that the cause lies right at their own door. But the gigantic and leading cause of the terrible increase of consumption is from those that deteriorate the constitution or produce unbalanced proportions of organs and functions of the child. These causes are incompatible marriages, the abuse of marital laws, the abuses of sexual laws before or after marriage, the living at high pressure, under necessary or unnecessary conditions, and thereby using up more than the normal share of our physical energies. In other words, overdrawing daily upon our physical bank account and, under this overdrawn physical strength by excessive mental or physical labor, Withdrawing from the system the very essence necessary to develop germ life possessing a good constitution. It may seem cruel and harsh to throw one of the main causes of the greatest evils existing in this country to-day, producing hundreds 372 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE of thousands of premature and youthful corpses, to the marital bed. Before too readily concluding that "this is not so," stop and think what the farmer or the breeder of animals usually does. Do not they take special care and pains to bring up to the highest physical con- dition those animals that are especially kept to propagate their kind? The perfect human being is one which derives its existence from a previously perfect existing being, which subsists on foods, grows up to maturity, decays and dies. Whatever the object of the Creator in constituting the human being may be, it cannot any more be denied that at least part of His design was that all should enjoy their existence while on earth. All other animals seem to be so constituted and seem to enjoy their existence, why not man? He can, and every law of nature says so, and all true observation and experience demon- strates that it is so, and if so, every particular part of his structure must be in harmony with each other in strength and function to con- duce to this end. The first law then, that must be observed to render a human be- ing perfect in its kind, is that the germ from which it springs shall be complete in all its parts, and sound in its whole make up. In other words sound in its whole constitution, and, as long as it con- tinues to live, it shall be supplied with the proper food, light, air, and the physical nourishment necessary for its support. And the third law, that it should normally exercise its functions. When all these laws are obeyed, this living being should enjoy health, pleasure and a long life from its organized frame, and we can see a benevolent design in nature, all around us and everywhere, that the constitution can and should be adapted to its natural surroundings in order to admit and enjoy obedience to these laws. Then there is such a thing on earth as a human being existing in full possession of life and vigor from birth until advanced old age, or until the organized system is fairly worn out. Numberless exam- ples of this kind have occurred and many are yet to be found all around us, and they show to demonstration that this material frame of man should and can be so constructed as to admit the certainty of us enjoy- ing health and vigor during the whole period of a lifetime. The great cause that underlies the present existing conditions THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 373 among the people of this nation, producing a gradual but sure deterior- ation of our once strong constitution imparted to us by the early pio- neers, is but the indomitable conflict between the sentiment of the age and nature herself. This conflict is entirely due to impressing upon the public mind for facts what are only little featherweight theories, false in their conception, injurious in their application, conceived in ignorance, incompatible with natural law, but boomed to their fullest extent by those whom the public hold in esteem, and in whom they usually place their fullest confidence, when really all is a deception and delusion and used only for notoriety and the money there is in it. Those who have traveled in New Zealand affirm the perfect and uninterrupted health of those people; nowhere among old and young could be observed a single person who appeared to have any bodily ailment, and that it would surprise any one how large wounds heal with such readiness that it would at first seem they must have some won- derful herb to heal them, when they really applied nothing. Of course this seems strange to us in this country where so much scientific nonsense is used to heal a wound. But the real fact lies in this, that the New Zealander instinctively gives nature a chance to do her work, where we with all of our scientific, absurd knowledge, have not learned that in this country as well as in New Zealand wounds (all things being equal) will heal just as readily without medicine, but we have yet to learn, with all our boasted intelligence, that doctors kill many times more than they cure, and under the law "the greatest good to the great- est number," it is certain they are more of a menace to the com- munity than all other criminals. We have said that the first law to a perfect human being with health and long life was a perfect germ in all its parts, developed in perfect mother soil. This is a demonstrated law and hence a scientific fact. A perfect germ in proper and perfect soil and surroundings will develop a perfect human being, but if this germ is not perfect but weak in one or more of its parts, it is liable to develop into a being weak in one or more of its parts. If this weak part should be the brain, there would be evidence by the manifestations in one or more of the numerous disturbances that would arise from an unbalanced or weak brain. If the stomach should be the weak part, we would have the troubles peculiar to that organ manifest; but if it 374 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE should be the lungs we have trouble showing itself from this weakness, in accordance with the degree of weakness existing; this degree can be altered according to the other conditions and surroundings. Then we take the Natural laws for our foundation to prove why the race is afflicted with consumption to such a large extent, and how it can be prevented by these same natural laws. Again these natural .laws never admit of an exception; those races who, as we term it, are below us, like the New Zealander, the Indians, and others, among whom disease, called consumption, is almost unknown, while among the civilized nations that are accustomed to making their living by outdoor labor without abusing their constitutions, are rarely afflicted with consumption, but as we rise higher in the scale we begin to find traces of occasional cases of consumption. Further, as we find people more confined to indoor work, less accustomed to physical exercise, but their vital energy sapped by excessive mental strain, by living in closely and ill-ventilated quarters, the percentage of consumption begins to increase; but as we climb to the top, among the refined, the cultivated, the rich, who have all of this world's goods with which to buy health, but right here, among the palaces and gorgeous civilization, is where this ravager consumption mows its victims annually by the thousands. According to this evidence, which is undeniable, civilization, educa- tion and wealth have not, as a rule, been conducive to the propagating of good constitutions, but have had a tendency to produce the degen- erating constitution and that class of diseases, such as consumption and many others, due to self-abuse of a good or poor inherited constitu- tion, in whole or in part. The life of a nation is not a tragedy of fate; each creates its own fate; it will live or perish; it will be diseased or healthy, just in pro- portion as it regulates its own conditions and the surrounding condi- tions in which it lives in harmony with nature. If much of the study now given to microbes should be devoted to this subject, it would be most useful, while the work spent in studying the microbe and the deductions obtained and applied, must be ruining to the constitutions of those children upon whom these vicious experi- ments have been made. The fact nevertheless remains that civilization, education and THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 375 wealth ought to be, and can be, the best promoters of health in all its forms, as well as improve the life and strength of each future gener- ation, but it must be in accordance with the natural laws of the organ- ized system of man. This in itself admits the possibility, yes, the cer- tainty of health, vigor and organic enjoyment during the whole period of life, while instead we are drifting and degenerating into gradual decay because our notions, false training, beliefs and education are, in spite of our honest and earnest intention, directly opposed to the Cre- ator's laws. Let us inquire into the cause and the proofs as to why this is so. It is a universal law of nature that birth, growth and death are one of the requirements of all life upon earth, let it be animal or vege- table. Further that all life is endowed with a certain amount of natural power of existence, according to its constitution and surround- ings. To illustrate, a certain plant, whether flower or tree, starts to grow in a certain place; it has, according to its seed and soil, if left to its natural surroundings, a certain constitution or vitality to grow and live a certain length of time; but if its surroundings are changed by any other conditions and these conditions should be unfavorable, as to live and grow out its natural or allotted time of existence, this plant's life would be shortened just in proportion to the effect of these un- favorable conditions, which we will say might have been caused by the interference of man, although this interference might have been hon- estly, although ignorantly, carried out for the purpose of benefiting this plant, but through this interference its life was shortened. But if this man had interfered with the growth and development of this plant with a thorough knowledge of its constitution and requirements, he would, by the proper culture, have improved the conditions and thereby have strengthened the natural duration of the life of this plant perhaps twenty-five per cent. So if the original conditions that the plant was born in, so to speak, would have given it a life lease of forty years, and by culture it improved one-quarter, it would die at fifty instead of forty years. This law is absolute and universal in all nature. In this illustration we have supposed that the seed of this plant was complete in all its parts and perfectly sound in all its conditions, which is an indispensable requisite to its vigorous development and the 376 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE full enjoyment of existence. If the corn that is sown is weak, wasted and damaged, the plants that spring from it will be feeble and liable to speedy decay. The same law holds good in all the animal kingdom, and I would ask, is this law observed by man? Although more or less has been written upon it during the last half century, yet it is doubt- ful if one per cent of the people know of the existence of such knowl- edge. It is at least notorious that it has not been applied by mankind, but on the contrary has been woefully abused, and no better proof could be presented than that one death in every seven is caused by con- sumption, to say nothing of the millions of feeble, the sickly and the incompletely developed, who are suffering from the abuses imposed upon their constitution. This law is abused shamefully by marriages which are not consummated in accordance with the Creator's laws, and without the least compunction regarding the organizations or consti- tutions which they shall transmit to their offspring, sending into the world miserable beings, the very rudiments of whose existence are tainted with a tendency towards disease. If we trace all this to its source, we shall find it to originate in the quality or organization of the life germ, and the mother soil in which it is developed. From what and how is this perfect life germ developed? From the food we eat, and the air we breathe and the normal activity of the function of our body. And just in proportion as these conditions are unfavorable will this life germ vary from a perfect standard. Then if this life germ is composed of the elements contained in the food we eat, and the air we breathe, and if we consider that from the food we eat can be pro- duced hair, nails, bone, muscle, etc., and if this same food were given to a hog, it will grow bristles and claws, and if cow's milk is fed to a babe it will give the necessary nourishment to a child, but if the same milk is fed to a sheep it will grow wool and hoofs, it stands to reason then that the elements of each particular body must have their own particular law and affinity for the food taken up and assimilated with the blood through the process of digestion and nutrition. In other words, life and development can only be explained by the law of organization and affinity. If we graft a twig of a sweet apple tree upon a plum tree, the twig will grow sweet apples just the same, by reason of its own law of affinity in the wood fiber. In this way food sustains the sys- THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 377 tern, each food having several different combinations of essential ele- ments for sustaining the human system and to replace all the wornout substances of the system. To each of these elements there is given certain affinities to the different tissues, by reason of their peculiar cell organization, which gives each its own power by inherent law; and affinity for each particle of food for each part of the system where an attraction exists. For this reason the milk fed to a lamb will grow wool, and if fed to a hog will grow bristles. The food principles are taken into the blood, and the blood, flowing at great speed in all directions, until each atom of the food supply is unloaded wherever the true chemical affinity of the part draws it, forming a union and rebuilding each part. All things in nature have their affinity and wherever a true affinity is found, there will be union. Thus the whole supply of the system is maintained. Anything that disturbs this law of chemical, or as it also may be called, electrical attraction of the part, will make a change so that there may be only a little or perhaps no affinity for nourishment. We know that in order to have a chemical or electrical affinity we must have a positive and a negative. But the power that will show it- self by this positive and negative will be in proportion to their power of affinity. This wants to be particularly remembered, as these are the primary principles of all life, for when anything loses its negative or positive forces, disintegration or death will take place. A stone even, has a positive and a negative; if you deprive it of this power it will crumble into dust, and when this dust becomes moistened by rain if it should happen to have an affinity for the element called carbon, which it will accumulate and thus make it fit soil to grow vegetation, it will become food for a higher life element. Thus all life by this law is evolved from a lower to a higher order until it reaches man. Man can be materially improved or degenerated according to his obedience to this law. This law of affinity is one of the grand fundamental prin- ciples of nature, which causes all growth and produces all progression by these laws of affinity and evolution, and at each evolution this true affinity can take a higher place in the unfoldment of nature. Vegetable life being consumed by animal life is another step of evolution from the lower to the higher. The sun is the grand orb which illuminates 378 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE all that is in the world. Remove the positive rays of light from the sun and you have destroyed all life upon the earth. The sun being posi- tive and the earth negative, and hence receptive, thus forming a true affinity just as it requires both a positive and a negative to produce an electric battery, just so does it require these same principles in nature to produce the life force, in fact all that exists. This law of chemical affinity is unbending and admits of no ex- ception and under the same conditions we always get the same results. Hence, if man were perfect at one time and now has developed weakness, which subjects him to disease, it is because he has violated this absolute law of harmony in nature and the penalties of this viola- tion must naturally follow. From much experience and observation I am convinced that profound ignorance reigns in all society with regard to the true laws and methods by which nature gives health or produces disease. It is a well known fact that all these laws work two ways, either to improve or to lower the conditions and constitution of the body. It is then evident that any degeneration of the human constitu- tion, whether it be on one or more organs of the body, must be caused by neglecting to obey these laws, either through carelessness or ignor- ance, and this must from generation to generation deteriorate the race. But on the other hand by obeying these laws we can gradually from generation to generation, even from year to year, improve this weak- ness of any organ or organs, up to the normal standard and thereby be able to withstand any encroachment from our ordinary surround- ings and live to a good, ripe old age. We have here to deal principally with a weakness or gradual degen- eration of the lungs, due to a weakened constitution of a large portion of our population, and which today carries with it a larger percentage of victims than any other disease existing among mankind. And all this is due to the direct infringement of the normal proportions of the natural functions of the body. The punishment of this offense has been a tendency to consumption, transmitted to the children, each gen- eration increasing in numbers and reflecting back in anxiety and sor- row to the parents, although we will show in future pages that any person born with a tendency to consumption can entirely escape this dreadful disease. It is more our purpose here to show the various THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 379 causes in general that have gradually developed this hereditary weak- ness or tendency to about one-seventh of our population. First-Parental relations have much to do with our present physi- cal conditions, and the union of certain temperaments and combinations of the mental and physical organs in the parents is at least one of the primal factors in deteriorating or lowering the physical constitution of one or all of the organs, which strongly serves as a tendency to con- sumption and also to other diseases. It also has a similar effect upon the morality of the offspring, and that these conditions may be discov- ered and taught with far greater facility, certainty and advantage is most important. It is an insult to the Creator and his laws to conclude that we are incapable of obedience to the laws of nature which are so easy to understand for all practical purposes, and once understood are understood forever. When once our intellectual faculties and moral sentiments have been trained to observation and the practicing of these natural laws, then our duty, our interest, our health will be a grand source of enjoyment. The doctrine of this hereditary tendency to health or disease, for morality or immorality, to some may seem to take out of our hands the conduct and condition of our lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terrible to us. For what we have received or inherited from our ancestors is only a fraction of what we are or afterwards may be- come. To what extent we can improve or deteriorate our mental and physical condition by violating or obeying the laws of our being, would surprise the most unbelieving, and our race would be greatly benefited, morally and physically, were more attention paid to the breeding and possible future development of our offspring. We can hardly imagine how much our common everyday life has been aided by even the light knowledge of mathematics gained by an acquaintance with addition, subtraction, etc. By it we are able to keep our little accounts correctly and neither cheat our creditors nor ourselves. Could we not then by a knowledge of the laws of growth and development, which is now more recognized as the law of evolution, keep our accounts with na- ture in a far better condition ? Could we not keep ourselves from be- ing cheated out of our health and happiness, and also do much to put an end to our physical deterioration, which threatens ten million of our 380 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE population in the United States with death by consumption, saying nothing of the millions that will develop other constitutional diseases from this same bodily degeneration ? It seems to me that the time should be at hand when more import- ance should be attached to the study of these laws of growth and devel- opment than to the less important ones of arithmetic and grammar. It is a well established law of nature that we transmit to our off- spring in increasing ratio the qualities most active in the parents, and by this law of succession is. provided for us a far higher degree of im- provement in the race than is generally supposed; then according to this natural law, pain and death in youth and middle age in the human species are the consequences of the violation of the Creator's laws, and a disgrace to ourselves for such unnecessary violation, while death in old age by a gradual and insensible decay is an essential and indispen- sable part of God's system of organized existence. This arrangement of the natural laws admits of the succession of individuals, substituting the young and vigorous for the feeble and decayed, and is the direct means that admits the race to ascend in the scale of improvement, both in their physical, mental and moral qualities. Many persons are able from experience, to attest the severity of the punishment that follows from neglecting to exercise the nervous and muscular system, followed by indigestion, lassitude, irritability, de- bility and the general uneasiness that attend a sedentary life. But the penalties that attach to neglect of properly exercising the lungs are made more severe, and are but little understood by the public, there- fore we shall notice them more fully throughout this chapter, for the reason that the proper exercising of the lungs is one of the main needs to prevent consumption. The lungs are equivalent in function to the system that the steam boiler is to running the machinery of a mill. It is through the lungs that the system gets its steam power, its vital force; take away this power and the whole machinery of the body stops. Is it then not clear, that if the element that is instrumental in creating the main power that gives activity and life to the body is received through the lungs from the air breathed, that it is equally clear that the lungs should be one of the largest and the strongest THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 381 organs in the body ? The benevolent design of nature intended that it should be so, and the best evidence of this is that it has been centuries upon centuries, in spite of the reckless manner in which man has abused nature, and by this abuse the human race has gradually been brought to their present deteriorated and weakened state of their lungs, as well as other portions of the body. We should know that nature has only one method of increasing the strength and size of the lungs, or of any other organ of the body, and that is by .exercise and culture. Then it must also be true that our weakened lungs are often due to the neglect of this law of use and disuse. This is proven by the fact that all mankind, as well as animals, that are compelled to follow a mode of life that compels them to exercise their lungs, have large ones; let all universal knowledge and experience attest to this fundamental truth, and wherever we find a good pair of lungs we find that the owner gives them plenty of exercise, and where we find this condition we also find the rest of the body proportionally healthy and strong and proportionally able to withstand the conditions that produce disease, because lungs that are large and well exercised take in larger quantities of air, hence, relieve the system of larger quantities of poison (carbonic acid) and the blood takes up larger quan- tities of oxygen, which charges the blood just that much more, and just in proportion that the blood is able to take up this element oxygen, just in that proportion is the activity and life of the individual mani- fested. The blood is circulated through the system mainly through its own created power received through the lungs from the air breathed. This fact shows that the lungs are the most important organs in the body, and is it not true that the functions of no other organ are more neglected by the public and medical profession ? Is it any wonder then, that the lungs have deteriorated when so neglected, and that their con- tinual disuse and abuse has brought them so far below the normal standard that they easily break down and consumption is the result? Their very function, condition, location and peculiar tissue, demon- strate that they were never intended to break down, as a cure is impos- sible when suppuration once has set in and there is no reason why any tendency to consumption should ever exist, for nothing but a violation for generation after generation could ever bring on such a condition 382 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE among humanity as now exists. And that the largest percentage Ly far exists among the so-called intelligent and educated is conclusive evidence that from a standpoint of health, happiness and a long life, our present notions and education, refinement and civilization are the grossest kind of ignorance, even far below the brute animal, for it is his total ignorance from nature's standpoint, his brute instinct leads him to follow out the natural laws of his being and he usually enjoys good health, is happy and lives out his allotted time given him by nature, provided this intellectual being, man, does not interfere with him. To illustrate this principle, look at the amount of consumption existing among our cattle, especially cows, that are so scientifically and intel- ligently kept in stalls without sufficient pure air and exercise, their food weighed and analyzed by experts. In other words, extra nice care is given them, which is called scientific, to prevent, as they think, that terrible microbe from getting down their throats and getting into the milk, so as not to give consumption to those who drink it. But the poor farmer that must of necessity let his cows run out where they can exercise, is not troubled with consumption among his cows nor the people who drink the milk. In the one case science is pretending to help the poor cows, but in fact is actually injuring them, besides deceiving the owner, to say nothing of the loss in money value; and all because it is contrary to natural law. On the other hand, these same scientific men are pretending to prevent consumption among the peo- ple by telling them they must not spit on the floor and be sure not to inhale this terrible bug, consumption is on the increase and is putting money in their pockets, under the pretense of curing them. There are two sides to this question; there is a fault among the public that is a most serious one; people will not stand it to be told that they are to blame, when disease overtakes them; they are deter- mined to lay the blame on something or somebody else. One class will always lay it to Divine Providence, and his will must be done; the other class will accept what so-called medical authorities say, provided these authorities do not say they themselves are to blame for their suffering. This condition of the public mind makes the microbe very popular, be- cause it pacifies the mind to lay the blame to anything but ourselves, and the doctors say life is too short to change the mind of even one THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 383 person. If the people would open their eyes and learn what is going on, on the doctors' side, and how the wool is being pulled over their eyes, under the cover of fine broadcloth, the incarnation of frauds and prince of humbugs, whose mistakes and blunders are covered up by six feet of dirt, they would stop talking about the combinations and trusts in money and trades, but would find that the most gigantic, the most dam- aging and the most damnable trust in existence was the medical trust, and in another chapter we will prove our statement as clearly as any evidence that ever convinced a criminal in a court of justice. On the other hand, if a physician would understand diseases, in accordance with the Creator's laws and treat them in accordance with the same law, no nobler act of humanity can be imagined; but this would drive at least three-fourths of the medical men out of business, and this will never be done until the public get to thinking and organize to create an opposition. The medical profession has no opposition from the public and all history shows that any party without effective oppo- sition, whether it be political, religious or scientific, has been the most corrupt organization on the face of the earth. On the surface if would appear that the foregoing had no place in this chapter, but it has, for the doctors ruin constitutions by the million, hence, the doctor is a great cause in producing consumption. Another thing that deteriorates the system, and hence the lungs with it, is the improper use of foods. This may be the supply of un- suitable kind or the insufficient quantity, but most of all it is the man- ner in which they are prepared. Briefly stated, this means that foods are not prepared and eaten in a manner approaching the condition in which nature has prepared them. We have already said that organiza- tion was the order of nature, and that this organization was perfected by the law of affinity of the various kinds of elements of which all nature is composed. All things done and constructed by man are me- chanical ; all things constructed by nature are done by the law of affinity and organization. Take a horse, a cow, a white and black sheep, all feeding in the same pasture, each animal taking the same food into their stomachs, diges- tion practically the same. This food is taken up into the blood and rechanged and charged by the oxygen; taken into the blood through 384 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the lungs and then by its electrical affinity taken to all minute parts of the body; is attracted so as to supply each part with its particular wants, nourishing the body and making horse hide and hair on the horse, cowhide, hair and milk in the cow, and white wool on the white sheep, black wool on the other. During the winter these same four animals will be fed on different kinds of food; perhaps the horse on oats and hay, the cow on straw and bran, the sheep on clover hay, but the system, by its perfect method of affinity and organization, grows the same kind of wool on the sheep, the cow gives her milk and the horse is as well nourished as before. Does this demonstrate an absolute law or does it not ? The answer is plain. Let us for a moment look at it in another light. We will suppose that two farmers have six cows, each in good health and constitution, and all fed on the same food. But Mr. A would take what would nowadays be called poor care of his cows; he simply feeds them regularly, lets them run about in a large yard all day, puts them in the barn at night, the same being old and rickety, the wind blowing through the cracks and openings, but he does the best he can; however, in spite of his so-called poor facilities, he has good healthy cows and pure milk. With Mr. B it is different. He is more scientific; has read that in order to have pure milk and good cows he must have everything first class; has the, means to do it with and does it. He has a fine barn, fine stalls; keeps his cows well groomed, fed just so, keeps their stalls scrupulously clean, gives them the same kind of food as Mr. A, only puts it up for them more scientifically, be- cause the scientific health officer says that it is the way it should be done to prevent his cows from getting consumption, otherwise the germs that produce consumption will get into the milk and his custom- ers in drinking this milk will take consumption; then those who take consumption from his milk will spread it to others. This is to him a serious matter, for he is very conscientious and a good Christian, and he is willing to spend his profits to avoid being responsible for the spreading of this terrible disease, consumption, to perhaps hundreds of people through any carelessness on his part. His neighbors flatter him for his care and vigilance, just as we flatter the doctors for their care and vigilance. When will we learn that this so-called good care and vigilance is sickness and death to us because it is not in accord- ance with nature's laws? 385 THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION But one fine day the health inspector comes around and praises him for the splendid way in which he takes care of his cows, but after a careful inspection of the animals he finds two of them are infected with the germs of consumption. They are ordered killed, in order not to spread the disease. Mr. B submits to this scientific decision, but the loss of two cows does not worry Mr. B so much as that he is afraid he has done injury to some of his customers, by selling them milk con- taining the germs of consumption. The health officer leaves his in- structions to inject some serum into the other cows, to kill the germs of consumption in the remaining four cows, or to prevent them from get- ting it into their system. Then the officer bids Mr. B good-bye and travels over to Mr. A, above mentioned; examines his six cows, finds them in splendid physical condition, but their coat of hair not groomed so slick as Mr. B's and none of the scientific facilities for keeping cows as owned by Mr. B. But the health officer advises him strongly to arrange and build a barn, such as Mr. B has, as he was running a great risk of having all his cows infected by the germs of consumption, and goes on to explain how the learned farmer, Mr. B, had to have two of his cows killed for having consumption and he certainly could not expect to keep his cows healthy with such poor barns and common methods of distributing the food to his animals. Mr. A answered the above kind of advice by saying: "Mr. Health Officer, you may be a very learned man; you may know much about these err, err, Bac Baccilli Tubercle or these little bugs, but I'll be bug- gared if I think you know much about farming or how to have healthy cows and good milk. I have been a farmer forty years, I never had any education about those bugs that you fellows see through that big glass eye (microscope). In fact, I never had much education of any kind, but my little common sense has always told me if I wanted to know the truth about anything I went to nature, watched and observed her workings as closely as my own eyes could see, and nature has never lied to me. I always have found her the same under the same condi- tions, and if you will go back to Mr. B and tell him to stop that kind of farming, the kind that is made up in a little room in your office in a large city, by men that never have seen a farm, but are studying out 386 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE high standing theories that no one understands, not even yourself, for the purpose of getting a fat fee. Also tell Mr. B to make lots of air spaces in his barn, in order to give his cows plenty of nature's vital rem- edy all night; let them run out all day, with an old straw shed to get under in severe storms. In other words, tell him to take care of his cows as nature says he should, and not what you darn scientific fools tell him, and then there will be no need of losing any of his cows with consumption." Have we made it clear that the cause of consumption among the scientific farmer's cows was due to the Jack of continuous pure air, overfeeding and the lack of exercise of the cows ? The animal steam was allowed to run down and the animal machine clogged, which means the glands became obstructed so as to burst them and so infected and broke down the lungs. From the animal let us take a glance at the history of the Indians. Consumption was an unknown thing among the Indians in their wild and original state. George F. Pope, agency physician, in a letter pub- lished August 24th, 1898, says: "I have in my experience the best il- lustration imaginable. I have attended the Indians, both here among the Sioux and in Idaho among the Bannocks. All agree that the older Indians say they did not have consumption among them when they lived in the tepees and in the open air, but as civilization advanced among them, the government has constructed log cabins and small frame houses for them and they have given up the tepee, except a short time in the hottest weather of summer. Now we have consump- tion, the most prevailing disease; more than half of the deaths are from consumption. I examined Indian children as to their physical fitness for school, and it is almost the rule to find tubercular glands in the neck or some evidence of it in the lungs. The joints of the Indians and mixed breeds are rarely attacked by tuberculosis. "These houses are mostly low, having one room; many are log cabins with dirt floors, sealed as tightly as possible, the whole family living in this one room and except in summer cooking there on a large cook stove, heating the poorly ventilated room to furnace heat and after perspiring freely, going into the cold air. They are in the transition stage between savagery and civilization, mentally, morally and physic- THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 387 ally. This may account in some measure, for the fearful hold this disease has on them, but I think tuberculosis came with the house and suspension of atmospheric influence." It seems to us that the above letter needs no explanation. Does it not show that the same law that produces consumption among the cows of the so-called scientific farmers before mentioned, caused consump- tion among the Indians by changing from pure air to impure air? Does it not show a state of evolution and organization under certain conditions? Does it not show that nature shows no difference be- tween a cow or an Indian ? Does it not show that nature shows no dif- ference or partiality in anything, whether it be a grain of sand, a saint or a culprit? Does it not show that disease is governed by law? Is not everything in this universe governed by an absolute law? Then why not disease? Is not health changed to disease only a change of organization of nature's elements under changed condi- tions and by changing the conditions a change of organization will again take place, which changes disease to health, or from disease to death? All must attest that this law is absolute and will forever re- main so. But this is not the teaching of medical science and therefore its teachings are wrong. If, then, the farmer uneducated in science, can have healthy cows, and the wild Indian be healthy until civilized and educated man controls him; if the wild animal in the woods and the birds in the air are healthy until they fall into the hands of civilized man, then it is plain that there was a benevolent design by the Creator, that all life should enjoy health, and that all life upon the earth has an inherent instinct to follow the laws of its being and has done so until thwarted by the hand of what is called civilization and higher education. And does not consumption increase in proportion as we advance in civilization and education ? It most assuredly does; then it plainly and positively shows that what we call civilization and education is not in harmony with nature's laws, and what is not in harmony with these laws must be injurious as well as being the grossest kind of ignorance. According to this, then, the more civilized and the more educated we are, the more ignorant we must be. The conclusion must be then that, according to the Creator's laws, we the civilized and educated are 388 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the most ignorant of all living beings upon earth, because our educa- tion is not in harmony with nature; therefore, a false education means false action, and this false education is the cause of the manifold dis- eases with which we are afflicted, of which consumption is the great- est destroyer of them all. Let us trace the evidence as to why this is so. The physical con- ditions at birth, of an animal or a human being, represent its constitu- tion ; growth represents the development of this new-born constitution under certain surroundings and conditions; death represents the allot- ted time this human constitution could live under those surroundings and conditions. For an illustration we will assume that this child's constitution at birth, with its surroundings and conditions for growth and development, were such that it could live to be one hundred years old, and that this age was attained because it had lived, grown, devel- oped and died in harmony with nature's laws, which means that death was caused by old age and not by disease. All will concede that any change in its condition or in its surroundings would have shortened or lengthened the life of this being proportionately. But could this child under poor surroundings ever be taken with consumption? We say it would be hardly probable, but a possibility under extreme cir- cumstances. But for instance, let this young child be brought up in close and ill-ventilated surroundings, and in after life follow a seden- tary pursuit, without the normal exercise of its lungs, perhaps breath- ing impure air a large share of the time, which would weaken and lower its entire constitution, and be liable to most any form of disease, consumption included, but all would depend upon environments and the result might be consumption, because under these unfavorable surroundings the first thing that happens is obstructed glands, which is usually the first abnormal condition of the system that precedes the breaking down of the lungs, but might affect other glands in other portions and produce some other form of disease, but if this person should be a female and marry, her children would almost to a certainty have a weaker constitution, and unless the surroundings should be favorable, which the chances would be that they would not, the chil- dren would be very apt from exposure of cold, etc., would develop con- sumption and die, and if children should have been born to them, they THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 389 would be likely of the kind that we say have an inherited tendency to consumption; that is, a weak constitution and weak lungs. In this in- stance the inherited tendency was developed in three generations. In most cases we think that it will require more and in some less. A young couple marry; each is well adapted to the other; both are healthy and have good constitutions, are energetic and ambitious. The father, a business man starting out in life to fight its battles, al- ways on the jump, his brain ever active to its full capacity, except dur- ing the few hours of sleep; he is ever successful financially; his wife exerts herself to assist him as much as possible; both seem to endure their hard work during a period of fifteen, twenty or thirty years, and apparently in good health; during this period their union was blessed with four children; these grew up among the wealth of their parents; are sent to school until they have a good education in the higher clas- sics, perhaps devoting a good share of their time after school hours to music; during all this period are what might be termed in fairly good health, but their appearance and actions are far from what their par- ents' were. The parents will often say, "My son cannot do the hard work of his father, he is not so strong; the daughter cannot do the housework of the mother; they are healthy, but not very strong." With one of their daughters they have to take especial pains to guard her health in their own way, and by the advice of their physician, but all of a sudden, perhaps at a reception, ball, ride or any other exposure, she takes a cold; this cold in any person of an ordinary constitution would readily yield to treatment, or perhaps without any treatment, but in this young lady this cold will not yield; she coughs more or less; is getting a little weaker; the doctor gives them hope that it is only bronchitis; the patient is having little relapses, never any worse, im- proving gradually all the time, until he who runs may read consump- tion, but she always thinks she is better, never worse, and finally dies in this belief; the consoling remarks of the minister that it was the Lord's will, and a daughter who had all that wealth and skill could bring is carried to her grave. A son and two daughters remain; the daughters marry men of wealth; the son, a good business man, marries; becomes associated with his father in business; is a hard worker, but he shows that he has not nearly the endurance of his father; gets tired 390 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE out and overworked; takes a vacation; again recuperates; goes to work again, saying he is feeling good; goes out with the boys occasionally, but is fairly temperate; keeps up his work in his father's office for five or six years; begins to cough occasionally; thinks it is only a cold, but his strength is slightly failing; thinks he will go off for his health for a few months; his physician sanctions it and thinks it will do him good; comes back in three months saying he feels improved, but his parents and his wife notice that there is a gradual decline in his health and strength. So far there is no breaking down of the lungs; it is simply obstruction of the glands and lymphatics for want of that systemic steam power, thus cutting off the nourishment of the body; he is finally advised to change climate, for money is no object if his health can be restored; goes to California; in a month he writes that he is a little improved; always thinks he is getting better, until a telegram is sent home that he is dead. Who does not know of such instances that are similar to the picture just drawn? And these are mostly among our well-to-do and the wealthy portion of our population. Here we have a father and mother of good constitution and physical endur- ance, well adapted to each other, but with weak children; two of them die with consumption before middle age; the other two have escaped consumption but are delicate, and if taken with any of the general dis- eases would be liable to succumb, and if children are born to them they would in nine chances out of ten die with consumption before they reach the age of thirty. We could give dozens of similar histories of families among our own acquaintances and neighbors. We will clearly show in future pages why this is so, and also make it plain why these healthy parents had children with weak constitutions, and again show if ever they were born with a weak constitution it was not necessary that any of them should have died with consumption, but could have lived to a fairly good old age, and their children, instead of being weaker than their parents, could be even better and improve propor- tionally during their lifetime, and each future generation in proportion. If we demonstrate the principle and the law of the few last men- tioned statements, it will be clear to the reader that consumption can be positively prevented and its cause stamped out. Before explaining more definitely the law and method of preventing this disease, we wish to THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 391 show how consumption creeps into the children of healthy parents among the poor people. Although by far the largest percentage of people afflicted with consumption exists among the wealthy and well-to-do, at the same time this dreadful disease ravages to a certain extent among the labor- ing and poorer classes of people, and it can mostly be traced back to very robust and healthy parents and ancestors, these ancestral parents coming from the rural districts of Europe, where consumption is al- most an unheard of thing, to this country with healthy children, locat- ing in one of our large cities. The children, under the new surround- ings and the general stimulant for money and position, work hard in- doors at sedentary work, knowing nothing of the effect it has upon their constitution, especially from the lessened pure air and lung ex- ercise such work naturally results in. The most important considera- tion is the lack of good air which contains a deficient quantity of oxy- gen to supply the blood, and hence every cell of the body as it is built up must be weakened, just in proportion as this life element is lacking, and as it takes but a few years to rebuild the body, it is the plainest of evidence that a child born with an all around good constitution can be weakened to a certain degree every four or five years, or say seven years, as many think it takes seven years to rebuild a new body, but we think, from some observations made, that three or four years is suffi- cient to rebuild at least all the soft tissues of the body, but perhaps it takes longer for the rebuilding of the nerves and bones. Again, it is possible that the time may be much longer to rebuild an adult life. This fact that the body is continually changing, cell after cell, is probably lit- tle known, or at least thought of, as a factor in health and disease, but no point is of more importance. We see from this that a healthy child placed under unfavorable circumstances during the first thirty years of its life would change its constitution at least four times during these thirty years, and be weaker by each evolution or complete change of the body, and be very susceptible, in unfavorable surroundings, to take most any disease in this condition of degeneration, and it would be cer- tain that consumption would claim its largest share of victims on ac- count of its being an incurable disease. As this law works both ways, a comparatively weak child can, under favorable conditions, improve itself every five or seven years, up to middle age. 392 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE From the foregoing the thought will suggest itself readily to the reader that if a healthy child, having a splendid constitution, can grad- ually debilitate and weaken this constitution a certain degree every five to seven years in its peculiar surroundings, and then marry in this con- dition, that the offspring would suffer in proportion, and in this way two or three generations would show a puny, weakly, consumptive and scrofulous lot of people, changing a little now and then by marriages and through the surrounding conditions in which they live. Then if this process of gradual degeneration from a healthy, robust father and mother can in two or three generations bring forth, just by the outward conditions they live and work in, be the result of bringing forth fifty to seventy-five weakly constituted human beings, is it any wonder that consumption is so prevalent? These conditions are prevalent all over the country, especially in our large cities, but exist more or less every- where, and they are mostly due, first, to sexual and marital laws and our wrong notions of civilization and education, and our lack of know- ing the value and effect of atmospheric conditions upon our bodily con- ditions ; second, the value of culture and exercise and education in har- mony with nature's laws; third, that wealth in a great measure forces the poorer classes into a condition to weaken and deteriorate their con- stitution, which easily predisposes them to consumption and often to other ailments. As the gradual decline from a healthy generation to a weakly one is possible, just so and by the same laws can the weakly and delicate constitution be gradually developed into a good, strong and healthy individual, with this difference, that it is always easier to slide down hill than it is to climb up; it takes more skill and well applied knowledge which must be in accordance with nature's laws. We call them simple laws because all animal life in the woods and in the air, by their in- stincts only, follow these laws a hundred, yes, a thousand times better than the so-called educated and civilized man. Man has just as much instinct as the animal to guide him rightly in obeying natural laws. Our instincts are only made to lie dormant on account of the activity of our intellectual nature, and by this intellectual activity man tries to understand nature and follow her through his misguided intellect, instead of his instinct. This intellect that we pride ourselves on, and THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 393 in a sense rightly so, but as regards health and disease it has been mis- led, sometimes by honest leaders, but more often, yes, many times more often, by dishonest and unscrupulous authorities, especially during the past century. We say it because we know it to be true; we say it again because the imposition is increasing and will continually increase, un- less the public will wake up to the fact that they themselves must look after the knowledge that will promote health from some other source than from an organization that under the pretense of looking after their welfare, are either purposely or ignorantly undermining the con- stitutions of the nation, and only for the purpose of serving their own selfish ends. We could fill volumes from actual knowledge and expe- rience, together with that of hundreds of living witnesses to»strengthen the statement, and besides, this kind of testimony can be found in most every community in our country. It is as clear as the noonday sun, if there is any truth in nature, and there is, for she never makes an error; never has and never will. The Creator's laws are as truthful as the Creator himself. If these laws, as stated, are for all practical purposes, so very sim- ple to understand as well as to manage, why is it then that it is one of the hardest things in the world to find two physicians who agree in court or out of court upon the practical workings of these laws ? The court records of physicians' testimony is one of the most disgraceful evidences of their ignorance. Ambiguousness (that is, statements with an uncertain meaning to them) is a strong characteristic of most all medical literature; it is written so that it will make no difference what side of the question you take, you are sure to be on the wrong side. If you say anything they are ready to show authority to prove that you are wrong; if you take the opposite side, down comes another lot of authorities that say you are wrong. To judge the profession from their literature, it would be very evident that they ought all to have been lawyers, instead of physicians. We say that the doctors are undermining the constitutions of our nation, and by this undermining of the constitution, the individual is easily susceptible to injury from his natural surroundings. This is largely, although not entirely, due to false theories, false education and the reckless administration of drugs, so honestly accepted by the 394 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE public generally. Almost every one knows that these diseases due to weak constitutions are entirely unknown among the savages, Indians and the wild animals, and are very sparingly found among the com- mon and illiterate people, and if their local surroundings were the same the difference would be still greater. To the thinking mind the analysis of the foregoing would be equiva- lent to saying that the public would be immensely better off without the existence of doctors or drugs, and rely entirely upon hygiene and good common sense. Can this seem possible with the amount of ap- parent hard work, effort apd brains for relieving the cause of suffering humanity? Let us go back only fifty years, when the death rate by lung fever was sixty to seventy-five per cent; in scarlet fever the death rate was about seventy per cent, in many instances more; consumption was very scarce, where now the death rate is larger from that than from any other known disease. Today the death rate in lung fever is about twenty-five per cent; scarlet fever about the same; and cancer has increased about eight hundred per cent. This looks as though a great advance has been made in medical science in treating these diseases, and the public gives the profession the credit for great progress. Where is the progress ? It is simply this: The profession kills fewer now than it did fifty years ago in cases of lung fever, scarlet fever, etc., for without a drop of medicine these same diseases could be brought down to a death rate of two to five per cent, instead of twenty- five per cent, so that about twenty per cent of the death rate of these diseases, even in this so-called enlightened century, is still caused by scientific medicine. These figures show that as long as the science of medicine cannot cure a larger per cent of diseases than can be cured without a drop of medicine, that the medical profession is the most damnable organization in existence, and is guilty of more legal crime (I say legal crime because it is tolerated and defended by law) than all the criminals existing outside or inside prison walls. Put me to the test of these statements in any honorable way your brain can invent and we will demonstrate the truth of it. We have demonstrated it in our practice for ten years, making every case an observation for the proof of our conclusions. At first we were even skeptic of these observations, but every case has proved their correctness and certainty. But this THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION. 395 matter of assailing popular wrongs that are, so to speak, a part of each individual, and being so strongly engrafted upon their minds by habit and public sentiment, is often a thankless task, and besides, this strong sentiment is backed up and stimulated by the civil laws, newspapers, and especially by the medical profession, and the health boards keep up a continual howl of "crank" and "fool" against those that assail their infamy, and the public must awake to the existing conditions, thinking and observing for themselves, instead of hiding behind self- made authorities, who can only live and thrive on the suffering and misery of mankind. Any attempt to change this suffering of man and the horrible death rate of our blooming and promising youth, is a thankless and hopeless task, until the public themselves will open their eyes to the plain truth that it is impossible to prevent disease, except through and by the co-operation of every individual himself. Yes, we repeat, if you don't want a disease in nearly all cases you must prevent it yourself. We make this statement strong, although experience has taught us that it is the most unpopular and most resented statement to the public at large that the author has had experience with. We do not refer to accidents, but to diseases due to the constitution and those com- monly called blood diseases, such as smallpox, typhoid fever, diph- theria, consumption, etc., and these mean at least ninety per cent of human suffering, and consumption now stands in the lead of them all and is killing one-seventh of all the people dying at the present time, and under present methods of preventing the disease it is sure to only increase very fast. These laws that are being framed and pushed by the medical profession, to hire men to chase after a microbe or germ and injecting animal poison into our bodies to keep him (the microbe) from entering, is only gradually and surely undermining our constitu- tions and rendering them less able in the future than now to withstand the natural surroundings in which we have to live. Some time ago we read of a discussion that took place, about forty years ago, at a medical convention in New York, where a doctor made a powerful speech and was very eloquent in his criticisms against those who ques- tioned the correctness of the then prevailing practice, notwithstanding the horrible death rate attending it. Homeopathy at that time was getting a bad scorching from a scientific (allopathic) doctor, and one 396 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE old man, who seemed to be a close observer, remarked that he was ac- quainted with several homeopaths whose practice among children was very extensive and their death rate was very low. Another younger man arose and replied in very hot and scorching sentences. The bur- den of his speech was that homeopathy was pure quackery, deceit and fraud, and that they (homeopaths) were nothing but frauds and quacks. A newspaper man who listened to the discussion remarked afterwards that he wished all the other doctors were the same kind of quacks and that good quackery was much better than scientific medi- cine. We do not infer from this quotation that we are a homeopath, far from it, but we do mean to infer that homeopathy lets their patients die a natural death and therefore have a smaller death rate than the strong dosers (allopaths). Nor do we mean to say that medicine, rightly used, has no virtue, but on the contrary, if medicine were used in accordance with nature's laws and human physiology, it would be one of the grandest and noblest works of man, including in this the educa- tion of the public with the proper knowledge of how to prevent disease, which is pretended at the present time by the medical profession, but which is not done. We boldly affirm, and can demonstrate it, that nearly all the principal laws of every state in the Union enacted for the prevention of disease actually increases them, and among these dis- eases, is included consumption. There is nothing the medical profes- sion is more sure of than the cause of consumption, and as a matter of course the health laws are enacted in accordance with this cause. The cause of consumption, according to all orthodox teaching, is due to a germ called the Tubercle Bacilli; then to prevent consumption we must not let this germ or microbe get us in its clutches, and to cure this terrible disease we must kill the microbes. If the disease is due to germs, we will agree with these ignoramuses that killing the germ ought to cure the disease. And upon this theory the serums and antitoxins have been created to kill the germs, but all present evidence proves that these serums and antitoxins injure and often kill the patient, while the germ and also consumption are flourishing better than ever. We will dismiss the germ theory as a cause of disease for the present by simply stating THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION. 397 that no theory, if carried out to its full conclusion, was ever conceived by the human brain that would be prolific of so much injury to man- kind by its detrimental effects upon the constitution of our people, made by direct injections of injurious poisons, and again by entirely divert- ing the people from the real causes that produce disease. While we have so far been generalizing much in this chapter as to the cause of consumption, we wish, as we approach its close, to more specially frame the platform upon which the causes of consumption and the methods to prevent the disease can be put before the public in such a plain way that every child that has attained the age of reason- ing can learn to understand and apply them as easily as can the younger child learn its A B C's, and up to the age of reasoning it should be the duty of parents, as well as school teachers, to teach and practice the simple methods that are necessary to prevent consumption in any one that is intrusted in their care: First.-To avoid deteriorating the general constitution in order to be unable to withstand the ordinary natural surroundings, such as the changes of atmospheric conditions in which people are living upon this earth and are determined to endure and can endure to old age, if the natural laws of our being have not been abused or violated by the par- ents before and after the birth of the child, or by itself after arriving at the age he is supposed to take care of himself. Second.-A right marriage is to the offspring what seed and soil are to crops. If seed and soil are not adapted to each other, the crops must necessarily be poor and often the seed dies before it sprouts. Or if the seed is poor and the soil good, the crop will suffer more or less, but not nearly in the proportion that if the seed is good and the soil poor. This same law universally holds good among the animal and vegetable kingdoms. A good healthy man and woman, with good con- stitutions, but by nature not adapted to each other, are liable to have no children, or if they do, they are liable to live only by taking the best of care of them; they have barely life force enough not to die, like the delicate plant at the first frost in the fall, and wilt and die, usually of consumption. A weakly, even consumptive, man married to a healthy woman, with good constitution and adapted by nature to him, may have good, healthy children, and with a little knowledge of how 398 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE to bring them up, can have them live to a good old age. But a man strong in health and constitution, married to a woman weak in constitu- tion, or if she has a strong hereditary tendency to consumption, which means that the glandular system is weak in proportion to other func- tions including the lungs, the results are usually disastrous. Third.-The abuse of the creative or sexual laws, either before or after marriage, is the cause of more misery, more cases of consump- tion of the lungs, more suffering in this world, than all the other causes combined. A sexually feeble husband can no more produce good healthy children, with ever so good a wife, nor can a sexually ailing wife bear good children by a husband, no matter however good, any more than a dyspeptic can relish his food, no matter how good it is. Children by the millions are doomed to early death from this de- generated condition of a large portion of our race. Millions live only to be from fifteen to thirty years old, consumption being the result, and only because there is not life force enough to exist any longer. Na- ture's paramount work is reproduction. The laws of sexuality, their right action and use, is one of the master problems of every individual and of the whole family of man, because upon their understanding and right use depends the primal inheritance of all human beings for all times. Is humanity going to ignore a subject so infinitely important to all parents and children for the welfare of their constitution and health and so for the welfare of the nation? Fourth.-The life germ. Nature tells and shows us everywhere in this world that wherever life exists that the conditions in which this life developed always preceded life. This is a universal law of nature. To develop a life germ of man with a good constitution, then to plant and grow it in good mother soil, is a law incorporated into every law of nature; therefore also in human nature, and whatever God has in- corporated into men and women is proper they should learn, yes, must learn, or suffer and die. If public sentiment were more in favor of than against true mother- hood, this primal law of life, instead of being abused as much as it is, would be allowed to take its course. What a solid foundation is to a building, the sexual laws are to the making and maintaining the life and vitality of a race, and to break these laws strikes at the very heart of a nation. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 399 Fifth.-Proof that poor quality of food will weaken a good con- stitution and that poor air will ruin it even faster. Foods should be eaten as nearly like nature prepared them as possible. Compare the constitutions of people living on plain and coarse food with those who are living on delicacies, to please a cultivated and artificial and un- natural taste. Remember that according to your constitution is your power of en- durance, and your natural constitution can be improved or determined or deteriorated much according to how you eat and breathe. Whether you are a hickory man, pine man, or steel man, etc., eat, breathe and work accordingly, and you will live out your allotted time. Sixth.-A powerful factor in producing consumption is the ex- hausting of nervous energy beyond the amount that the system is able to produce. The result will be the same as when you have a thousand dollars in a bank and draw out a few pennies or a few dollars more every day than you deposit. Bankruptcy must sooner or later take place, and so people are drawing just a little more upon the strength of the body every day than it can supply and physical bankruptcy must be the result. If you do not begin to deposit more every day, under such circumstances, than you exhaust, sickness must be the result and the part of the body most susceptible to injury will suffer, the lungs being in the lead in delicate constitutions. Our school system is the cause of more physical bankruptcy to the young than anything else. Most children and young people are stimulated to overdraw their phys- ical bank account by the brain sapping the body of its dues. Seventh.-Consumption can be produced in the healthiest and the most robust person, following some other serious disease like lung fever, that has weakened the lung tissue so much that it will not re- cuperate, but breaks down, which is then called consumption. La Grippe has taken its victims by the thousand, being followed by con- sumption, during the past ten years. In another chapter we have shown distinctly that it is the treatment that is the cause and not the disease, La Grippe. Eighth.-The contagiousness of consumption is now claimed by the medical profession to be the main cause of spreading the disease, and this is done by spreading the germ that the profession claim to be the 400 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE cause of consumption (the tubercle bacilli). All the laws of nature say positively that it is impossible that consumption is a contagious disease; further, that there is no such thing as a contagious disease of any kind whatever. At the present time we doubt if anyone, at least among the medical profession, will agree with us upon this statement, but we are ready to demonstrate the truth of our statement in every single instance. Please think, read, observe and investigate before you condemn the statement. Remember that a man said the earth was round and that it moves; the whole world was against him, but it was true just the same. Ninth.-Environments. Everything that lives must have a con- stitution that will withstand the ordinary conditions in which it lives or suffer, for nature demands in the human being, as in everything in this world, a balance and proportion. This law of proportion is what keeps this world in its orbit so accurately that astronomers can predict its movements centuries ahead of its actions. Tenth.-Another serious and important cause of consumption is the ruining, stunting and deteriorating the constitution by the millions in the funneling down of drugs almost continuously by perhaps one-half of the population of this country. Is it a fad with them, or is it false education? We think it is false education, mostly induced by the con- tinual howl of the doctors and newspapers as to what wonders medi- cine is doing. It is doing wonders; nothing in this world except one thing, the abuse of the creative laws, that has done so much to stunt and deteriorate the constitution of our nation as this abominable craze of taking so much medicine. There is at least five hundred times as much medicine used, for the amount of sickness we have, as is necessary, and there is nearly five hundred times as much sickness as there ought to be. Stop taking drugs and the health will improve in nine out of ten that are using them. Christian science, faith cures, etc., get a hold of an over-drugged patient. They take the drugs away from him and stim- ulate hope into the patient and he gets well. The patient is made to believe it was the interference of the Lord, through their faith in Him. So through the frauds and deception of doctors in medicine, other frauds spring up. When the medical profession begins to be honest and treat a patient right, these other frauds will all vanish from want of patronage. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 401 Eleventh.-Are fashions the cause of consumption? If so we are stepping upon the sanctum and authorities of the four hundred. Nearly all fashions, so called, now in vogue, are more or less contrary to na- ture's demand, therefore, are injurious to health, lowering our consti- tutions, producing consumption and many other diseases. Fashions make an immense amount of business for the doctors and the under- takers. We call ourselves the most intelligent nation upon the earth, but no civilized nation acts and works against nature and her laws more than we do, therefore, in the eyes of nature and God we are the most ignorant, instead of the most intelligent. Study and regulate your fashions in accordance with nature, and three-fourths of the doctors will have to go into other business. People will live to a good old age, and the nation will be stronger and wiser, more happy and more useful. Twelfth.-Schools under our present ideas are doing much, yes very much, in ruining the constitutions of our children. In the present physical condition of our nation, so many of the bright and brainy chil- dren have frail bodies. The crowding of these bright brains saps the weak constitution of the body by this active brain; thus the head eating up and killing the body, and so the brain with it. This condition of affairs makes thousands of youthful corpses; if not they grow up phys- ically weak, mentally bright, and at the least exposure to unfavorable conditions go into consumption or some other disease. With this class the very opposite course should be followed; very little schooling and mostly an outdoor life, until full grown at least; then it would be easy to control such children, and there would be some in every neighbor- hood. They would soon, by intuition, almost practice open air school one or two hours a day, perhaps by the assistance of some one. This would be a fashion in accordance with their nature, and so become healthy instead of consumptive, and they would then be a pleas- ure and blessing to themselves and to parents and to the country. Thirteenth.-Exercise and live an outdoor life. The meaning of exercise in the general way that this word is used and understood by the public, to produce health and strength in weak individuals, is wrong. The more steam is produced the more fuel must be used. The more loaded freight cars are attached to the engine, the more fuel and steam 402 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE must be used, especially up hill. So with the human body; the more exercise, whether mental or physical, the more steam and fuel is used up; in other words, the more food and air must be used, and the air es- pecially must be pure. The old saying that the road to health is through the stomach is erroneous, although partially true. The road to health is mainly through the lungs. In nearly all cases the size of the lungs represent the balance of the body; as they are, so is the heart and stomach. Increase the lungs and proportionally you increase the body's vitality. On correct breathing depends more than anything else the duration of life. On what we breathe and how we breathe de- pends our very existence. The lungs are the storage room of the very element taken from the air, which gives motion and life to every cell of the human body, and without it everything is soon lifeless. A man's force, activity, constitution, everything, depends upon this one ele- ment (oxygen) from the air creating the electric force throughout the system. Our past knowledge of breathing has been about equal to that of a child that has learned its A B C's and thinks it has an education. The true knowledge of what right breathing means to the human be- ing will revolutionize our whole present ideas as to what will bring health and long life, or what are the causes of disease, and what will prevent it. Our present knowledge is far more injurious, and has no more foundation to it than has the superstitions of hundreds of years ago. Dogmatic assumptions are worse than superstition in hygiene or medicine. It is more safe today to trust even a child's intuition or appetite than the dogmatic and arbitrary decisions of the doctor. And following the arbitrary decisions of dogmatic medicine and the craze of fashions has done much, if not a large share, to bring about the present state of our physical constitutions, favorable to developing consump- tion. Fifteenth.-About as great a surprise as can be given the reader is to say that consumption of the lungs is only a secondary disease, not a primary one, as has been so far taught and believed. No one has ever been able to find any difference in the lungs of those people with a tendency to consumption from those who have no tendency to the dis- ease. The difference is in the disproportionate size of the lungs and their proper use more than in the tissue itself. The constitution of the THE GENERAL CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION 403 lung tissue is generally in accordance with the constitution of the rest of the body, and sometimes they are even better than the rest of the body, yet under these circumstances the person becomes a con- sumptive patient and so dies. Consumption of the lungs, in fact any form of the tubercular diseases, is first due to obstruction of the glands of the body. If these glands become obstructed, as experience will show they usually do in the neighborhood of the lungs, these glands begin to increase in size, finally break open, and their mattery and poi- sonous contents produced from this abnormal growing is discharged against the tissue of the lungs and causes the lungs to begin to break down in a similar manner that the glands begin to break down, and we have consumption of the lungs and the patient's days are numbered. No matter how strong the lungs are, or how powerful the constitution of this person, it will sooner or later undermine the life of the patient. All observation, all experience, will demonstrate this truth, but so far it has not been observed by the medical profession. The obstruction of these glands is usually due to a sluggish action of the system or over- crowding by waste matter beyond their powers or functions, usually due to unbalanced use or proportions of organs. People with this ten- dency to consumption are always slow, inactive, and therefore sluggish in breathing, and sluggish breathing means slow steam or power of the whole blood and body. Sixteenth.-Colds. Fast running water will not freeze as easily as slow running water, and motionless water will freeze with very lit- tle cold. Apply this principle to the laws of your own body and you will gain more knowledge to know the cause of diseases and how to prevent them than medical science has discovered in two thousand years. The person we term predisposed to consumption is like the very slow running water. The fluids of the body are slow, and it does not take much to check their activity. A fast beating heart is no evidence of power. Power of the body depends upon the power and activity created through the normal functions of the lungs. This power de- pends upon the quantity and quality of the air we breathe and how much of the pure air we are able to diffuse through the system, and this must be done by activity of the lungs and body. Activity of the body gives activity to breathing, and activity to this in turn creates and 404 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE throws out heat on the surface of the body. This activity of the lungs, with plenty of pure air, gives heat and free skin circulation, therefore cold cannot easily affect it, and therefore the person cannot take cold easily. The woodman with his coat off, his sleeves rolled up and the temperature twenty below zero, is glowing with warmth, because his activity brings active blood circulation to the skin. You may stand along side of him with fur coats and freeze on account of the slug- gishness of your skin circulation. Consumptively inclined people have usually small lungs, small stomachs, small hearts, small lymph and glandular system; the body in same proportion, but large and active brains, hence inclined to use the brain and not the rest of the body, when this ought and must be reversed by training and education, so as to avoid consumption and not have the head eat up the body. Colds are not directly the cause of consumption, but are nearly al- ways the exciting cause, by freezing, so to speak, and stopping the flow of the fluids through the glandular system, which was naturally already slow and sluggish. In other words, checking the elimination of waste matter and other organic functions, where if strong electrical power through the lungs had kept these fluids active, the cold would have done no particular injury. THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION. To put plainly before the public the positiveness in which the med- ical profession holds the real cause of consumption to be, and the only method to prevent the mowing down of one-seventh of humanity was shown at a meeting held at Chicago, January, 1899, for the purpose of organizing and perfecting a plan to stamp out this dreadful disease. This move was headed by the Health Officers and many of the most prominent lights of the medical profession in that city. According to the reports of this meeting, these dignified gentlemen started out by saying that few persons will realize how humane and how benevolent, especially can the public not see the motive of the sev- eral branches of the medical profession in promoting their adopted plan, nor do the public know how well assured and beneficial are the results. These words seem grand with one exception; they do not say whether they apply for the benefit of the physician or the patient. If for the patient, the following would make it clear that the words are in- compatible with the results that would obtain in their execution. They say that consumption of the lungs and other diseases of the same na- ture, are fatal to both human and animal creation, and that at last they have been proven absolutely contagious, and not inherited and de- scended from parents to children, as had been presumed for centuries, and therefore are preventable diseases and possible of eventual extinc- tion by unceasing vigilance of sanitation, isolation and education. Ig- norance, say these learned gentlemen, as to the origin and nature of consumption and other tubercular diseases is almost universal and serves as an agent for their dissemination. To combat this we must enlighten the public in general, and the sufferers in particular, so that all may intelligently assist in preventing the further spread of the dis- ease and thus ultimately stamp it out. This will be one of the first en- deavors of the organization which will be known probably as "The Chicago Society for the Prevention of Consumption." These very en- 405 406 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE lightened lanterns go on further to say that no doubt is entertained that hygienic measures, such as isolation of patients, disinfection of sputa and scrupulous cleanliness in public conveyances must tend to reduce the number of deaths by consumption. It is well known that sunlight very soon destroys the tubercle bacillus (the microbe) and most eminent bacteriologists claim that dryness also kills it within a relatively short time. Most competent observers and experimenters claim that it is not the dry sputum which, when it enters the air in small particles of dust and is inhaled into the respiratory organs, that is of near so much consequence as the direct inhalation of small bits of tu- berculous sputum whirled into the air during the coughing, speaking and other expiratory efforts. Flugge has endeavored to show by in- genious experiments that these moist particles are most to be feared. Prevention, it is held by some authorities, would be incomplete, there- fore, unless such infection by coughing, sneezing, singing and talking could be excluded, and to accomplish this purpose perhaps chiefly in an educational way, is one of the problems the society intends solving as a primary purpose. A consumptive expectorates at times as many as 7,000,000,000 of bacilli in twenty-four hours. If the sputa containing these germs is not perfectly disposed of, if it has had a chance to dry on the floor, in a handkerchief, on the clothing, linen or beard of a patient, sooner or later it will become pulverized and be inhaled as dust by the other mem- bers of the family or other persons present. Numerous experimenters, such as Falk, Wesener, Straus and Wurtz, have shown that the gastric juice has little power to destroy the bacillus or germ of tuberculosis, and thus, if the blood, which in health is phagocytic (this is a big word and means is of poor quality) its corpuscles will not be able to swal- low the ingested bacilli. If the victim be a child these will find the best medium for multiplication in the delicate intestinal epithelium. If it be an adult the bacilli will find an easy abiding place in the apices of the lungs through the lymphatic and circulatory system. As to the carriers of the contagion we must look to the sputum, urine and faeces of humans, and the milk and meat of tubercular ani- mals. By far the most common and dangerous bearer of the infectious organism is the sputum of phthisical patients. At times this sputum THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 407 is thrown into the air in a very fine spray by unusual expiratory effort, such as coughing and sneezing, and the bacilli suspended in the minute clumps of sputum may float about the room or be carried some distance by air currents, to be inhaled by anyone in their vicinity, and in this moist condition they are said to be more actively virulent than when dried." These learned gentlemen here claim that the danger lies in the moist sputa. On the other hand, other eminent authorities claim that the moist sputa is absolutely harmless; that it was the dry sputa spread as dust in the air wherein lies the danger of contagion, but let that be as it may, one is just as correct as the other, because both are absolutely wrong. No individual with a thinking mind can read the foregoing pages without coming to a certain conclusion that if the statements are true that it would be simply impossible to tell who the next victim of consumption would be, any more than a man could tell who he was going to hit by firing bullets into a crowd in the dark; that it is just as apt to hit the strongest as the weakest. The following will show, like most medical literature, that the more unreasonable, the more nonsensical an idea is, the more scientific it is held in the practice of medicine. In September, 1899, the State Board of Health of California was reported to have passed the following resolutions introduced by Dr. D. D. Crowley, its object being to establish a quarantine against consump- tion in that state: Resolved, That the State Board of Health considers the propriety of quarantining against human beings and domestic animals with tu- berculosis entering the state. Dr. Crowley said : "We are morbidly afraid of diphtheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, cholera and yellow fever. We quarantine these cases because they kill so quickly, but the lingering tubercular disease that eventually kills twice as many as all these together is permitted to con- tinue unchecked. "The feelings of the relatives and associates of persons found to be suffering from the bacilli are in every reasonable way to be con- sulted. I concede that the consumptives already in our midst have rights. I do not believe in any way in compelling sick people to give 408 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE up a certain portion of their social life, or interfering with their proper and safe association with the members of their families. Consumptive patients, I do think, ought not to attend churches or theaters or general public or social gatherings, nor ought they occupy public conveyances, as railway cars, without special provision being made for them. "I may say further," continued Dr. Crowley, in answer to a ques- tion, "that I do not believe that patients suffering with consumption should be permitted to enter hotels without the rooms being protected by the health officer of the community, acting in accordance with the general laws of the state. I further believe in a state sanitarium, or sanitorium, as the word is now called. This institution should be away from any city, from 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the sea level, where pa- tients could enjoy dry air and undergo scientific treatment for tuber- culosis." Everything which comes under the observation of human intelli- gence is comprehended either through the senses or by the reason. Such being the case, it seems almost incredible that men of large intelligence and opportunities for investigation and observation could have the un- adulterated gall to impose upon the public such scientific nonsense and so contrary to any law manifested in nature. The best evidence of this is that the demonstration will absolutely fail in every instance, and these schemers know that the public will not, or at least never have, de- manded that they should demonstrate to the public that these germs are the cause of consumption. If the public would make any such demand, the germ theory as a cause of disease would be as dead as Caesar in thirty days. But when we realize that more than 10,000,000 of the people living in the United States today will die of this dreadful destroyer of humanity, consump- tion, it means that it is equivalent to one death by consumption in every family in the land. If this statement was made in regard to smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever or cholera, the chances are that the mental disturbance and anxiety it would create in the public mind would have the tendency to perhaps create as many more cases of nervous prostra- tion. Although consumption destroys more human life than all the dread- ful epidemics of diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., the people THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 409 seem to take it as a matter of course, probably on account of their fa- miliarity with the disease, but make a great fuss about an epidemic of some other disease that is not nearly so dangerous, although the public have been taught to believe otherwise. All sorts of misery will continue in the future, as in the past, until humanity begins to understand the simple laws of nature in regard to health, and that it makes no difference to nature whether it be a saint or a culprit. Nature recognizes no difference; she has and will for all time to come be governed by the inherent laws of her elements. This is the record of her past and it will be her record of the future. Upon this foundation all other sciences are based and so demonstrated. To recognize these laws of nature and follow its simple dictates is the only method' to prevent consumption. In fact, this same law applies to all diseases that man is heir to. The term consumption is so often misused by medical men, as well as the public, that it would seem proper to define what consumption of the lungs is, as in many instances cases are pronounced consumption be- cause the patient has a continued hacking cough, is losing flesh as well as strength, and often when they are spitting out a mattery-like sputa, which may be due to a chronic secretion of the bronchial tubes (air pipes). The term "consumption of the lungs" means to consume; that is, destruction and death of the lung tissue exists. This destruction of the lungs is usually accompanied with a subsequent formation of pus. This is the course pursued in all cases of consumption in individuals who have, as it is claimed, an inherent weakness of the lungs, and who contract this disease. Destruction of the lungs following other dis- eases, such as lung fever, la grippe, etc., pursues the same course as the others, but are often more rapid in their progress, on account of the general debility of the body and the lung tissues. By a weak lung is meant that this organ is not as strong in propor- tion as the rest of the body. This weakness may be inherited by the individual through one or both of the parents, and perhaps occasion- ally through some accident experienced during the period of the moth- er's gestation. Not an atom of favor does a human being receive more than anything else that exists in this world from any source whatever. It is just as absolutely true and demonstratively certain that nature's 410 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE health method is the kind of organization, as in everything else that exists, differing only in its complexity. In all organic matter in nature, birth, growth and death is its special rule; continual change is her or- der and method. When this change is favorable to life, we, as con- scious beings, call it growth and development. When the change is unfavorable we term it degeneration, disease or death. We only exist as conscious beings because of our peculiar organization of the Crea- tor's elements in certain proportions and conditions. These propor- tions may be changed, by ourselves or by our surroundings, to raise or lower our original organization, because change is nature's universal method. We say that consumption was the consuming and breaking down of lung tissue and the formation of pus. Now when we have pus in any part of the body, let it be a finger or leg or any part outside the body, or any of the internal organs, this pus must be removed and the affected part kept free from this pus and a healthy surface established in order to heal the wound. We also know that a very slight wound on the sole of the foot or in the palm of the hand, the wound being closed, should even contain but a few drops of pus and allowed to remain many days, absorption into the system is almost sure to take place and blood poison- ing be the result. This fact is known to many of the public, and they have seen many physicians either careless or ignorant of this simple fact, as I have to my own certain knowledge a half dozen relatives and friends, who had to give up their lives from this simple neglect of al- lowing a little drop of pus to lie in a wound where it could not flow out. Then let us stop and think what the results must be in the lungs, where we have a peculiar tissue which is full of air cells and blood cells, and if this peculiar lung tissue begins to break down it can be plainly seen that there is no chance to clear away the pus, only when the quantity becomes so large that the patient will expectorate some of it; but a portion of it must always remain, only to keep burrowing deeper and deeper, and the destruction of lung tissue must be in proportion. This fact, that pus is the result of dead and broken down tissue, and that this pus cannot be removed from the lungs, causes them to keep on breaking down, because the lungs have been cut off from a large portion of their nourishment through the obstruction of the THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 411 glands, hence they have little resistance, as the recuperative power is, to a more or less degree, cut off. This is the reason we claim that consumption of the lungs in most cases is only a result following another diseased condition. Therefore we are safe in repeating that no man (let him be a physician or not), has ever cured a case of con- sumption of the lungs either by medicine or by other means. Further, that on account of the very nature, location and peculiarity of the lung tissue, it does not seem probable that any man in the future will invent any means of curing a case. These strong assertions to be valid must also be backed by as strong and indisputable evidence. But I will admit that life is too short and time too precious for at least a large portion of the public to spend their time in theorizing; what the people are craving for, and ought to have, is plain prac- tical facts. Nature and all her laws are, for all practical purposes for humanity, plain and simple to apply, and to explain and teach these laws in a plain and easily understood manner and then have the public apply them to their benefit, is the only way to prevent consumption. No matter how consumptive your parents and relatives may have been, you can escape it altogether by assisting nature to counteract this tendency. Nearly all endowed with strength enough to be born alive can, by following the proper course, be made to attain full ma- turity and grow stronger up to a ripe old age. Growth also coun- teracts even this entailed lung and bodily weakness, as it does all others, by proper care and management. How often do weak chil- dren grow stronger with age and make healthy adults! No mat- ter how much of a tendency you have to consumption, it can be nearly all overcome in a very simple manner by observing certain physical laws, commonly known as natural laws, and thereby devel- oping your lungs and other weak organs of the body to an equal proportion to the rest of the body in strength, or even to exceed them. This will enable you to surmount all your consumptive tendencies. Then what does a tendency to consumption mean? It simply means that the lungs or some other organ, or both, although healthy are not strong or large enough, as compared with the rest of the body, to withstand the ordinary exposures, conditions and surroundings, 412 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE that people ordinarily can withstand, without developing the disease. No person is any stronger for the endurance of his environments or surroundings than his weakest organ, any more than a wagon is any stronger than its weak wheel, or any other of its main parts, and can be loaded only without danger of a breakdown to the endur- ing capacity of this weak part; neither can the body endure any more than the ordinary capacity of weak lungs, no matter how strong the rest of the organs of the body may be. The weak part in a wagon can be replaced by one equal in strength and endurance to the other parts, and then it can stand an equal strain or use of any of the other parts of the wagon, and thereby make it of long and useful service. So it is with the human system. The human system is no stronger for endurance than its weakest organ, let this weak organ be the lungs, let it be the kidneys, heart, or any other organ of the body. When the wagon with the weak wheel is placed under the same conditions as the wagon composed of all sound parts (all things be- ing equal), it will sooner or later, under a heavy load or blow, break down, while the sound one will be of good service for years afterwards. The person with weak lungs is usually placed in the same surroundings and conditions as those having strong lungs, hence will sooner or* later break down under some load or physical strain or exposure. This breaking down simply means consumption, and when this condition, this breaking down of the lung tissue, has once taken place there is no appeal; death will sooner or later claim its victim. On account of the peculiar texture, and espe- cially the location of the lungs, they are not to be replaced when suppuration has once taken place; the pus cannot be removed and hence cannot be repaired by the mechanic we call nature. Their pecu- liar and porous condition, location and function precludes the possi- bility of repair when pus has once formed, while nature can very often alone, or with some assistance by man, repair many of the breakdowns of this human body which we call disease. From the foregoing my position can be readily seen, that this human wagon, so to speak, is born with a weak wheel; that is that some organ or organs which have a special function to perform are THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 413 not proportionately as large as they should be, therefore not as able to perform their function as are the rest of the organs of the body, and this unbalanced condition will overtax the smaller organs, when the larger ones are kept in action to their full capacity. What we mean to impress upon the mind of the reader is that this weakness of the lungs as a direct cause of consumption is very rarely, and we doubt if ever, due to a direct' natural weakness of the lungs themselves. In cases of inherited tendency to consumption we usually find the tall, slim, narrow chested person, with an active brain; they are not, as a rule, well nourished, and they are usually not very active physically but very active mentally. In reference to these cases we often hear people make the remark that "That young man or young woman we believe to be consumptive." At the same time we may have seen their father or mother die of consumption, or theirbroth- er or their sister. But when we examine the lungs of such a person we find them sound. Sooner or later this young person goes to a physician and complains that he is not feeling well. To the observing physi- cian his general appearance tells the story. Inquiring into the case he finds the patient feeling weaker, with loss of appetite, occasional night sweats, a little hacking cough, accompanied with slight daily fever. Examination of such a case, unless of very long standing, will show that the lungs are perfectly healthy, but by the medical pro- fession it is pronounced a case of consumption. Here is where the mistake by the whole profession is made. We have here simply a systemic trouble, a functional obstruction and disturbance of a por- tion of the glandular system, thus cutting off nourishment. As al- ready intimated in another chapter, the obstruction of a portion of the glands, especially those near the throat or lungs, is the cause of consumption. This may be due to sluggishness of the glands themselves, or even a general sluggishness of the functions of the body may be the cause of the clogging up of these glands; but as a rule this natural sluggishness is usually increased to an entire ob- struction of some of these glands by a cold. For instance a man or woman with a constitutional weakness, which only means a predispo- sition to consumption, takes a cold which results in what is called consumption of the throat (laryngeal tuberculosis). 414 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE One of the first symptoms which presents itself in this case is loss of voice, their speech rarely being above a whisper. What do we find in examining the throat in the early stages of the case ? Sim- ply enlarged glands. These enlarged glands can only be seen by reflected light thrown into the throat. Now this patient complains of no pain, while in the ordinary inflammations of the throat, with or without hoarseness, we generally have pain; these cases as a rule are not dangerous, but the patients are generally the most scared because they suffer, while in the other case, where no pain exists, we have a very dangerous case. The glands are enlarged, with loss of voice, and we can be almost positive that in a very short time these glands will burst open beneath the mucous membrane, which soon causes ulcers to form. This condition we call consumption of the throat. From these ulcers absorption takes place into the blood, even more readily than when the disease exists in the lungs, the pa- tient rarely surviving more than twelve to twenty-two months after the onset of the disease. When consumption, or breaking down of the lungs, has taken place a cure is impossible; our only remedy is to prevent it. Pre- vention is possible in nearly all, if not all, persons. A machine to be perfect must be well balanced and well proportioned in all its parts, and equally well composed of good material. The very first and most essential thing in acquiring this well proportioned make- up of the human body is to be born perfect, but as the new-born has no voice in this matter, this duty is entirely devolved upon the parents themselves. Much has already been written upon the subject of marriage and the abuses of the natural laws pertaining to the marital state, but notwithstanding this there is no subject we know to which less attention is paid. It is laughed at, sneered at, and even ridiculed, not so much by the common people as by the so-called re- fined and educated. At the same time the hue and cry comes from these very sources, "For God's sake why don't you doctors find something to prevent consumption?" But if the truth is told you, you will not accept it. You will in some way manage to argue it off, because it opposes some old inherited notion, fashion or habit, and often people are actually aware that they are violating a law of THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 415 nature and know they must suffer from its violation, but will not change a false notion so long cherished, perhaps inherited. Admit- ting that a large share of our suffering is due to ourselves, much is due to either ignorance or carelessness, but more often to wilful obstinacy. When warned or criticised you will invariably try to transfer the blame from yourself upon others, and the largest por- tion of mankind transfer the blame for their suffering upon the gods or their Creator. To select your partner in marriage so as to be married by nature, and not by the mouth of the minister or the legal statutes, is all important, although the latter is proper to be used as a public decla- ration. To be married by nature is to be sure of a happy married life. To be married as nature demands is the real preventive of divorce. Nothing but death can separate the parties to such a mar- riage. To be married by nature and the obeying of the sexual laws is the first foundation, yes, the main foundation, for preventing this terrible disease, consumption. No matter what your health nor your wife's if by nature you are incompatible, your children are almost sure, under ordinary conditions, to be short lived. The least expo- sure or overexertion is almost sure to be the forerunner of some dis- ease. As we have devoted another chapter to marriage and con- sumption, we will take up the subject as to the condition in which we find the child after birth, and the conditions favorable and un- favorable to his existence. Let us take a child five or six years old, that has never been sick and apparently is in good health, very bright, intelligent, quick and active, especially the brain; is of a nervous temperament, but the body inclined to be not as strong in proportion to the brain; begins to go to school; learns very fast; takes great interest in its studies; and in a very short time is known as a very bright child. This is kept up for four or five years without the parents' noticing any injury. Even at thirteen and fourteen years of age the child has its plump face, in spite of its nervous activity and hard school work. Now comes the high school or university, mixed in with a few social functions; becomes one of the leading scholars in the class, and, as often is the case, a prize is to be won, and ^adually we see 416 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE this plump face and red cheeks become pale. The parents notice it; tell her not to work so hard; perhaps ask her if she didn't feel 7 well; but the ambitious child does not realize that day after day her physical bank account is being overdrawn. Being naturally of a very active mental temperament, slim in body, and not very full chested, showing that the lymphatic system upon which the body depends for its nourishment is not in proportion to its brain and nerv- ous system, so that when the sap of life is being drawn upon be- yond its normal capacity we find that the function of digestion is one of the first to suffer. In these cases the lungs are usually inac- tive and sluggish because these nervous and mental temperaments pay very little attention to breathing. The large organ, the brain, is continually in the lead. The parents soon begin to notice that the young daughter or son is not eating so well and that they fear that health is failing and agree to call in a physician, who will be likely to say that the system is run down, overworked; advises a tonic and to not work so hard, or perhaps to remain from school for a time. Between the fretting of the mother, the ambition of the girl to not lose her lead in the class, and the doctor's stuff, there is no apparent gain, some days better, some days worse, but all who can see know that this blooming rose of eighteen is gradually failing. A little cough begins to be noticed, supposed to be a cold, but some way or another this little cough continues. The parent advises the doctor to examine the lungs closely; he says, truthfully, that he finds nothing the matter with the lungs, the cough being due to obstructed glands causing pressure and irritability to their surrounding parts. These glands gradually enlarge near the lungs or the throat, burst open and infect the lungs. In short we have a case of consump- tion. These are very common cases among all classes in this coun- try and especially among the so-called upper and middle classes of Europe and America. Is there hardly any of us who do not have in mind more than one of such cases, where a year or two ago the young girl had a normal appetite, bright eyes, the vim and go of the typical American child, but is now day by day losing ground? Her appetite, except perhaps for coffee and pickles, has vanished; her husky and tomboy disposition has been exchanged for a delicacy that THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 417 even tires her to comb her hair; her lips have become pale, anemic; her ears translucent; her rosy cheeks have disappeared; her pulse is irregular; menstruation scanty or entirely disappeared; but why enu- merate any more of these symptoms? You all know them. What we wish to ask, is it necessary to rob these blooming youths of their vigor and health at such a price as this? With all this death and suffering around us, caused by unhealth- ful school conditions, is it not high time a change was demanded, especially when it is realized that it has been imposed upon us, and not only an imposition but considered an absolute necessity, and all coming from a self-constructed authority composed of nothing more nor less than a lot of political doughheads who cater to the politi- cians for the purpose of holding their jobs, rather than for providing healthful conditions for the scholars. The average school teacher has often been heard to say that he knows that the methods are injurious to the child but that they must obey these political superiors or lose their job. One essential fact is daily impressed upon the pupils, that at any cost they must pass the final examination or be ever- lastingly disgraced. And all this sapping of the vitality of the pupils by forcing them to memorize repetitions of facts that can be of no possible use in their after lives. There is no chance given the child nowadays to think for itself; it is simply to cram, stuff and force an immense amount of undigested facts into unhealthy chil- dren. Under these fashionable circumstances how is it possible to bring to maturity a body from which its very essence is taken, through the overworking of an undeveloped brain and cramming into it a lot of nonsense that is of no more after use to them than chewing sawdust? Another thing we wish to insist upon more strenuously is that our present and fashionable method is most hurtful in de- veloping thousands of cases of consumption where there is not even the slightest tendency to the disease, and is still more hurtful to the future sexual health, which keeps them in misery nearly all their life, to say nothing of the even greater injury stamped upon the next generation. These things are not unknown to parents and the public, yet they keep silent and allow their children to be injured or murdered because it is fashionable to understand lots of Greek 418 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and Latin which is of no use to them in after life. Every human being, like all things in nature, has an inherent power to live a cer- tain length of time; this natural specific time may be lengthened or shortened by the individuals themselves, by either assisting or abus- ing their inherited powers given them by nature. We all must admit it to be a fact that few persons live their allotted time, because they abuse and wear out one or more of the organs by overwork, fric- tion, or any other of the numerous abuses by which the human being through ignorance or carelessness may injure itself, and thus ma- terially shorten their lives, whereas if they would assist, or even give nature her natural course, and not overwork or otherwise abuse the body by dissipation and high living, the life of the individual would likely be lengthened out twenty to forty years. Instances to demonstrate this fact can be found in most any community. Those who have inherited weaknesses that naturally might, on some slight exposure, drift into consumption, usually are tall and slender, nar- row chested with brain too large and active for the body. Those who are tall and slender are, as a rule, predominant in the nervous and mental temperament and deficient in what is called the lymphatic temperament. Here we have distinctly an unbalanced condition, al- though it need not always be necessarily an indication of consump- tion; because those two temperaments are unbalanced, that one is weak, the other strong, means that they should not be exercised beyond the capacity of the weaker one; here the lymphatic one being the weaker, and as the nourishment of the body is mainly carried out through this lymphatic system, it can readily be seen that to exer- cise the body beyond the powers of this lymphatic system that the nourishment of the body must suffer, and anyone who has observed must know that it is this class of people that are the sufferers from the various diseases that come under the head of dyspepsia and indi- gestion, thus starving the nerves, and nervous prostration is usually the final termination. The next class of tall and slender people which interests us most here are those where the description is the same as the one just given. The nervous and mental temperament pre- dominates over the lymphatic, but all in a lower scale. In these cases, at the least provocation, instead of having the functional dis- THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 419 turbances like dyspepsia or indigestion, by the least overdoing or exposures we get a partial or complete obstruction of the lymphatic system that are the carriers of food and waste matter, thus cut- ting off nourishment of the body, and the tendency in most of these cases, especially after taking a cold, some of the glands in the throat or near the lungs become enlarged, finally rupture, infect the lungs or throat, and we call it consumption or tuberculosis. This we think ought to make it very plain that what is commonly called a tendency to consumption is generally this unbalanced proportion of organs or temperaments of the body, and just as soon as this person will work or expose himself beyond the capacity of the weaker functions dis- ease in some form must be looked for, sooner or later. Then what is the way to prevent consumption? Does it not already suggest itself to the reader that there can only be one rem- edy after the birth of the child with these unbalanced conditions? The remedy is simply this: To put foremost and above all other edu- cation, public and private, the carrying out an absolute law of na- ture, that is, the strengthening and enlarging of organs by culture and exercise. This is the only method that nature has of correcting or improving any part of the body, hence we are not compelled to carry our defects to our graves. The saying that the right kind of practice makes perfect is especially true in the exercise of the lungs. Since exercise and culture so wonderfully increase the muscles and other physical capacities, why not the chest and lungs? They can, and to a remarkable and surprising degree. Facts by tens of thou- sands without one to oppose them prove incontestably that the more an organ is exercised (but not overexercised), the larger and stronger the organ becomes, and the less it is used the smaller and weaker it becomes. This is a universal law of nature. Another strong and most important point that suggests itself here is that the smaller an organ, whether it be of muscles, internal organs, or a faculty of the brain, the less the possessor is inclined to use it, and the larger the organ the greater is the pleasure taken in its exercise, and the tendency is to continual action; while the smaller the organ the less pleasure is taken in its action. To illustrate, the faculty of acquisition is almost invariably small 420 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE in the children of the rich; they have had every want supplied and therefore no occasion for the exercise of this faculty; the faculty becomes small from mere disuse, nature thus effectually preventing the continuation of immense wealth in the first families. Does not this well-known law emphasize the necessity of educa- tion, and that education is the only remedy to prevent this scourger of humanity? Culture and exercise of these weak lungs, as well as other weak organs and functions, and keeping them in the lead, is necessary, at the same time being careful not to go beyond the strength of the weakest, and thus gradually establish a nice balance between the weak and the strong organs. Nothing paralyzes function or diminishes organs so rapidly as not to use them, and close obser- vation will demonstrate conclusively that children or adults with weak lungs have a tendency not to use them to the proportion that the person will who has large lungs; this tends to weaken the already weak lungs given him by nature, and thereby widening the breach of disproportion; while if less attention were paid to the development of the brain and muscular system, in fact keeping them below their working order, nature would do much to restore health and strength. This must be done and more attention paid to the lungs or weak organs; thus a good balance can be established and kept up. If this were done an immense amount of work could be accomplished in the future, besides of having the pleasure of good health and a long life, instead of blighted prospects and a prema- ture death from consumption. This class of persons should never become permanently tired out nor worn down, nor used up, but must keep well rested. They should never be allowed to attend school more than one to three hours each day; better to have good health and long life than to die young pos- sessing knowledge of no value. Proper culture and exercise is the one and only great preventive, and therefore this class of children or adults should be given proper physical training in preference to all other kinds of education; to form and practice the habit of fill- ing the lungs with every breath they take, beginning slowly and gradually increasing the power of expanding the chest as their strength increases; these exercises should be brought about by breathing THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 421 through the nose and except in extremely bad weather should be out of doors. This not only exercises the lungs and chest, but in- creases the energy and functional activity of digestion, as well as of the lymphatic and glandular systems, and also the circulation of the skin; these exercises of the lungs and chest should be performed while moving about in the act of walking or playing. Active exer- cises of the brain and nervous system by mental work should be almost entirely avoided, thus keeping the weaker organs and func- tions in the lead and so gradually from month to month and year to year bring them up to equal strength and endurance and thus assure them an equal chance with their more fortunate friends who were born and reared with well-balanced mental and physical organs, giving them nearly, if not entirely an equal chance for a long life of usefulness and happiness, instead of dying with this dread dis- ease consumption before reaching adult life. This exercise for pro- ducing health and strength of the lungs and body is on the same principle that a man who is born with weak muscles and by proper training develops a better muscular system by the time he is twenty- five years old than many who are born with a splendid physique, but let it go to waste by neglecting its proper use. Those thus pre- disposed to weak lungs should read aloud daily, sing, talk much, ^breathe deeply, and do anything that requires lung action; keep out of doors most of the time, yet be careful not to tax the weak organs beyond their strength. Warm extremities for such are most impor- tant; keep a good circulation and keep warm at any cost, not by baking around a stove but by exercise out of doors. To live in a climate where the temperature is about the same the year around, say 75 degrees, is best, but not a necessity, on ac- count of taking cold, which is nearly always the beginning or excit- ing cause, but when properly understood colds can be prevented in any climate. Follow the above rules and keep the pores open and you may'snap your fingers at consumption and the doctors. But the great trouble with all these families is that these things are always neglected, or rather not understood, until their son or daughter is taken with the disease. In other words, the lung tissue has begun to break down. Then they run to the doctor, sometimes 422 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE from one to the other, and when the doctor sees that the patient is nearly gone he sends them South or West to die on some other doc- tor's hands. Reader, when will the public arouse themselves as one body and study all these simple laws and demand the teaching thereof in every school and family in the land? Ministers, teachers and other citi- zens should organize for the purpose of adopting means and measures to change the present sentiments and adapt our habits, character and customs to these natural principles or laws. This would immeas- urably benefit mankind, not only in the health of the nation, but morally and socially as well, because nature makes no distinction with anything or anybody, and the outgrowth of these principles would bring mankind to recognize each other on an equality in all matters that relate to health, long life and its enjoyments. Does it not seem clear that it is the duty of the public to take hold of the subject of preventing consumption as well as. other diseases, instead of leaving it to the physicians who must make their living by treat- ing disease? It is all nonsense to think that any set of men will combine earnestly and honestly to eradicate what constitutes their existence. Such a thing has never been known in business or pro- fessional life, except, perhaps, in rare individual cases. This law of culture and exercise applies to all other bodily or- gans, as the stomach, skin, etc. Children often outgrow this or that ailment, if nature is allowed or assisted to establish a nice balance between the weak and strong organs, by keeping the weak ones in the lead. Then why not the lungs by the same law? Then it is plain that consumption can be prevented and people having weak lungs can be brought up to a reasonable standard and the next gen- eration to a still higher degree, so that in two generations the inher- ent tendency to consumption would be an almost unheard-of thing and the whole of mankind be immeasurably benefited. I boldly affirm that these principles are the only remedy to lessen or eradicate this dreadful and incurable disease and I refer you to all physical and organic laws to back my statement. These laws never lie. Our present ideas of consumption, that it is produced by germs, is rank assumption, and cannot be demonstrated in a single instance, THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 423 because the theory is opposed to all natural law. If a disease of any kind can be produced by germs in one single instance, I am a con- vert to the germ theory, or if anyone will name one condition in this great universe where the condition did not exist before animal life developed I will also be a convert. In a recent prize essay on consumption its author says that in the treatment of this disease our attention must be directed to the solu- tion of two problems. First, the destruction of the microbes, and the second, the immunizing of the organism and the antagonizing of the toxic effects of the microbes. In the very next breath he says that the artificial products of the laboratory can never supersede nature in the treatment of consump- tion, and to cap the climax the statement is made that "if we knew how to produce consumption we could cure it," and that we need no agents evolved by bacterioligist research, but emphasizes the fact that sunshine and pure air are superior to anything else in the treat- ment of consumption, because the sun's rays will kill the microbes, and this killing of the microbes by the sun's rays were only labora- tory experiments. These experiments were not even his own, but he read that Koch of Berlin had killed microbes by subjecting these to the rays of the sun. The above is the cream of a cash prize essay in the Philadelphia Medical Journal, the article being written in such fine language that if not analyzed by sound reason it would dazzle the unthinking mind and seem very scientific, because written with such redundancy and with such great verbosity, but it is only a jungle of fine theorizing and assumption, contrary to all natural laws. Suppose a lung has a large pus cavity, in other words, consump- tion has set in; and if it were possible to turn the sun's rays upon the lung, which would kill all the microbes, would not the remain- ing pus go right on and keep breaking down the lung and new mi- crobes develop, because the condition favorable for their development still remains? All natural law says absolutely yes, and these laws never lie; hence this main pillar upon which the present day medi- cal structure stands is nothing more than a bag of wind, a jungle of fanciful assumption, and when public education and sentiment once punches a hole in this bag of wind the whole foundation and present medical structure falls and crumbles to pieces. 424 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE The signs of consumptive tendencies are that persons thus afflicted are generally tall and slim, long fingered and limbed, spindling and narrow chested, inclined to sit and walk stooping, with their shoul- ders thrown forwards and inwards; have a long neck, sunken cheeks, long faces and sharp features, light complexion, a thin, soft, deli- cate skin, light and fine hair, great excitability, very active minds, and for this reason nearly all mental labor should be avoided because the brain uses one-sixth of the blood of the body, and thereby saps the physical vitality by its activity. Their natural abilities are ex- cellent, have intense feelings, are easily startled and inspired and have a decided predominance of the mental temperament over the vital and head over the body. We have known whole families that appeared healthy looking up to the fifteenth or twentieth year, when a cold would start the disease. In one instance fifteen deaths oc- curred among the relatives in less than six years. All of this class of people have a glandular system which becomes easily obstructed, therefore should live out of doors and be careful not to overdo, but especially exercising the breathing functions with fresh, pure air. The small lungs and hearts of those predisposed to this disease renders their circulation imperfect, and to promote and overcome this should be their first aim. Whatever, therefore, tends to retard the flow of blood, especially at the surface, such as sedentary pur- suits, confinement within doors and particularly heated rooms, habit- ual sewing, a cramped and bending posture, severe mental applica- tion, impure skin, sudden atmospheric changes, colds and the like, should be sedulously avoided. A light and nourishing diet, plenty of fresh air, out of door pursuits, abundant sleep, and vigorous exer- cise, keep the skin clean and especially active, and you are safe. Tight lacing is most pernicious to those predisposed to consumption, because it cramps the lungs, prevents their inflation, inflames them, and shuts out oxygen, the deficiency of which is also a great cause of this disease, as it curtails the action of the whole vital apparatus and consequent supply of this vital element oxygen. No language can tell the number of premature deaths of both mothers and daugh- ters occasioned by this accursed practice. To girt up the vital or- gans is virtually to commit suicide. THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 425 Exercise in the open air is especially beneficial, yet one must be very careful not to overdo; this is the great fault with persons of consumptive tendencies, because their brains are too active for their strength. Alternate rest with exercise of the lungs, and abundance of fresh air, these are the best preventives; nothing can be com- pared with them, and medicines are powerless. Doctor little or none at all, but invigorate your general health by full and frequent breath- ing; this is especially advantageous because oxygen of the air is the force of life and the main power that circulates the blood. Sit or stand straight, throw the arms back and the chest forward and then draw in slowly as full a breath as possible and hold it a few sec- onds; meanwhile striking the chest in order to force the air down into all the air cells of the lungs as well as to enlarge them; keep up this practice habitually and consumption will pass you by. Few prac- tices contribute more to general health. An erect posture is espe- cially important. Real warm climates in the south are detrimental on account of the atmosphere being deficient in oxygen (that is less per volume), which is the principal agent of life and health. A uni- form temperature, dry and not too warm, is a good preventive of consumption because of the less danger of taking cold, which is one of the first exciting causes to clog up the glands and finally break down lung tissue. Our sudden changes in the weather, espe- cially if accompanied with dampness and no sunlight, are very dan- gerous, but those accustomed to outdoor life, if proper care is taken, can easily avoid those dangerous influences of the air. A predis- position to consumption only means that one or more of the organs which supply the body with nourishment are below the strength and capacity in proportion to those organs and parts of the body they are intended to supply. These weak organs, almost without excep- tion, are the lungs and the system of glands, especially those con- nected with the functions of digestion and nourishment, but by im- proving the power and function of the lungs we also increase the power and function of digestion, thus increasing the nourishment of the body, providing the excessively large organs, such as the brain and muscles, are kept partially in check in order not to use up the needed supply of nourishment for the improving and increasing of 426 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE these weaker organs or functions of the lungs, glands and digestion by proper culture and exercise. This is the one and only means that nature's mechanic has for developing and strengthening weak organs; all the human mechanic can do is to teach the method. Fortunately here, as in all nature, her method is simple, the whole matter summing itself up in the understanding and the proper carrying out of the instructions in the above sentence, to develop a weak pair of lungs or other weak organs by proper culture and exercise. With the un- derstanding that the stomach be furnished the proper plain and nour- ishing diet, all can be accomplished by performing the exercises needed for the normal functions of breathing, and nothing else. This will sound too simple, too cheap and too common to say to the world that one death in every seven is caused mainly because the people are neglecting to breathe properly, and by this neglect have violated one of the best and most easily demonstrable natural laws known, the law of use and disuse. For generations and centuries this neg- lect of their proper use and improper environments, and this has o stunned the functions of digestion and nourishments. It is a well- known fact that when the human being becomes deteriorated in con- stitution he is very susceptible to injury by disease, even under natural and favorable existing surroundings, and would be still more sus- ceptible if the conditions and surroundings should be below the gen- eral. Another kind of deterioration of the constitutions of civilized nations, which seems to become more and more marked each gen- eration, is the unnecessary artificial life that is so fashionable now- adays, and it has not only become fashionable but has become an in- herent part of us. The so-called comforts which accompany wealth and civilization have brought in their train all forms of disease and death; and this state of affairs is what we call education, intelligence, refinement and higher civilization. In other words, our inclination to do and act and be a little different from the so-called common middle class of people by eating and drinking fancy and artificially made foods, that have been changed from their natural state of organization, which makes them entirely different from the original. Besides these unnatural methods of preparing our foods, we may mention the sty- THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 427 lish methods of draping our windows, which excludes light and air and the overdoing of night pleasures, overfeeding, improper diet and cooking, etc. In other words, the person who leads the most nearly natural life is the one who possesses the best health and lives the long- est and has the greatest amount of happpiness. The methods in the age in which we live, the circumstances of our birth, our education, or rather our false education, and environments very often preclude the leading of a natural life. The facts are that the simple condi- tions and methods that should be adopted to prevent consumption would prevent almost all diseases to which man is heir. I have already emphasized the fact that the way to prevent con- sumption in those who have weakness of organs, which give rise to a tendency to this disease, is by exercise and culture in order to develop these weak lungs and their functions up to a standard with the other organs of the body. I wish I could emphasize this state- ment strong enough to indelibly impress it upon every individual in the land so that they would never lose sight of its importance and benefits to all mankind, for as before stated, no man or physician has ever cured a case of consumption when once developed and I defy anyone to show a single instance where a cure has been made. I know of a great many people who claim they have been cured of consumption, but it was only where the physician made them believe that they had the disease, while in fact they had some trifling ail- ment and afterwards recovered and gave the doctor the credit of curing them of consumption. I myself have cured dozens of peo- ple who believed they had consumption, all the way from one to fifteen years' standing simply because physicians whom they em- ployed had impressed them with that belief. In some instances many of the most prominent doctors had diagnosed the disease just be- cause the patients were incessantly coughing and their cough really being so characteristic of the consumptive cough that the doctor either ignorantly or wilfully diagnosed the case as consumption; I think ignorance or carelessness the most probable. I will cite a few cases of these various forms of this so-called consumption. A lady came to me a distance of seventy miles; she had been in poor health for a number of years; been treated by a 428 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE number of physicians and had taken patent medicines; she was told she had lung trouble, by some others bronchial trouble; another said she had a pus cavity in her lungs the size of a silver dollar, but that he could cure her and that it would take from one to two years. She had a hacking cough which deprived her of rest and sleep; was wanting in flesh and strength and she firmly believed that it must be consumption. Examination showed that her lungs were sound and excellent in quality; that she had simply for years overdrawn her physical bank account, and to regain her health she must begin to deposit more every day than she withdrew to again balance up her account with this physical bank of hers, or else nature would eventu- ally begin foreclosure proceedings against her, which meant finally some organic disease, which would result in death. I gave her one prescription and the proper advice to again replenish this physical bank account and go home, follow it up for three or six months, a year if needed, and never to come to me or any other doctor again. In six months she wrote to me that her health was first rate and bet- ter than it had been for ten years. Another case was a lady who had been treating a year with two of the leading lung specialists of a large city for throat and lung dis- ease, or as they said, the beginning of consumption. She was ema- ciated to a mere skeleton and coughed incessantly day and night; her appearance would almost lead anyone to believe she was in the last stages of consumption. I never had harder work to convince anyone that the lungs were sound and that her whole body was in the same condition as her throat and lungs, that she was physically run down, and that the same trouble existed in her little finger and great toe as much as her throat and lungs, but that this irritability of the nervous system was what made her cough. One prescription for medicine and advice followed up for four months restored her health, which she has enjoyed up to this time. The third case is a man who had employed physicians for nine years until he was finally told by a doctor of world-wide reputation that nothing more could be done for him, that his lungs were so far gone that treatment was of no more avail. When he first came to me he was apparently in a deplorable condition; within twenty-four THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 429 hours I made the correct diagnosis and the following day relieved him 'in forty-five minutes of a tapeworm one hundred and five feet long and his consumption was cured, and the past ten years he has en- joyed excellent health. By the way I want to remark that this man had a pair of the finest lungs I ever examined in a human breast. Is such ignorance as this by any of the leading medical teachers in this country excusable? Case No. 4. A young lady aged nineteen; been in poor health for four years, the last two of which she was supposed by her medical attendant to have consumption. Her emaciated and run down sys- tem proved to be due to reflex troubles produced by eye strain; the correction of a large degree of hyperopia and astigmatism by properly adjusted spectacles made a healthy and well young lady. Case No. 5. Was called to see a lady thirty-five years of age, for the purpose of having a physician make out the death certificate, in order to save the presence of the coroner. She had been an invalid for seventeen years, and had employed all the leading practitioners of the city; she claimed from forty to fifty in all, but the past few years had employed no physician and was simply waiting her call to the great majority. Her trouble began with a cough and she had coughed more or less during all the years of her illness. Lung dis- ease, bronchial complaints and consumption had been what she was treated for whenever she employed medical aid. When I first saw her she looked more like a corpse; could not speak from debility; coughed incessantly, and was so very nervous that the ordinary sound of a voice would make her bound in bed. Her two sisters, who had taken care of and supported her all these years said it was of no use to give any medicine, that she had had consumption for the last fifteen years and that it was evident she could live but a short time. I examined her lungs, expecting to verify their statements, but to my surprise I found an excellent pair of lungs and perfectly sound. It was no easy task to convince them that her lungs were perfectly sound, after so many others pronouncing her consumptive. The long and short of it was she was a nervous wreck and nothing else. I told her two sisters who were supporting her that there was a pos- sibility of saving the girl's life. Well, all doctors promised to help 430 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE her, and they could not afford to spend any more money as it would do no good anyhow. I spent several hours in explaining the case and the results that might be expected, and if they would agree to follow my instructions they could have my services and medicine free, provided they would agree to give her the necessary medicine at least twelve months if she lived; furthermore, if she lived two or three weeks she could be brought out a well girl. This they thought a fair proposition and agreed to carry out my instructions. In three months she was able to go out, and in six months she could walk a mile to my office to get her medicine; in twelve months she was as healthy a lady as could be found and still remains so, and it is nine years since I began treating her. Moral.-There are thousands of cases of consumption like this who go to an untimely grave through the ignorance and careless- ness of the physician. I could give dozens of cases in my own prac- tice whose friends were sure of consumption when it proved to be purely nervous irritability; this irritability in the air passages will often if not always give them a hacking consumptive cough, while the same condition may exist in the rest of the body, yet have a dif- ferent way of manifesting itself. These cases illustrate the kinds of consumption that can be cured, and many of them in this debilitated state of their system are ex- posed to a cold, develop consumption unnecessarily and finally die because the proper diagnosis and treatment was not given them in time. Enlarging and strengthening the lungs by exercise. We all know that a person (all things being equal) with a weak body is not much inclined towards work, but on the contrary will be inclined to exercise that portion of his body which is predomi- nant, which usually is the brain; we also know that a person with a small or weak talent for music, and a strong talent in some other direction, will be inclined to use the strong talent; if strongly in- clined to be selfish, that trait, in spite of one's self, will crop out; if inclined to be religious this will be strongly manifested at the least exciting cause, and so on all the way through the different faculties of the brain. The large one will always at the least prove- THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 431 cation, or even without provocation, be in the lead, either for good or evil. This physical law is indisputable, and unless a person overcomes a predominant trait towards evil, by exercising and cultivating the weak organ and letting the large organ lie dormant, the result will be disastrous. This culture and exercise of the weak organ brings out a reasonably good balance of the faculties of the brain, while if it were not exercised would sooner or later lead to the detriment of their possessor, either to disease of the body or to the detriment of his social and moral welfare. This same law always holds good when applied to any organ or organs of the body, and especially are its detrimental consequences more serious in regard to the lungs. A child or adult born with weak lungs is less inclined to exercise them, even to the extent that their weak capacity are capable of, so the result must necessarily fol- low that the lungs will not develop in this growing child in propor- tion to the rest of the body, and at the same time the body has also suffered through the neglect of the proper exercising of these weak lungs. Why? Because the lungs are to the body what the steam boiler is to running the machinery attached to the engine from which it must receive its power. The lungs are the boiler through which the system receives its power to run the rest of the machinery, especially the circulation of the blood; without it all is lifeless in a few minutes. The import- ance of this statement is practically unknown to the profession, as well as to the public, at the present time, as I wjas the first physi- cian (and only within the past year) to positively demonstrate that the main power that gives the blood the force to attract itself through the body was received through the lungs from the air breathed. This being true it will be clear to anyone that if the lungs are weak and small and not used to their full enduring capacity, they cannot furnish the blood the needed material from the air to give the needed power to the blood, and hence all the machinery of the body must suffer in proportion as this power is deficient. This is even more recognized where we have a large body, active brain and small lungs and chest. Now if a boiler in an engine room is too small and weak to 432 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE furnish the needed power to run the engine and machinery it can be re- moved and replaced by a larger one, but to increase the strength and size of the lungs, or any part of the body, it must be done by exer- cise and culture, as this is the only means that nature has for im- proving any organ or function of the body. How should this exer- cise and culture be performed? First.-The child should be taught and allowed to live a natural life, which would also be splendid advice for all children. This means a life in pure air, not three or four hours a day, but twenty- four hours out of every twenty-four. The air in the sleeping room should be pure; this can easily be accomplished by letting the outside air circulate through the sleeping room day and night and regulate it so as not to create a draught upon the child. The mother or guardian should understand how to teach the exercise of breathing, which only needs good common sense in order not to overdo the exercise in the beginning; every two, three or four hours the mother should spend five or ten minutes in having the child take deep and full inspirations and have it form the habit of continually keeping up this full breathing; this should be done by breathing through the nose; the body should be erect and the shoulders should be thrown back, so that the upper part of the chest can be well inflated. This exercise of deep and full breathing, if kept up, will gradually ex- pand the chest and increase the size of the lungs, as well as their strength. The exercise should be increasd as the months pass by. If this can be done without fatigue to the patient, the muscles and lungs are surely growing stronger. In order to expand to normal proportions a chest contracted from imperfect development or weakness, or even a diseased condition, nothing is so important as these breathing gymnastics properly per- formed. By breathing gymnastics proper, I mean enforced and fre- quent deep and slow breathing and exhalation; not with great force and great effort but by full and natural breathing. The necessity for these exercises cannot be too strongly emphasized, for they are the only means that will ever lessen the death rate from consump- tion among those born with the unbalanced weaknesses of lungs and body, and by its general adoption and the obeying of the sexual THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 433 and marriage laws, in several generations the tendency to consump- tion can be almost entirely eradicated among mankind. We make this statement without fear of its ever being successfully contradicted, as it is in harmony with nature and her laws, the sexual and mar- riage laws and those of exercise and culture. Nothing in all nature and science equals them in their immeasurable benefit to the health and physical welfare of mankind. Another and very important gain the system gets from the proper exercise of the lungs by breathing pure air is that it furnishes the blood with that vital force which gives it the power to circulate, and it is this power that gives activ- ity and life to every person. Just as soon as you breathe air of poor quality or reduced quan- tity of oxygen, you feel loggy, drowsy, indolent and sleepy. Cannot everyone testify to the truth of this? In the summer time when the heat expands the air, one gets less oxygen per volume, hence we should therefore breathe oftener than in cold weather. This condition of the air is what makes all people indolent and lazy in hot climates. Again, this deep and full breathing causes better oxygenated blood and stimulates a better degree of nutrition in all the tissues of the body. By this the body is built stronger, more durable, and can resist exposures and diseases of all sorts more effectively. Not only does deep breathing supply the oxygen to the blood and create elec- tric power and build the body strong, but by this act of deep breath- ing it helps to more perfectly remove from the body a poison called carbonic acid gas or carbon dioxide. This is another great function of the lungs, to carry off this poisonous gas, which if retained in the system produces various forms of disease. This fact shows why a room should always have some means of supplying it with circulat- ing pure air; otherwise it soon fills with carbonic gas from the lungs, which is a powerful poison. Another reason why full and deep breathing is necessary is that all the air the lungs contain is not changed at each breath; each lung ordinarily has a capacity of about two hundred and twenty cubic inches of air, and only about twenty cubic inches are breathed with each quiet ordinary breath. But if an unusually long inspira- tion is made one hundred and ten cubic inches can be added to what 434 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE each lung contains, and if an unusually complete expiration is made after such an inspiration, two hundred and thirty cubic inches can be forced out, so that we always have a double benefit in deep and full exercise of the lungs. First, to take in the very essence of life and rid the system of poisonous materials -generated, which means either disease or death to the individual if retained in the system to an abnormal amount. Then again this exercise and culture of weak lungs by enforced or voluntary and complete breathing becomes by this frequent and persistent repetition a habit; so that the person after a year or two takes to breathing full and deep without noticing it, because the lungs have become larger and stronger and adapted to this force of habit. These breathing exercises are especially useful where the elas- ticity of the lungs has been lessened by disuse or disease and the amount of air habitually inhaled and exhaled has been too small or when the chest is narrow, thin or deformed; the best results are obtained in the earlier years of life, that is during youth and early manhood, when the bony framework of the chest is still pliable and the upbuilding power of the tissues is great. Combined with this systematic exercise of enforced deep breathing, outdoor sports of any kind that will force breathing are especially useful, such as run- ning, riding, climbing, hunting, fishing, bicycling, ball and tennis games; but all must be taken below fatigue or they will be injurious instead of benefical. Another bad habit that through a false notion is followed where the lungs are considered weak is the wearing of a muffler; this is a very injurious habit, except, perhaps, when one is walking against a severe wind or storm. Dry, cold air should never be feared, if breathed through the nose, for of all things it must be remembered that pure air and unhindered breathing is the most essential thing for those whose lungs are weak or crippled. Active, that is volun- tary, exercise is preferred; it keeps the person on his own guard and is more likely to gradually form itself into a permanent habit. Another point to be remembered is that a little care should be taken when the air is moist, because moist air causes a rapid with- THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 435 drawal of temperature from the surface of the body; a variation of five degrees in a moist air will produce severe chilling of the sur- face and shock to the system, which is not equaled by a fall of twenty to twenty-five degrees in a dry air. At all times and seasons and in all climates the outside air should be freely admitted to our homes, even if the outside air is not absolutely perfect; it is always far bet- ter than any other, whether it be by day or by night. Most people are afraid of night air. Are not those people who sleep out of doors, or in houses full of cracks and holes, more healthy than those who live in our modern homes? Another habit of the person with the weak lungs and body is that the individual, knowing his weakness, is so very careful of his lungs; actually afraid to take a full breath for fear it might injure them; they are afraid to go out of doors without bundling up and while outdoors are careful not to get much air into the lungs, pre- venting it by holding their hands over their mouths or by a thick veil or muffler. Why is all this? From wrong notions or false education on this subject; by trying to do what they think is tak- ing care of their lungs; yet they are actually doing the worst thing to bring on the disease they are trying to prevent. To make it most clear to anyone what the use of air is to the individual, the furnace in the house is the best illustration, as it is as exact an example as can be given; the same identical processes are going on in the fur- nace as in the human system, only not so complex. The air box fur- nishes the air needed and the oxygen from this air is what makes the fuel burn in the fire pot; if you check the furnace by cutting off the air the fire goes down; if the air is entirely cut off the fire goes out; again, if you have a good draught and poor fuel, you have a poor fire; if you have a good fuel and poor air draught you have either a poor fire or it goes entirely out; again you can have good air and good fuel and have a poor fire, because flues or chimneys do not carry off the waste. We see here that one function of the furnace depends upon the other, in order that we may keep up a good and well regulated fire. What is it then that gives us fire in the furnace? It is the coming together of two elements; the oxy- gen from the air is the element that oxidizes or burns; the remain- 436 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ing constituents of the fuel are the ashes and other refuse which are taken out through the proper channels. A similar process is going on within our system; the lungs repre- sent the air box in the human furnace; the stomach or organs of digestion represent the fire pot; the oxygen from the air comes in contact with the carbon and other nourishing materials taken into the blood and combustion takes place, and by this process of com- bustion the heat of the body is maintained. In the furnace smoke is produced by the process of combustion or burning; this smoke is nothing more than carbon dioxide and is carried off through the chimney, and we all know how dangerous smoke is if it gets into a room or is retained in the furnace. So in the system, by the proc- ess of combustion carbon dioxide or smoke is just as dangerous to life in the system if not carried off through its proper channels. One of the chimneys to carry off a large amount of this smoke or carbon dioxide is through the lungs. Then it is plain if this air box or lungs is not properly used or exercised, it does not carry off this poison or smoke sufficiently to keep the system pure; at the same time the system does not get the proper amount of oxygen to supply the system, hence a double injury to health; here, as in the furnace, one is dependent upon the other; if you breathe air sup- plied with good oxygen and use poor food or fuel in the stomach, the fire of life must be in proportion poor. If the food is in every way good and the air poor, the fire of life again suffers in propor- tion; if the air and food are both good and the chimney and ash grates are clogged, in other words the skin, lungs and kidneys be- come obstructed and do not carry off the smoke and ashes, the sys- tem suffers in proportion to the degree that elimination is checked. As to the furnace, the janitor is supposed to see that all these three main functions of the furnace are kept in good order. In the human system nature's janitor demands that these functions be kept in well balanced and running order. To put it all in a nut shell-the furnace and all that pertains to the furnace proper must all be in proportion to the size of the house to be heated; so the furnace in the body must have all its parts well proportioned to the body it must heat and supply with energy. The THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 437 air box (lungs), the fire pot (digestive organs), the chimney and ash grate (kidneys, skin and lungs) must all be able to supply the body with heat and energy and our instinct and education should guide us in furnishing it with the material as nature demands, which must be different in proportion in the winter as compared to the summer. We wish to call attention for a moment to the necessity of em- ployers of factory labor for providing shops that are well venti- lated. All such laborers should be educated to feel the necessity for (and should insist upon protecting themselves) having provi- sion as far as possible for the breathing of good and pure air while at work, and the laborer should also form the habit of filling the lungs full in breathing while working, instead of being in a stooped and cramped position, which in most kinds of work can be avoided. Where this cannot be avoided the employe should be allowed to change his position occasionally for the purpose of allowing full and deep breathing and not exact a constant and unremitting labor dur- ing working hours. Is it astonishing then, that the factory girl is pale, thin chested, weak bodied and easily subject to colds, con- sumption or any other disease in consequence of her perhaps en- forced and yet unnecessary environments? If the employer would consider the health of the employe a little more, and thereby often prevent the loss of skilled labor by consumption or other diseases, would such care from the employer not be good economy in the long run? If I am correctly informed, in England laws have been enacted controlling the construction of factories on this point, and similar legislation would be of much advantage in this country; if public education and sentiment were directed strongly in this direction, it would bring good results. The choice of a vocation for anyone with weak lungs and body should, if possible, be an outdoor life. When this is impossible these simple rules of systematically developing good lung capacity and power of breathing should be carried out; overexertion and depression of either mind or body should be avoided. In a word, rest should be as systematically arranged for as exercise and in their proper pro- portion. It will be self-evident that the food of these persons pre- 438 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE disposed to consumption should be plain and nutritious diet; the coarse or natural foods are the best, and in their preparation the natural organization should not be changed any more than can be helped. In following out the views-now discussed, we have only outlined a natural law that is as absolute as the rising of the sun, and all should be, from childhood up, thoroughly trained and educated as to how to breathe, what we breathe and what we breathe for. Give your child this knowledge of culture and exercise as nature teaches it and you will have added from twenty to fifty years to its life lease. Then why not make these laws the foundation and leading text- book of all education? Why waste the precious time and exhaust the sparse energies of our youths on so much stuff, that is of no more after use to them through life than chewing sawdust, yet wholly ignore this natural law that would give them a long life and happiness? In closing this chapter I will repeat: if you want to labor hard with brain or muscles, and without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly of good and pure air, which contains the normal amount of oxygen; for it is only oxygen that is taken up in the blood. It is the invigorator of life and all functions of the body. Nature has no panacea like it, for as fire goes down with the scarcity of oxygen and goes out when it disappears, so the fire of life goes out as its supply diminishes and death follows when it disappears, showing that oxygen is more indispensable to life than any other element, for we can live longer without food or any of the other necessities of life, but it should always be taken in the form of pure air, as it is rarely of any benefit when artificially taken. From the foregoing we see that breathing rightly promotes every life capacity and function, and we should attend more to breathing than to eating; yet many breathe so little that the heaving of the chest is scarcely perceptible, indicating that they are too lazy to breathe deeply, when it is so important to health and so cheap, and most of us might live many times faster and better by redoubling our breathing. Most men and nearly all women breathe wholly with THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 439 their ribs, due largely to suspending their apparel from their hips by bands which press just below the diaphragm and prevent its easy downward motion. All apparel of men, women and children should hang from their shoulders, not hips. Most women by noticing their own chests will see that their breath goes down only five or six inches, while every breath should move their whole chest; in other words, fill the lungs full at every breath. Not one person in a thousand fills his lungs as full and steady when awake as when asleep, but if they did they would im- prove their health and vitality a hundred fold. It is when asleep that most of us breathe as we should when awake. In the foregoing pages we have in a general way spoken of these cases of consumption which occur in the class of people whose physical condition is by nature in a normal, healthy state, but who were by inheritance endowed with a weak pair of lungs, or other weak organs, which really predisposes them to consumption. But we have another class who succumb to this scourger of humanity. These cases may occur among any people, no matter how strong and healthy they may be. / These cases are entirely due to debility of the lungs resulting from some other disease, such as lung fever, la grippe and especially anaemic or chlorotic patients. This latter class swells the percentage of consumption to a large degree. These anaemic patients are what in common parlance are called blood poor, or as some have it, their blood has turned to water. The symptoms that always show them- selves in these cases are paleness of the face, the lips and ears having a deathlike appearance. They tire very easily; even climbing a pair of stairs slowly will completely exhaust them; we find this trouble existing almost entirely among young women. This condition usu- ally comes on between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth year, the cause in most cases being due to one or more of several causes. It may be from working too hard during these years of growth and devel- opment, or working in poorly ventilated shops or mills where the blood is not getting enough oxygen from the air to charge and elec- trify the blood; or it may be due to bad digestion or assimilation of the food; again, it is often due to taking cold during the menstrual 440 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE period. This is largely due to standing around in damp places with thin-soled shoes, when being warm from walking, dancing, etc. When the whole system is weakened, or, so to speak, half wilted, it does not take much to cause a breaking down of the lungs, and these cases run their course very fast, commonly called quick con- sumption; but if a person has some other organ of the body which is weaker than the lungs it is apt to affect this weak organ, unless for some special cause the lungs should be made more susceptible, as from a cold. No greater mistake can be made by a young woman than to neglect this condition of impoverished blood, called chlorosis or anaemia; it is a condition that is so easily helped; there exists no chronic disease that is so sure of a cure, but if some organic dis- ease should be allowed to develop there is not one chance in a hun- dred of ever getting well. Be sure and never neglect this condition of anaemia. Consumption following la grippe has claimed its victims by the thousands-more, I think, due to bad treatment than from the la grippe itself. This statement should be made plain, for it makes no difference how good or strong the lungs, if attacked after having la grippe it is sure to claim its victim. During the severe epidemic of the la grippe in Milwaukee in 1889, being my first experience with this disease, and reading the reports from the East before it arrived at Milwaukee, the symptoms described were so uniform and plain and with my knowledge of physiology, concluded that it was surely a disease of the nervous system, affecting mainly the spinal cord, and as the spine and brain are the main nerves of the body, all other nerves of the body arising from this main one (the spine) and the symptoms in la grippe being mainly severe pains in the back, head, and from there extending in many cases over the entire body, I concluded that the whole trouble exist- ing was nerve obstruction due mainly to the action of the damp, cold atmosphere upon the nervous system (this condition of the atmos- phere most always, if not always, existing first in the East). This being my conclusion, I reasoned that nerve obstruction of the spine, cut- ting off nerve function of the whole body, was a serious affair, as it would not take many days to debilitate the tissues of the body so THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION 441 as to prevent recuperation afterwards; and often nature would suc- ceed in removing this nerve obstruction in a few weeks, in spite of bad treatment so often used; if complete recuperation should take place under these circumstances it would be slow, often requiring months. In short, in this disease we have arrest of nerve function due to contraction of the sheath covering each nerve, thus giving pressure upon the nerve fibers within the sheath, which gives the pains described in the expression "I ache all over." From this kind of reasoning my conclusions were, what must I accomplish to relieve my patient quickly before any injury to the system has been done? Why, produce relaxation to relieve this stricture or vice these nerves are in. This should be done within twelve to thirty-six hours and always can be in the very severest case. This is accomplished by getting the patient in a steady per- spiration until all pain is vanished; this can be assisted by a few doses of medicine in the form of hot drinks. This puts the patient convalescing in a few days, and although somewhat weak, gradually recovers without any bad results following. Having over eighty cases during this severe epidemic and not making more than one visit to each case, excepting three cases, and these not over three visits, while other physicians were nearly driven to death making more visits, often three times as many to each case as I made in the eighty cases, is pretty good evidence that it is not profitable from a pecuniary standpoint to treat cases right. In conversation with one of my brother physicians during the epidemic, and who is now prominently connected with one of the medical colleges, I mentioned the success of my first experience with the disease. He answered me by saying: "You are a d fool; now is the time for your harvest and you ought to take it." Within six to twelve months afterward I was called to a number of these grippe patients who were by nature endowed with the finest kind of lungs and physical body, but all were suffering with consumption and all had to succumb and join the great majority because of poor treatment or care of this disease called la grippe, but this poor treat- ment proved very profitable to the physicians. I speak of this 442 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE because I think it of the utmost value to the public, and make it so plain that most any one can handle his own case of la grippe by following the above simple directions, and a thousandfold safer, with no danger of taking consumption, than the injurious method of treating la grippe at the present time. MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES. Has nature left this matter undetermined? Does she not regu- late this whole matter of marriage, etc., throughout its minutest details by unalterable laws? Certainly, she does. She would not leave this the most important part of her domain to be run at random. Nature regulates her creative laws as absolutely and cer- tainly as she does all her others. But for it there could be nothing, no life, no functions. From it alone came all that has issued forth upon the boundless oceans of time, space and existence. Marriage, it may be well said, is a divine creation, hence governed by the Creator's laws. These laws are the natural laws, and there is no law that all are so solemnly bound to learn and obey. Its sole aim is to establish the greatest amount and the highest possible order of life. By the institution of this natural law and its perfect arrange- ment, it enables us to bring about any desired result by employing their specific means and demands. Can anything be more useful and beneficial? People try to become proficient in all other branches of science, but this branch pertaining to the laws that govern mar- riage and their offspring are almost totally neglected; yes, even worse than that, it is totally abused; but if the laws that should govern marriage were rightly used it would surpass all others com- bined, and would save millions of lives from this scourger of human- ity-consumption-every year, to say nothing of how it would benefit the constitution of every human being living and yet to be born. Does not the farmer produce better crops and finer stock in just proportion as he applies and understands these natural laws to growth and development? Just so will our production of offspring be superior, and there will be just so much less of consumption, etc., as we apply and understand the natural laws as • applied to mar- riage. Is there a product on the earth so glorious, so beneficial, as perfect children? And they can only be obtained by applying 443 444 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE these creative or natural laws to humanity. See the time and amount of money spent in the application of these laws in producing fine horses, while the same principle in creation of children is almost if not entirely ignored. It is practically the main cause of three- fourths, if not more, of all the suffering and misery that the human family is afflicted with, with consumption in the lead, followed by the other constitutional diseases. If these laws were more studied and obeyed, they would surpass all other sciences as much as a superior human being exceeds fine animals or fine fruits; in fact, words or any comparison fails to describe its greatness and benefits to mankind. Can we say that anything is or has been more cruel than the almost entire neglect of the study and application of this subject? How much more is a perfect article worth than an imper- fect one? A child with a weak pair of lungs is only as strong in proportion as its lung is weak. We may carry this still further. Suppose the child has all the excellent human qualities but one; it may be in health, or its intellectual qualities or its conscience, or it has a tendency to steal, to lie, or it is lazy, heartless or cowardly; let any father or mother say how much more this child would be worth without this fault. How much less still is this child worth if both sickly and vicious, simple and thievish. Again, how much does it add to the benefit of this child by adding to or taking away one of its faults? How much if it would only be weighed in the light of social and commercial value to himself and others? It seems to be folly to try and compute the difference in the value of perfect children over imperfect. Let some of the fathers and moth- ers foot up the profits and losses to themselves, and especially to the children, by this principle. A good child is more valuable in proportion than a poor one as it gives more pleasure and comfort, and a bad one is as much worse than none as it causes more pain than pleasure. Let all the actual and possible enjoyments experi- enced by the perfect child in this world measure its real value to itself; let all the exquisite pleasures taken in a splendid boy bounding in and out, ruddy, merry, overflowing with joy and sunshine wher- ever he goes, and compare this child with a poor, sickly, miserable, squeamish being, mad half the time and sniveling the rest, keeping MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 445 his parents in continual fear and anxiety that any change in the weather will give lung fever, or as he grows older a cold will pre- cipitate consumption or in some other way endanger its life, or that his rage and depravity might do irreparable damage. Does this not show the infinite value of perfect over faulty children? Some may argue that poor children are better than none, as a musty loaf of bread is better than none, but at the same time this is a flimsy excuse, for if we were educated to understand the severe penalty that nature attaches if you abuse these laws pertaining to marriage, then we would forestall all this and provide ourselves with knowl- edge to bring us out of our present deplorable and perverted con- dition and provide ourselves with the very best family of children possible. This done for one generation would almost revolutionize the world in improvement over our present bodily constitutions and thus prevent about one-half of the existing misery from disease and death. Then is it not plain that knowledge and education relative to these laws is of more value than all other knowledge combined? Measuring everything from the standpoint of health and long life and its consequent pleasures and enjoyments, are we not then the most deplorable and reckless, if not the most ignorant, people from this standpoint upon the earth, instead of the most educated, enlight- ened and most civilized? But this condition is due largely by the masses putting their trust in an organization that poses before us as our guide and bene- factor to help us out and bring us back to a normal condition by funneling down drugs, which are mostly injurious instead of bene- ficial, and continually by ambiguous writings and statements tell us how to trim up the branches or organs of this human tree and make it appear beautiful for a time. But our foundation and con- stitution is becoming weaker every generation. More often the fault lies in the gratification and abuses of our sexual inclinations. If physicians would have the courage (some have the sense) to show a young father and mother the error of their ways with their first born, most of them at least would be glad to profit by it, if put in a clear and understanding light. But the trouble is that generations and centuries of false ideas have become so established 446 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE that physicians as well as others have created a sentiment so strong in the wrong direction that now they are but echoes and tools of public opinion. Teachers and moralists should organize to change this public opinion; you can if you only wanted to, by working and sacrificing a little pecuniary and self-interest, but you lack the nerve. Teachers and ministers can change the moral atmosphere in which they live if only organization, honest effort and devotion is applied. Education in harmony with nature's laws is the only education; all else without this is fruitless and dangerous so far as the health of the race is concerned. This knowledge would demonstrate abso- lutely that God has created these laws so that parents can preordain the qualities and value of their future children. God might have assumed their entire formation Himself, but instead He guaranteed their general qualities if you obey His hereditary laws. Every obser- vation and experiment of the whole human race will demonstrate conclusively that He mercifully allows us to say and choose for ourselves what shall be the make-up or fashioning of our young. Can we imagine any production that is a more beneficial one? He allows us to enjoy just in proportion as we plan and build, just as we would select, plant and trim a tree or fruit, or as we have reared a horse with fine qualities, by the understanding and then arranging his hereditary qualities. These results are generally far better than they would have been if we had not understood those natural heredi- tary laws. Then how much more lovely and precious our children will be rendered, how much better society, how much better the nation, by having increased their virtues and lessened their tendency to faults, to disease of any kind, consumption standing in the lead; for as you prevent the tendency to consumption just in proportion you lessen the tendency to all other diseases derived from a con- stitutional weakness. Ought we not bow in shame that we neglect the fashioning of our children by the influences that can be brought about us by the proper application of these hereditary or creative laws? The old saying that "education forms the common mind" belies and is belied by all nature, for it is generation alone that gives all animal as well as vegetable life its innate specialties and instinct. MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 447 Just as children are created, just so mainly it predetermines what- ever they do, say or are. It is true that as "the twig is bent it is inclined to grow," but a hemlock twig can not be bent into an oak tree, but can only be bent as a hemlock, for that is its nature. All education can not "make ducks catch mice" nor cats seek the water, nor can it teach chickens to swim, or tigers to eat grass. Education, to have an effect, must first have primal elements upon which to work, and in forming character and molding conduct it is only a floating mote. It is really blood that tells, while all education without these primal powers to be educated is utterly insignificant. Just so in forming and controlling character, conduct and all that there is in it, rate it as high as you please, here or hereafter. Children well born, even if left wholly uneducated, are far superior to those poorly constituted, yet well educated. Those poorly begotten can not be educated any more than you could make silk cloth without silk, while those well begotten will educate themselves by business obser- vations and books; therefore, I say to all parents, provide yourself with children that are naturally good, not poor, strong and not weak, long and not short lived, talented and not simple. It is the best investment that you can make for their education. Try to make this a fashion, try to make it a public sentiment, for public senti- ment has much power for good or bad. This of itself will quicken your own sense of the great value of good over poor children. Then you will have something to show for your large investment of dol- lars and worthy of all this educational outlay, to say nothing of the great satisfaction in having stored up for them the inherent quality of a long life and its consequent felicity. To incur all of this time and investment of money on natural born dolts, sensual- ists or ingrates is far more senseless and less profitable than to till barren soil or invest in wildcat speculations, especially since by learn- ing and fulfilling nature's creative laws you can secure children that are both easily educated and in every way worthy of your parental toil and financial investment. My dear parents, I can not too strongly impress upon you to first study and think out this problem of the creative laws. God 448 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE instituted them to be obeyed and not to be trampled on; to be learned and not be ignored. What did he mean by ordaining that all offspring must inherit all the traits of both their parents, but that all married selections should be made with specific references to the best possible endowment to our offspring? Wicked beyond all others are those who neglect, but blessed over all others are those who fulfill his creative ordinances, because it is not possible for one per- son to injure another as effectually as parents can their children by imposing upon them vices or diseases. Nor can mankind be blessed so surpassingly as can parents their own children by observ- ing these creative principles. What crime is as bad as parents neglecting a sick child, yet how much worse to render this child sickly by constitution, when they could have created it so robust as not to need nursing. The parents of a thief, liar or murderer would feel guilty before God and society if they did not do all in their power to eradicate by education and moral discipline what they had implanted constitu- tionally. Was not the vicious impregnation worse itself, when they could have conferred, by fulfilling these creative requirements, good talents and virtues? Is it not, then, the greatest crime, even if through ignorance, to mar, spoil and deprave God's children? Prospective parents, have you any conscience, any sense about anything? If so, use both in learning these child-endowing ordi- nances. Their neglect is heathenish and damnable, since their obedi- ence rewards man with robust and perfect children, the most luxuri- ous of earthly possessions. These principles and laws are applied to improving animals and fruits. Then why not to children? I believe the time is near when men, and especially women, will make a literal rush for this special knowledge; they will throw aside that squeamishness which has up to the present time been so successful in resisting it. Human nature must always remain true to its instinctive love for the young and will not let a fruit so useful as perfect children hang in full view unplucked. Soon all will inquire and learn and know that these creative conditions are, in practical importance, far above all oth- ers; that education is nowhere in comparison, and that all human MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 449 enjoyments, talents, virtues and interests converge in nature's creative principles. Mothers are usually more closely attached to their children than fathers, because they are their natural nurses. Nothing inspires a woman's hope and nerves up her efforts; nothing makes her home a heaven as does good children; and knowing these creative laws is of more importance to her than to the father. Ignorance of them punishes men, but punishes women -much more, hence girls should learn these laws. In all other things women use every means from all sources to increase their opportunities and satisfy their instinctive desires, and the duty rests upon you to learn how to have the best children possible before you become mothers. But, some of you will say, this is immodest, improper, corrupting and impure; in other words, you say it is perfectly proper to be a female, but to learn nature's feminine laws is improper; again, knowing your selfhood and one of God's commandments to you should be corrupting. You think it modest to have female organisms but immodest to learn their laws? You consider it pure to bear children, yet impure to learn how to have perfect ones; must your ignorance of these matters spoil yourself and children? Millions already have spoiled them- selves, and their progeny thunder "No!" You and your offspring are worth too much to be offered up on that squeamish altar. God has endowed you with maternal capacity, therefore it is your duty to learn and obey its laws. Many claim that this would promote passion. No greater error can be conceived, for it really chastens and directs them instead. Let all those be witnesses whom secret sins have clearly ruined, if it was not sexual ignorance that ruined them and that a timely knowledge would have saved them. It is also a fact that most all, especially women, approve and are thankful when they have had an oppor- tunity to acquaint themselves with a subject that is of so much importance to them. It is clearly a natural instinct incorporated into us. This inherent feminine appetite for sexual creative knowl- edge thus becomes a divine mandate issued to all females to learn and apply it, while its ignorance punishes them terribly. To obtain this knowledge is our sacred right and solemn duty. How would 450 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE you feel when looking upon your child you find it marred for all time by your ignorance of these truths? Is it not high time that this public opinion, by which society interdicts this knowledge and we learn how not to need yourself or daughters a doctor's expense and unnecessary exposure, should be more fully understood ? Female readers, think of its value, and proclaim its merits. Man never wrote on any subject that is so intrinsically interesting or important to all women and, viewed from any standpoint, is of such advantage. It should be more honored and more honorable to women than wear- ing a crown. THE IMPORTANCE OF MAKING A RIGHT SELECTION IN MARRIAGE. A perfectly happy marriage is the greatest end and object men are permitted to achieve, and this is doubly true of women. "Bungle whatever else you will, but don't bungle this." Starting out just right on this marital voyage, no words can tell how all important the dif- ference is between marrying right or wrong. This one or that one may be the very best selection for another, yet a poor conjugal partner for you; while the one may be poorer, yet may make you much the better husband or wife; that is, "One's meat may be another's poi- son," hence each should learn what is meat and which is poison to each. How many marry and afterward find that they made a poor choice, and if no obstacles, such as children, property, re- proach, etc., does not hinder them too much, get a divorce and select others. Then are you so much wiser than others so as to not fall in this same trap. For it is certain that nature's laws, male and female, at- traction and repulsion, are just as absolute as those of gravity. Be en- treated, then, by selecting in accordance with these laws, in order to make you a happy home and perfect children, instead of by a wrong choice making home a purgatory on earth, with almost a certainty of poor children or none. We will show you who are and who are not mutually adapted to each other; and so fully and plainly that none need ever be in doubt as to this, that, or the other one, is or is not specifically adapted to his or her own individual requirements, and rendering this important sub- ject just as lucid as noon-day, unfolding it from first to last by giving its governing laws and their detailed application general and specific, MARRIAGE CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 451 so as to be applicable and useful to all and a public good of the very highest individual moment. Husbands and wives by millions start out in married life with the very best intentions, each resolving to do every possible thing to per- petuate their love and avoid discord. Yet before they have traveled far both have actually spoiled each other, thus making their lives a veritable penance box, whereas the same efforts guided by knowing be- forehand what must inevitably enamor and what alienate, would have rendered both perfectly happy throughout their married life. To en- amor his wife and redouble her love concerns every interest of your man's life; every fiber of your whole being more than anything else; because her love is your perpetual bliss, her indifference a chronic disappointment. But being a true man toward her will secure this bliss and avoid this perpetual agony, and wives, all this and much more is doubly true of you. Then by making your marriage a mutual agree- ment to execute nature's creative functions will put all your inter-rela- tions under the creative laws, thereby requiring you to treat each other in accord with them, or else suffer in continuous discord. Neither should treat the other just as you individually desire, but you are both morally bound to act towards each other as these laws command, and just so far as you carry out the demands of these laws you enamor, but as you fail in carrying them out you alienate each other's affections. Just as you treat each other on the sexual plan, in exact proportion it will compel each other to love and to hate in proportion as you fail, as neither of you love nor hate the other by chance, but only because and so far as you treat each as your creative partner, irrespective of your intentions. All discord in marriage can be prevented and perfect happiness ren- dered sure simply by each fulfilling these creative requirements which underlie your marriage; knowing them, therefore, is as important as are your moral affections and the importance of good children. To know, then, just what is right and what wrong, item by item, just how all husbands and wives should treat each other in order to fulfill these creative requirements, what enamors and what alienates, by their vio- lation, can all be made so plain, practical and fully understood that even the unlettered need not err. I tell you, young lovers, incorporate 452 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE these lessons in your courtship and married life and attest whether they do not immeasurably bring you lifelong affectional enjoyments. Those of you who are married and who love less than you could, should, or would like to, the more you practice these directions the more you will love each other and jar the less; for it certainly does show the hidden causes of discord and the means of promoting discord. Those who are married, yet unmatched; those who love some, yet wrongly; those who enjoy a little and suffer much, and those who loath instead of loving, if you really desire to live affectionally with each other, read these pages and re-read them, both together, and put its teachings into practice and they will gradually melt down your dis- cord and re-kindle love and regenerate both of you. To be well sexed is to marriage and offspring what seed and soil are to crops. A good sexual constitution is the specific, marrying, marriage- able and creative requisite, as a good stomach is necessary for a good appetite and good digestion. So a vigorous love arrangement is the first condition of a happy marriage and fine children, just as a miserable dys- peptic can neither relish nor digest good food, so a sexually impaired husband can neither love nor produce good children, with ever so good wife and bearer; nor can a sexually feeble or ailing wife love or bear good children by husband and father, no matter how good. Manhood and womanhood are to marriage and offspring what mot- ive power is to machinery, all moving slowly when this is weak, but powerful when it is vigorous. Many are dissatisfied with their husband or wife for precisely the same reason that dyspeptics are with their din- ner, viz., because their own sexual deficiency has rendered them sexu- ally squeamish they could not love even an angel husband or wife, nor children worth having until they get themselves into a good sexual condition. The unhappy marriages of these days are due mostly to sexual degenerates and can be cured, not by divorce, but by sexual hygiene. Children by millions are doomed to premature graves and forstal- ling their own productions if they had lived, as well as their descend- ants, and many who do live have barely life force enough not to die. One child from parents in sexual health and vigor is to itself and all mankind worth a score from the same parents sexually impaired, MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 453 though it may be the same in all other respects. This shows that im- proving this sexual origin of life improves the entire issues of future generations. This magnificent world, created to endure until time shall be no more, is destined to be filled and kept packed of untold millions of living which are only a drop in the bucket compared with those yet to be. Gender alone must originate all this countless number of earth's products, and as rivers can never rise higher than their sources, so neither can individuals nor the races ever, neither in quality nor quan- tity, rise above the sexual fountain head in which they originate. What a large share of humanity is withering or rotting from one or another form of personal or parental sexual impairment, old and young, boy and man, matron and maiden. Among all these many are suffering throughout their entire being from weaknesses or ailments due to the abuse of these laws, while many are literally perishing by slow and agonizing inches from sexual misery of some kind. Many of the fairest daughters and noblest sons of humanity are in secret moaning over blighted love, preferring death to life and hastening their destruction by suppressing their silent grief. Among the married there are millions who are suffering still more from sexual loathing or aversions. They may attend church together and appear loving enough, even smiling, yet the canker worm of mutual disgust gnaws their soul night and day; others quarrel outright, perpetually venting their malice by mutual railings at each other. Many are compelled by law, respectability or for the sake of children, to live together, but keep pouring -volcanoes of brimstone upon the other; their entire feelings are embittered, often venting their feelings towards each other. Their worst enemies need not wish such a couple a worse purgatory. It is awful, yet how common. Think of the frightful amount of the nervous diseases we meet and how many young men so irritable that they can scarcely do business; memory blurred, bad tempered, all their passions set on fire by this nervousness, and provoked by this half-crazed false excitement to many other vices otherwise repulsive to them. First:-Their constitution and morals are a complete wreck and some sexual ailment at some time or another being the chief cause. How many teeming myriads half unsexed before puberty by secret vice, 454 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE thereby searing and undermining their own constitutions, as well as their intellect and morals and on top of that their future children. Is it not high time that this nursery infected with loathsome leprosy was seized and taken up by some strong hand to check this slaughtering monster of the young and stay its ravages ? Is there no balm anywhere to prevent, mitigate or cure these mis- eries, or should all ignorantly err ? While nature has provided kindly for nearly all other ills, why should she not do as well for these ? She has, and like all others they are simple, yet efficient. You sexual sufferers little realize how far you are restorable. You seek relief, but usually in the wrong direction. Millions consult doc- tors; millions upon millions of dollars are spent without benefiting, but only resulting in injury to constitutions and aggravating the very ailment they seek to get cured. The way for such to be restored to health is by learning and obeying those sexual ordinances, the viola- tion of which was the beginning and whole cause of their suffering. Every iota of such impairment must have this for its only measure and cure, but besides this cure there underlies another moral still deeper, broader, mightier than all others; that is the saving of our dear chil- dren. The mere possibility that all these dear hearts should be doomed to pass through the slough of sexual demoralization and become im- paired like their elders should make every parent shudder and inquire, how can they be saved ? To prevent is far more important than to re- store, but how can it be accomplished ? Only by teaching and expound- ing those principles which teach a right sexual life. "To forewarn is to forearm," and prevent for the want of this knowledge causes most of these errors, therefore the ailment. Reader, were not your own sexual errors and diseases that followed caused mainly by ignorance of these matters? Would you have in- curred these ills upon yourself if you had known beforehand what these serious consequences were? No words can portray all the suf- fering in consequence of this very want of information upon creative laws, and the suppression of this knowledge by many well-meaning but prejudiced persons is not justified by the facts and philosophy. If man- kind would have as much sense and use these creative functions with as good judgment, or rather instinct, as animals do, then knowing and MARRIAGE-CONSUMPTION AND SEXUAL ABUSES 455 understanding the creative laws would be unnecessary, because the ani- mals use these creative functions only for the production of the off- spring, and for this only these functions and organs were created. This shows that all human knowledge and the puffed-up human intelligence and the greater superiority in which man is held above the animals is not equal to that of animals, and positively shows that we are, at least in this God-given function, far inferior to the animals. If we would throw aside all scientific and medical knowledge and follow the instinct that all animals have and learn the lesson they put before us, it would take away 99 per cent of all the misery, disease and suffering that man- kind is heir to. It is high time that man and woman became personally interested, for their own, as well as for public virtue and happiness; that the cre- ative laws, which are so powerful for man's weal or woe be scien- tifically analyzed, their natural history expounded, their laws and right and wrong exercise pointed out, and above all, the causes of these im- pairments and means of their restoration detailed. Why should this department of human science, second in practical importance to no other, be any longer condemned ? Have not men suf- fered awfully and long enough? Then is not our subject matter, sex- ual facts, laws and science of infinite practical importance to every sexed being ? FEMALE WEAKNESS-ITS CAUSES AND PREVENTION. Female health concerns every man, woman and child more deeply than any other public problem, and unborn generations more still. Robust, healthy women are more desirable, yet rarer, than any other commodity. The woman's rights question is nowhere, as to practical importance, in comparison with woman's health. To attempt to say how infinitely important it is to every woman herself is to attempt the impossible. And it is about as important to every man as woman, and still more so to the children, and those yet unborn the most. "Modern society" suffers more today from the acknowledged feeble- ness of the female sex than from all other evils put together. Let the individual experience of nearly all say how much. American society suffers by far the most. In no one nation on earth are women so weak,- yet in none is female health so desirable. What a large pro- portion of our American women are feeble and sickly, it is not our present purpose to say, nor to discuss their special ailments as such, but only to inquire after the causes of their present weakness and physical debility. Women and men, come with me to the solution of this ill and forbidden problem. By nature the female sex is as healthy as the male. German and Irish women are about as healthy and almost as robust as German and Irish men; the same is true of squaws and Indians. That this mod- ern and American debility is due to the habits and usages of civilized life is demonstrated in the palpable fact that the female sex among the peasantry and uncultivated is about as strong and robust and as uniformly healthy as the male. This shows that modern female weakness is easily avoided; that it originates in style, not nature-in fashion, not necessity. Usually, female drudges are healthy; as a rule only ladies are weak and sickly. Mark this universal fact, and learn the lesson it teaches. Must most men, then, put up with either a strong, robust, healthy, 456 FEMALE WEAKNESS-ITS CAUSES AND PREVENTION 457 coarse-grained, uncouth wife, or with a weak, nervous, sickly one? Has he no alternative? For if not, his lot is as hard as that of woman herself by being doomed to drudgery or feebleness. The trouble is not inherent. God has made all things wisely and well, but society has sought out many foolish inventions. A healthy lady is not im- possible, yet is somewhat rare. But if any can be healthy and refined, of course all can. Why should refinement blight the female physi- ology? It need not. The two are not antagonistic, but were made to accompany each other. She is unfortunate who has either without the other. Woman certainly needs refinement, but she needs good health still more, both as a human being and as a female. Both are natural and should accompany each other. Only false sanitary usage separates them. I believe in time to come men will be blessed with wives who are both fine-grained, intensely emotional and exquisitely tasty; not occasionally, but generally; not now and then one, but by millions; and some who are living to-day may live to see that glorious day. It may be slow in coming, but it will certainly come, and come just as soon as men choose to prepare its way. What civic usages, then, render ladies so uniformly weak or else sickly? The causes to a fact thus uniform must be wholly apparent and very aggravated. Violation of the law of balance is the great cause; that law is both absolute and universal; it governs women as well as men. All degrees of its violation are punished with propor- tional severity. Modern female education, which to be rightly named should be modern female ruination, which consists in a steady, persistent and intense taxation of the brain and nervous system, almost from the very cradle. The little girl must learn to read almost as soon as she is able to walk, be confined in school, and made to sit still, while yet a mere toddler. She needs and desperately craves exer- cise and fresh air; but no, poor dear sufferer, she must enter from her cradle upon her lady-modeling martyrdom, just as her Chinese sister must in sorrow put on the ever-pinching shoe, and both deserve equal pity. Cannot both customs be abolished? She needs and craves exercise; let her take her fill. Her first great specific ruination con- sists in the conjunction of these two things; preventing bodily devel- opment, but stimulating the mental to its very highest pitch. And 458 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE this error is kept up throughout her miscalled educational but really ruinational career. This is clearly a violation of the law of balance; she should have both exercise and study, but more of the former until maturity. Give the full liberty of yards and fields and she will grow up both talented and robust, healthy and refined. Her romping desire grows on her until three years after puberty; but no, she must primp up, dress up and be so very precise and proper in every word and ac- tion. Her gushing, girlish nature must be effectually cramped and dwarfed as a Chinese lady's foot by her tight shoe, worn day and night. The beaux next tickle her already feverish excitability up to fever heat; she talks of them, and of little else by day, and thinks mainly of them by night, and perhaps suffers nervous paralysis from excite- ments. Of course, sitting still retards her growth and interferes with the formation of a good constitution, perhaps even undermines it. What a little bit of a thing she is! At length her ambition is aroused to become a premium scholar. She not only studies but she worries day and night to get her lessons, and for fear that she might miss one question or one word, her anxieties straining her nerves even more than her studies. Novels and magazines, with a love affair or two thrown in, now finish off her nervous ruination, which really is by this time becoming complete. Cultivated or fashionable female life is one dead strain on the brain and nerves all the way up from the cradle to death, which therefore occurs at an early age. Why cannot fashion makers get up those fashions which will promote female health instead of ruining it, and why will women follow and impose on one another any ruinous fashion? Women are by far too precious and too lovely to be thus sacrificed upon the altar of fashion, which is not worth all this sacrifice. Female apparel is another cause of female feebleness; its very construction is often constitutionally destructive of health from first to last and head to foot. All this false rigging of the head and com- pression of the arms and shoulders, this lacing of the waist and load- ing of the hips, those visceral displacements caused by the perpetual dragging down of clothes, including consequent local overheating; the narrow pinched-up shoes to make the feet look genteel and prim; thin soles and thin hose included collectively are enough to ruin the FEMALE WEAKNESS-ITS CAUSES AND PREVENTION 459 const tution of almost anything, much more of a woman naturally weak and then overtaxed mentally and cramped physically. Female health demands, all men and especially all prospective children de- mand, a complete revolution in these injurious fashions. "Woman's Rights Righters," come; right up this most irksome of woman's wrongs. Outdoor exercise is woman's special need; confinement in the schoolroom, the house and the nursery is her greatest curse. She needs something to care for and nurse, and something to do in the open air. To do anything about the house is ungenteel and to walk abroad is unladylike. To remain within is her fashionable doom. Some ex- cuse for going abroad, something out of doors to call and keep her more in the open air and sunshine is her requisition. Flowers and berries furnish this needed excuse; to admire and nurture them is yet genteel. Besides showing your garden, take hold of it with your own hands. A strawberry bed, a berry patch and a vegetable garden in- crease woman's range of out-of-door excuses, and so does skating in winter. The bicycle the past two years has been a splendid addition when not overdone by fast riding, which strains the heart action and checks the breathing. Ride no faster than what will admit of taking good, full, easy inspirations. Some genteel play, some laughter- promoting sports, which will furnish a great deal more muscle devel- oping exercise than croquet and yet allow both sexes to participate, are excellent pastimes. Female tourism bids fair to do something in this direction during the summer months, but something less expensive and fitful is needed, and which is available all the year around. Ladies, awake to your own emancipation and then summon the men to your aid; and let men and women join hands and heads in promoting this greatest American necessity, female health. Fash- ionable exercise is the par excellence and restorer, as excessive brain taxation is the main debilitator. How many women lock their troubles and sufferings in their own hearts and silently endure misery and pain which would cause strong men to cry out in agony. The sufferings of women are more than half unknown and unappreciated. The refined sensitiveness of their organism lays them liable to a thou- sand exquisite tortures which a coarser nature can never experience or comprehend. FADS-WOMEN'S DISEASES. HOBBYISM IN DISEASES PECULIAR TO WOMEN. The following is a paper written by W. S. Mott, M. D., of Salem, Oregon: "In selecting a subject for a paper for this occasion I thought I would choose something easy, but after seeing it in the printed program I made the startling discovery that I had bitten off more than I could chew. In the language of Carleton, T found myself taking a ride in McFluffy's canoe.' 'This subject is too great, sure, This paper is too small; I can't get the cratur evicted at all.' So I will say something in general, and nothing in particular, and ask you to pardon me for saying anything at all. "A man is what his mother makes him (until he is married, at least). There is always a woman at the bottom of it." "It is also written, 'Man that is born of woman has but a few short years and is full of trouble,' or in modern phraseology, 'Like small potatoes and few in a hill.' "Is it any wonder that the above have become familiar quotations when we come to consider that only a few short years ago every woman, with very rare exceptions, was the proud possessor of a full set of reproductive organs (which may soon be the exception) ? Even now it is very rare, indeed so much so that I do not now remember ever to have seen a case recorded where the woman had been accused of having that surgical trophy known as the vermiform appendix. "How fortunate for the male members of the family that they have monopolized that surgical portion of the human economy; oth- erwise we might have become subjects for testimony instead of ap- pendixotomy. Shades of kickdom, what a kick there would be if a 460 FADS-WOMEN'S DISEASES 461 doctor, for instance, had been born without an appendix and pre- sented symptoms of a neurosis, and should be unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of a hobbyist with a mania for operating. Oh, let us thank our Creator that we have an appendix to offer as a sacri- fice on the altar of hobbyism, and let us pray that our sisters and our daughters and all womankind in general yet unborn may be supplied with an appendix to offer upon the altar of surgical 'faddism' in lieu of her ovaries or uterus. "I have read somewhere that there is very little variation between man and woman, and I once heard a devout old Christian, in his prayer at a revival meeting, thank God for that little variation. Now either the original author of my last quotation spake in a parable when he uttered that sentence, or else he was not well versed in modern gynaecology, for otherwise he would have known that that slight va- riation between man and woman has formed the basis for the most lucrative practice of the majority of modern practitioners. To be not well versed in diseases peculiar to women in the practice of today is not to be in it, and at the present rate of advancement in that direc- tion it is not far in the future when the physician who has not re- moved the uterus and its appendages, both by laparotomy and by the vaginal or bloodless operation, and has not a full stock of pickled ar- ticles as proof of his skill in gynaecology, will be weighed in the bal- ance and found hunting a job in some other vocation. "Now by all this I do not mean that we should neglect any legiti- mate treatment or operation on the female generative organs, or any of the abdominal viscera for that matter, but we should not make a hobby of it and do an operation for the sake of operating or for the fee, as it is sometimes done, and thus unsex and maim and make mis- erable for life the noblest of God's handiwork; nor should we encour- age those already credulous victims of neurosis in the belief that the seat of their malady is antiverted or retroverted, or antiflexed, or ret- roflexed, or prolapsed or in other ways diseased. Old Doctor Jones, or Smyth, or Lookwise or Know-it-all, or some other fellow, has assured them that this was what was wrong with them, and for this he has treated them for years and has led them to believe, if it had not been for his wonderful skill and pessaries they would have been in 462 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE their graves ere this, or had their icterus hanging around their knees or their ovaries enlarged to the size of pumpkins. "You have no doubt all had patients come to you with a history something like the above, and on account of their old doctor, to whom they owe their existence, having died or moved away, or getting the appointment as superintendent of the insane asylum, they have been compelled to call upon you with the hope that you may be able to pro- long their lives still a little longer. You make an examination, and oh, shades of Aesculapius, you find an ill-fitting pessary that has been there so long that the memory of the woman runneth not to the contrary, and an impacted rectum and a cystitis from pressure of the accursed thing, and you further find the tracks of lunar caustic, nitric acid and what not. "Oh, may the powers that be deliver a long-suffering people from such pseudo-scientific treatment as is practiced by M. D.'s in good standing with the church and with the public generally, in every place but. Salem, of course. How long, oh, how long, will it be before our profession is purged of its hobbyists, its 'faddists,' its pretenders, its ignoramuses and charlatans, especially in diseases peculiar to women!" SLEEP-ITS NECESSITY. Every form of animal life requires sleep. A sleeping instinct accompanies all animal life at about equal intervals, compelling, not rest merely, but a supervision of consciousness in sleep proper. Rest is good, but is insufficient without sleep. Love of sleep is quite as strong an instinct as love of food, because food nourishes the body and sleep cures the body, as the body is sick every night, and should be cured before morning, or else you gradually run behind your physical bank account. A person deprived of sleep for a given length of time will starve rather than keep awake any longer in search of food. This proves that sleeping is quite as important as eating. The luxury of sound sleep is one of the greatest proffered to man and beast for restoring and invigorating the whole system. No one should allow business or anything else to curtail this luxury, and parents should promote it in children instead of drumming them out of bed early. Indeed, the best way to do the greatest day's work possible is to get a complete sleep the night before; work away with head or hands or both if you want to, as long as you can sleep well, but stop working as soon as your sleep departs or you will break down. Loss of sleep often produces insanity. Keeping well slept out, and rested up will add immensely to your capacity to enjoy, endure and accomplish, at the same time promoting all the other life functions. A right state of the stomach and mind is the best promoter of sleep; eating when hungry before going to bed is not injurious, as was formerly supposed; in fact it is often a good sleep producer. In brain workers and nervous people, if they find that they can not go to sleep, to get up and take a lunch and retire will be found helpful, because the food taken in the stomach calls for an increase of blood to that organ, thereby relieving the engorged brain, which is so much the cause of wakefulness. This prescription has been oftener of service to my patients than a sleeping powder; a cold foot bath with a good rubbing afterwards, or even rubbing the whole 463 464 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE body with a coarse towel wrung out of cold water to promote blood to skin, hence from the brain, is better than medicine to promote it. Sleep, then is most important; many can not obtain enough. All preternatural excitements of the brain and nervous system pre- vent its due supply, as do mental troubles, overexertion, disordered stomachs and diseases of any kind; in all these and kindred cases sleep should be promoted by the simplest method possible. Previous preparation is the starting point, as in order to enjoy a meal we must feel hungry and also prepare for it; so we should sharpen our sleeping appetite and prepare ourselves mentally and physically for this delightful repast and grand restorer of exhausted energy. This can be done by a due degree of action, especially mus- cular. To overdo causes wakefulness, yet a due quantity of employ- ment promotes refreshing sleep; those whose wakefulness is caused by brain excitement should seek quiet in the evening before retiring, in order to reduce that brain activity which keeps them awake. Night seems to be the appointed time for sleep, but I think more because of the darkness and while we can not do anything else, but the rule should be to sleep when you can, but sleep enough; if you can't get it at night, take it by day. The wakeful should especially go to bed soon after becoming drowsy., etc.; they become wide awake and remain so perhaps most of the night; this direction is particularly important; we should try to go to sleep as soon as possible after going to bed. Amusements at home, when of a pleasing and soothing kind, often promote sleep, as playing with children, conversing with friends, while exhilarating and exciting amusements prevent it, but a happy mind is the best of all and all should cultivate it. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" is doubtless founded upon this law. Hence, induce children to have a good play before going to bed. Religious contemplations and quiet devotional exercises will promote sleep. I read of a physician who directed his wakeful patient to think of God when he could not sleep and the patient said that for forty years when wakefulness returned this prescription would lull him to sleep. I have myself advised counting, or reciting even some soothing pieces of prose or poetry, with splendid results; prayers are good if you know any. Invalids and the sick particularly SLEEP-ITS NECESSITY 465 require as much sleep as they can get. Medicines are no comparison to good sleep, therefore it is wrong to awake a patient to give medi- cine. A return of sleep is always a good sign in a sick person, but a state of mere stupidity is a bad omen. Being disturbed when once asleep is as bad as a shock when awake; many mothers have ruined their health, and even lost their lives, because of crying children, and this has ruined the health of many a physician who was not of a robust nature. Bed and bedding are important articles; mattresses are preferable to feathers because not soft enough to enervate nor hard enough to give pain; even those of straw are none too hard. Bed clothes should never be kept on the bed during the day (on account of the putrid waste matter passing from the skin during the night, which is poisonous) but thrown over some chairs and the room kept well ventilated by open windows and doors and a window should always be open partly from the top all night. So many people hold to the old foolish idea that night air is not healthy. The night air is, as a rule, even better than the air in the day time; it is usually more dense, therefore contains more of this life principle, oxygen. Are not the people that sleep out of doors the healthiest? COMPLEXIONS INDICATE TRAITS OF CHARACTER. Many of our teachers of physiology divide the temperaments mainly by the color of the eyes, hair, skin, etc., just as if this color or complexion caused the temperaments, when really it is only an effect and not a cause; although colors indicate qualities throughout all nature. The dark or black indicates power, therefore is generally found in the powerful or motive temperament. All the dark races furnish a good example. Nature furnishes the right thing in the right place, if not molested by man. This is proven by the fact that the dark races are the legitimate inhabitants of the warm climates, and all experience has demonstrated that it takes a more powerful person to endure the environments of a warm climate; or it would be more correct to say that they are better adapted by nature for this climate. The tendency of a certain class of diseases, especially those of an epidemic nature, are usually found in very warm seasons, especially when combined with much humidity and moisture in the air, these conditions being favorable toward developing disease by the lack of the necessary quantity of oxygen needed to carry on the functions of the body during the day and the unfavorable systemic conditions increased by the cool and moist atmosphere at night, which means unbalanced proportions between the food or the material to be used up and the oxygen contained in the air that we breathe, which through its instrumentality uses up this material. Again, dark persons generally wield a powerful influence with those they come in contact with, especially over the opposite sex. Daniel Webster was well called "Black Dan," and his power over men, and especially women, is well known. A dark-haired female is also able, if so disposed, to control a lover or husband almost magically; she makes him feel as if he must do as she desires; if she is good her influence among her family and acquaintances will be beneficial; but if she is selfish she will be hook or crook, by persuasion or force, bring all hands under her 466 COMPLEXIONS INDICATE TRAITS OF CHARACTER 467 thumb. If she engages in business, she generally leaves nothing undone to succeed in her march to conquer; if she leads toward good ends, no one will execute them better, but if she is inclined to be bad, none can be more desperate. This illustrates the workings of this color when strongly directed, but turned into good channels, no color is more desirable; success generally goes with it. Black-haired speakers carry their audiences with them, often sway them right and left as they please. This color predominates in public men, in politi- cians, generals, in fact in all that needs physical power and force to accomplish their ends. The light-complexioned are much more refined than the dark, more progressive and less sensual. Coarse black and coarse red hair, skin and whiskers indicate powerful animal passions, with an equal strength of character; while fine or light auburn hair indicate qual- ity, susceptibilities, together with a good taste and refinement. Fine dark-brown hair signifies a combination of exquisite sus- ceptibilities with great strength of character, and with strong moral sentiments is an excellent combination; while the auburn or florid countenance denotes intense feeling, high order of sentiment, with a corresponding purity of character, and has the highest capacity for enjoyment or suffering. The curly hair and beard indicates a curly disposition, as well as being excitable, crisp and changeable, with much diversity of character; flowing full of hate at one time and cool at another; with intense love and hate, gushing emotions with the brilliancy and variety of talents; in other words, look out for these little ringlets; they are as changeable as April weather. The way to manage them is to treat them gently, lovingly, and you will have the brightest and the sweetest, balmy seasons; but cross and dis- turb them, and you raise a very hurricane, so better not ruffle them. This is doubly true of auburn curls, but only a little gentle and tender treatment is needed to render them just as genial as the balmiest •spring morning. Black-haired bachelors have an unusual way of playing havoc with female hearts, breaking and smashing them right and left, especially these auburn-haired tenderlings. My dear blondes, look 468 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE out for these dark-haired charmers; you will find yourself dead in love, both unable and unwilling to break their hold over you or to resist their persuasions. With this complexion is generally accom- panied a great and powerful organism. In the red-haired indi- vidual is usually found a warmth and heartiness of soul, and emo- tionality generally comes with blue eyes and auburn hair. The blonde wife will be more susceptible, loving, tender, plastic and complying; while a brunette wife will be more independent and efficient. The blonde is easily molded to your taste; the brunette will mould you. If you desire refinement, taste, sweetness, purity and gushing emotions, choose the blonde; if you want energy, force, quantity and efficiency, choose the brunette. Pale blondes are rare except where exhaustion has sapped the constitution, because florid complexions and good health usually go together. Here it is well to observe the indisputable fact to be seen everywhere, that the wife who is a blonde is so often in poor health, has a debilitated nervous system because the husband does not make allowance for the differ- ence in their power of endurance; he being dark, strong, with power- ful passions and not controlling them to a balance equal to the wife's, who is by nature less powerful of endurance. Flaxen hair and a light complexion and a little inclined to be pallid signifies quickness of action and perception, warm affections and bright, clear mind, pure motives and a desirable character throughout, and is rarely combined with coarseness, organic or passional. The pale black indicates more burning intensity, more power to do and dare; in short, more desperate than any other. Gray eyes indicate power in all functions, strong passions and vigor of intellect; if you pos- sess them, keep yourself straight and avoid dissipation and you will be all right, but be on your guard as to eating, drinking and fast habits; "touch not, taste not." The various functions of the body and brain are also indicated by the temporary color of the cheek, for the time being indicate the existing state of health, so they clearly indicate mental health and disease or the normal and abnormal states of the brain. Existing color will show existing organic and mental conditions; thus a good brain with a bad physical condition would show a worse and more depraved physical character than a poorer COMPLEXIONS INDICATE TRAITS OF CHARACTER. 469 brain with a good body. A nervous blonde is very irritable, hateful and furious, while the same woman will be as amiable and sweet as a turtle dove when her nerves are in a healthy state, because the abnormal physical condition will disturb the mental, especially pas- sional, manifestations. Men's virtues and vices depend far more on the state of their physical condition, particularly the state of their stomach, nerves, etc. One state of the stomach and nerves will throw one part of the brain into one state, while another nervous state will throw the same set or organs into action as different as summer is from winter. When the system is in a perfectly healthy state the whole face has the expression and glow of health and beauty; while any permanent injury to health, which prostrates the bodily energies, will change this complexion into dullness of countenance, indicating that but little blood comes to the surface or flows to the head, with a corresponding stagnation of the phys- ical and mental powers; yet this dullness frequently gives way to a fiery redness, not that of health, but a redness of inflammation or false excitement, with usually a corresponding demoralized men- tal state. When the moral and intellectual greatly predominate over the animal, redness may not cause coarse animality, because while it increases the animal nature it also increases the intellectual and moral much better; the larger holds them in check, but when the animal is about equal or exceeds the moral and intellectual, this excited systemic condition evinces a greater increase of the animal nature than of the intellectual or moral. Gross sensualists and depraved sinners generally have a fiery-red countenance. I would advise you to stand aloof from them, for their passions are all on fire, ready to explode on any slight provocation, so slight that a healthy person would hardly notice them. Bloated drunkards and healthy children illustrate this difference as to both complexion and character, in that the drunkard will have a dark-brown dingy red or a fiery, livid color of face, combined with coarse-grained sensual passions and appetite; while healthy children have bright scarlet-red cheeks, purity and innocence of feeling. Another contrast is easily noticed between the complexion of healthy maidens and women of pleasure. The importance of this point warrants an illustration. 470 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Love furnishes our best illustration of this point; pure, elevated, sanctifying love accompanies bright scarlet-red in the cheeks, van- ishes all into pink, then into a pure lily white, while the dark brown, dull, bloody muddy red, not exactly red, but a dingy, brownish red, signifies the inflamed and animal state of lust along with sexual exhaustion, showing that this love element has been debased so as to have used itself well-nigh up, indicating a wild and frenzied action, instead of its pure and exalted state. A good complexion, then, is something that is more than skin deep, and so is the poorer one. Who, then, can dispute that the complexion does not indicate the existing state of health? Who does not know that these mental and physical states control the temper and morals? Then by putting this and that together we can draw our own inferences; then any one may be justly proud of a good complexion and ashamed of a poor one. Certainly, then, all should try and keep or make theirs good by observing the health laws. To thus expose so many is painful, but it compliments those who deserve to be, for truth is no respecter of persons. Then blame no one for exposing this natural law principle, but go about it to remove any stigma to a poor complexion by removing its causes. Although so apparent, is it not strange that this truth has slum- bered so long unobserved? CHEERFULNESS-ITS INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH. The unsound body is directly opposed to a pleasant and happy disposition, and moroseness is directly opposed to a sound body; therefore one of the great causes of ill health is down-hearted, irritable or morose dispositions, but is one of the causes that is easily overcome, because it almost entirely depends on one's own self. Of course, there are occasional circumstances over which we have no control which often cause grief and disappointment, as for instance in the death of a dear friend or relative; and to be cheerful under these circumstances would be unnatural, but this kind of grief is different from the so-called irritable disposition. The one is inex- cusable, I would even say morally criminal, when it is enough to destroy one's body and often add to the discomfort of others. A low-spirited person does not breathe properly; when you stop for a moment to think of the seriousness of that statement, that breathing or in other words, the oxygen that is absorbed in the system is really the vital fluid, as has already been stated that oxygen is the main power that circulates the blood, it is easy to see the extreme necessity for regular and full breathing; on the other hand, a down- hearted or morose person is continually brooding, letting their head hang and actually won't take a full breath in a month; at the same time eating perhaps a hearty meal and often, if not half as much is eaten, the system does not receive oxygen enough to burn up the fuel of the system, that is the food eaten. The serious effect it must have upon the health of the individual can plainly be seen, when this law of balance between oxygen taken into the lungs and the food eaten is not maintained. This is the real cause of many of these people who are continually brooding developing serious diseases, such as typhoid fever, yellow fever and kidney troubles. The nervous system suffers from improper nourishment, all sorts of functional disturbances and often organic diseases develop, these facts being an 471 472 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE absolute law of the human system. Irritable people do not digest their food properly when taken into the stomach, and where food is not properly digested there can not be perfect health. Headaches, at first trifling and then severe, are almost sure to follow such a con- dition and eventually lead to graver difficulties; the brain of an irritable person is not clear in performing its functions, being over- crowded with blood. How can we expect to keep the nervous system in good condition, as all the functions of the body are largely con- trolled by the nerves, when not supplied with a balanced amount of pure oxygen from the air and a sufficient call for food? We must naturally expect such derangements. Does it not seem most import- ant, then, that we cultivate cheerful and happy dispositions, espe- cially cultivating a habit of taking full inspirations of pure air to every breath? That of itself, by charging the system with oxygen to its full demands, when practiced by a person in a melancholy mood, will make the mind feel pleasant and clear, by sending the blood bounding and equalizing through the system. People who are inclined to look on the dark side of things should train themselves to throw slight troubles aside and laugh at them and accept bravely the greater ones and to accept life as it is; this will enable them to strive and better their condition, rather than bemoan their fate. But how are we to acquire these dispositions? It indeed can not be true that our dispositions are born with us, so that we can not control them. We are placed upon this earth as human beings to develop a perfect condition and we are naturally adapted for such purposes, for we have will power and reasoning power, and we should use them in carrying out the plans of nature or we will thwart the real purpose of our natural lives. Only by health can we avoid these things which are calculated to bring about these irritable and melancholy dispositions. One of the greatest helps to accomplish this is to keep busy; have something to do and set your mark high and make due allowance for obstacles, which in life are bound to turn up on either side; so arrange it that a specified amount of work must be done in a certain time, or that a certain purpose must be accomplished each day. This realization of work accomplished is the greatest source of satisfaction and a stimulant CHEERFULNESS-ITS INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH 473 to cheerfulness; to enjoy life should be the privilege of every indi- vidual, rich or poor; and what is really meant by the enjoyment of life depends largely upon the nature and surroundings of the indi- vidual. What may be a source of pleasure to one would be a source of annoyance to another. All animal life, from the lowest form to man, demands some form of pleasure, for all work and no pleasure makes Jack a dull and often a bad boy. The duties of life, such as attending to business and the maintenance of life preservation, require a strain upon the mind which is routine in character in most cases, hence legitimate pleasures intermingled with work relax the nervous tension from a too strong pursuit of pleasure while no definite design of other work would bring about a tense condition of the nervous system, as all work and no pleasure will do the same, for no organ or tissue can be used excessively in one direction without producing discomfort of a condition in some form. Pleasure, then, must be indulged in within reasonable bounds; then only are they helpful, otherwise absolutely harmful, just as all forms of exercise, if not carried to excess, benefit will follow; to be on our guard, then, but not overdo, and to enjoy the exercise while it lasts, so as not to suffer from excess afterwards. Just so with the brain; it can not be constantly used in any one direction without injury. Of course, pleasure does not irritate the brain as fast as worry does, pleasure being relaxing, but too great a relaxation might produce unpleasant results. Let moderation be the rule in all forms of work, as well as of enjoyment, so as to get the full benefit afforded by pleasures and to enjoy them to their fullest extent while participat- ing in them. Never carry business or sorrow or worry with whatever pleasure or enjoyment you choose; learn to control the mind if you desire to enjoy life. A hearty meal can not be of much benefit to one who eats it while worrying over the cares of life; one thing at a time, and that thing well done, is a very good rule, as well as a truthful saying. Nothing can be accomplished by allowing your thoughts to wander or dwell upon business or cares, sorrow or petty strifes, while indulging in pleasure; this does not help you to settle your business strifes or alleviate your sorrows, but forgetting them completely for the time 474 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE being will aid you to do all, for it will relieve your mind and add to its strength to meet the obstacle, whatever it may be. A life of happiness, if one of stability, can be secured by the alternating of pleasure and work, for a life of pleasure is soon fol- lowed by one of misery; the best rule, then, in performing pleasure would be to abandon yourself entirely to it and from the pursuit of business and the sterner realities of life, devote yourself to them ardently. But let each day find its due portion of bodily pleasure and business as far as possible, then when emergencies should arise requiring close attention to matters of business, to domestic trials and endurance, your mind and body will be equal to the emergency; and when the season for vacation from such cares shall come around you will find yourself able to enjoy it. These are exceptions-where pleasure and enjoyment at the same time are injurious to the body, such as the excessive indulgence of alcoholic liquors and the use of tobacco; this often gives a sensation of pleasure, but a false stimulant that injures the nerves. Such enjoyments are at the expense of vitality and are directly antagonistic to health. ANIMAL WARMTH, SKIN ACTION, SLEEP AND BREATHING. Warmth brings life to man; neither food nor breath is any more necessary to life than warmth. How soon death results from too severe cold, and with what certainty does it stupefy cold-blooded animals, reptiles, alligators and insects. Swallows and many other birds remain only during hot weather, because insects-which are their food-abound there only then and are killed off by cold. Warmth, in short, then, is one of nature's greatest agencies, of which the sun is the chief source; hence the great need and agreeableness of sunshine, which by the public is not duly understood and appreciated. The human system must be kept up to about 98^ degrees Fahren- heit in order to work well, and can rarely rise much above or fall much below without injury. In other words, it means there is something wrong. The mental faculty aided by its other cerebral organs has much to do in supervising this warming function. The mind and will have much to do in keeping warm. When going from a warm room out into the cold we naturally brace up against it. What is this but the instinctive action of the mind faculty? Heat escapes continually from the human body, which is warmer than the air, except in extreme cases. If the atmosphere were as hot as our bodies it would be most relaxing from want of oxygen. This is the cause of the limp and ragged feeling experienced in extremely hot weather, and naturally produces the indolence so preva- lent in hot climates. The air should be generally much cooler than our bodies, as heat is diffusive and tends to equalization. We lose it all the time, and, in right cold weather, very fast; hence the cold- ness of a corpse and of most surrounding objects. Our bodies would soon sink below the living point unless supplied with heat from some internal fountain. Enough external heat to keep us warm would prevent the due oxygenization of our blood and 475 476 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE thus cause death. In short, the loss of heat during the hottest weather is great and in cold weather is enormous. A rugged man, after eating a hearty breakfast, shoulders his axe on a cold winter morning and works all day in the snow, though the thermometer is many degrees below zero, while he is 90 degrees above with his coat and vest off, so that the transfer of heat from the body to the air is very rapid; yet he is all aglow all day, from head to feet, inside and out, with normal heat. The retention of this warmth by its continuous manufacture within the system becomes, then, a necessity to life. Though a snake may be so frozen that when bent it will snap like a pipe stem and yet come to life by warmth, yet man must be kept warm to about the same temperature summer and winter, in Greenland's icy mountains or on India's coral strand. Now, how is this heating process produced? Carbon is the base of all that burns and whatever burns-coal, wood, charcoal, vege- tables, sweets, gases, etc.-consists mainly of carbon. Oxygen is the burning agent, as carbon is the burned, of all combustive pro- cesses. Carbon and oxygen, combining with each other and igniting by the electricity in the system, create animal warmth. We eat and breathe to supply the above-mentioned materials to generate the warmth and thereby keep up life and health. This ought to show clearly to any one the great part these two things (eating and breath- ing) play in the production of health and disease, and they should be thoroughly understood by every human being. In the process of digestion carbon is set free into the blood and the lungs furnish it with oxygen. This is done by the affinity that the iron contained in the blood has for oxygen, and are thereby carried together to every portion of the body, whenever and wherever blood flows; that is, the oxygen of the air that is inhaled is forced into all the minute blood vessels, into close contact with the carbon of the food eaten, and, having a stronger chemical affinity for carbon than for iron, the oxygen leaves the iron and unites with the carbon and produces heat and likely electricity and by combustion burn each other up on precisely the same principle employed in warming rooms, generating steam, etc. Nothing will burn without oxygen. The same as cotton is extremely combustible when it can come into contact with oxygen ANIMAL WARMTH 477 from the air, but will not burn without it, nowhere in the whole universe is heat produced except by some form of combustion. All chemical experiments show that the affinity of oxygen for carbon is greater than it is for iron, so that when all these are forced together in the small, minute blood vessels the oxygen loves carbon better than iron and leaves the iron, and, uniting with carbon, creates animal heat. CARBONIC ACID-ITS FORMATION AND EXPULSION. Smoke and ashes result from all combustion. Of course that these two gases must and do eliminate both the ashes and coals of this internal combustion when analyzed are almost identical in their chemical compound with charcoal, both being composed mainly of carbonic acid; combustion can never take place out of or in the sys- tem without creating this acid, and the combustion which heats the system forms some ten or twelve ounces of carbonic acid a day. It is this carbonic acid gas which every one knows, or ought to know, is so extremely poisonous to life and any one ought to see at a glance the great figure it cuts in health and the cause of disease, which is elsewhere thoroughly explained. Hence we see that unless some means were devised for ridding the system from all impurities, wherever they are created from this combustion, those parts-in other words, the body-must die. Now, how is the system cleared of this foe? By the iron in the blood. The iron that first made love to the oxygen in the lungs, who left her lover nitrogen, which is the other element with oxygen of which the air is composed, the oxygen runs away with her second lover, the iron, when the iron carried the oxygen all through the system and meets Mr. Carbon. Then oxygen begins to love carbon better than iron; she rushes into the arms of this charcoal lover so ardently that they consume each other, and die of excess of love, and leave only their burned carcasses in the form of carbonic acid gas. Then the iron that was jilted by oxygen makes love with Mr. Carbonic Acid Gas and takes this new bride along back to the lungs. There they find that they were not well mated; the carbonic acid leaves the iron and makes a rush through the fine gauze in the lungs and unites with nitrogen and is exhaled by the lungs out into the world 478 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and taken up by vegetable life, which is its food and existence, but is sure death to animal life. This desertion does not aggravate the iron, because he has found a new supply of oxygen which he likes far better than carbonic acid gas; or thus the nitrogen in the air and the iron in the blood mutually agree to swap lovers, each liking the other's love better than his own, and as these lovers love each other's love better than their own they jump at the proposed change. This series of faith- less desertion on the one hand and of summary matches on the other accomplishes that great end of heating up the system, so comfort- able in itself and so indispensable to life; a means as ingenious as the end attained is indispensable. By this means the system guards itself against the otherwise fatal consequences of those sudden and extreme changes of the atmosphere, from heat to cold; is prevented from freezing on the one hand and from burning on the other, and always kept at the required temperature. Thus it is that animal warmth is generated by breathing and digestion. Now reader, are not the tracing out of these relations of cause and effect, these com- binations, evolutions and re-combinations, beautiful in the highest possible degree, and do they not go far towards explaining the instru- mentalities by which life takes place, which a short time ago to attempt to solve would have been blasphemy? THE REGULATION OF ANIMAL HEAT BY FOOD. The atmospheric temperature is extremely changeable; sometimes one hundred degrees above and sometimes forty below zero. Some means must therefore be obtained to create more heat, the colder it is and the less warm it is, in order to keep the bodily temperature even; viz., the colder the air, the more dense it is and therefore con- tains more oxygen and nitrogen for its bulk. Hence the three pints of air inhaled at each breath yield more oxygen the colder it is, and just when the most heat is needed. The colder the air the more heat the body requires and generates, so that the healthy person needs little fire, even in winter, because nature increases the supply of heat in proportion to its demand. Since the breath yields much more oxygen per hour in winter ANIMAL WARMTH 479 than in summer, yet can combine with only a fixed amount of carbon, we need to eat more food containing carbon the colder the weather; hence we all notice that our appetite is better in cold weather, and we relish the carbonized food, such as fat, which is four-fifths carbon, as are also butter, honey, various oils, nuts and the like. Hence the Esquimaux can drink gallons of train oil and eat twenty or more pounds of meat per day, and fourteen pounds of candles at a meal without injury; indeed they cannot live without an immense amount of carbon. The great density of the air in his climate allows him to inhale a proportionate amount of oxygen to burn up this great amount of carbon; we should therefore eat more in cold weather than in warm, and see that the food is rich in carbon. Vegetable foods contain more carbon than animal, excepting fat; four pounds of starch contain as much carbon as thirteen of meat; molasses and sugar are about all carbon, except their water; all vegetable oils con- tain about four-fifths carbon. Civilized life eats too much carbon, not too little. This is especially true of people of sedentary habits; they breathe but little because they exercise but little, and live mostly in heated rooms where the air is not good and often poor, then wonder why they are so deli- cate and their children consumptive, while they inhale but little oxygen to burn up the carbon. Yet such eat and keep eating as heartily as out- door laborers, and often more so, which is so often the cause of disease, where if they should eat and breathe more freely of pure air to burn up its surplus they would obtain permanent health. Though vigorous exercise in perfect health would probably fur- nish all needed warmth, yet we often need to apply our minds while sitting, as in writing, reading, listening, and in sickness, exhaustion, etc., where there is too little action to keep warm by breathing alone; then fire becomes necessary. Colds, those great disease breeders, by locking up the sewers of . the system, come from being too cold, yet in sickness when the circulation is low, it is even better to provoke as much natural heat by friction and rely on as little fire as possible, because invalids more than all others need lots of oxygen, which arti- ficial heat in the room always reduces. Men rely too much on external heat and too little on internal. 480 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Most of the heat should be generated within the body. External heat does not really warm us, but only retards the escape of internal heat, and does not actually infuse heat into us. By too much warm- ing of a room you destroy the oxygen in it, thereby preventing the required internal combustion. Almost everyone can attest that if you cannot keep warm in a room, but are compelled to go out to exercise, you soon accelerate circulation enough to be quite warm in a few minutes, which failed by a hot fire. Those who occupy warm room apartments cannot imagine how much more brisk, lively, buoyant and happy the feelings and how much more clear and more vigorous the intellectual operations are while keeping warm by exer- cise on a cold day. Therefore, breathing, exercise, and food are the three prescriptions to keep comfortable in cold weather. Of course, clothes to a certain extent, are needed for man's comfort, or else he would have been created with thick skin covered with abundance of hair or fur, but all wear too much clothing. The error begins in the cradle. Children as a rule are kept too warm by clothing, which only relaxes the skin and paves the way for those colds so common in children; it is just as you habituate them. Children three years of age and over generate animal heat very rapidly, if allowed to play. Give them the liberty of the yard and you can risk their taking cold, unless they have been previously nursed to death. This cart- load of clothing is injurious; when running in and out they will keep warm without all this fuss. Healthy people should form the habit of wearing but little clothing, even in winter, and rely on nature for warmth by exercise, but these changes should not be made too sudden; to keep warm we must get as much heat as possible by breath- ing and exercise. Warm feet promote health and comfort, as cold ones are most injurious. That old saw, "Keep the head cool and the feet warm" is full of practical wisdom; wash and rub the feet often; few things promote health more; in many it will almost double their health, besides enhance the serenity of the mind. Let the chil- dren who are inclined to be delicate be brought up to rub their feet with a towel wrung out of cold water before retiring; the prevailing idea that it is injurious is erroneous and foolish. Wet feet are dan- gerous if good circulation is not kept up; it is standing still with wet ANIMAL WARMTH 481 feet and letting them get cold is where the evil lies. Who had the most colds in the past generation; those of us poor boys and girls who had no rubbers and wet feet half the time, or those boys and girls who were kept baked by the stove and turned out in dry weather? FUNCTIONS, STRUCTURE OF NERVES. The nerves are but a continuation of the substance of the brain, extending throughout the whole body. This is effected by means of the spinal cord, which is inclosed in the spinal column or backbone. The substance of this cord and of the nerves closely resembles that of the brain. The spinal cord gives off nerves at each spinal joint, to the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, viscera, and all the other internal organs; when any one of the organs becomes chronically irritated, inflamed or diseased its nerves are similarly affected, and often by its reflex action disturbs healthy organs to such an extent as to make you think the healthy organ is the one diseased, like delirium tremens, where the trouble is an inflamed stomach; but the brain shows the greatest disturbance, of which all are aware who have ever had delirium tremens or have seen any one affected with this disease. Then again, dyspepsia or any functional disturbance of the stomach will cause apparent heart disease, which really does not exist; again, a person having a run-down system will manifest all sorts of complaints, imagining he has all the diseases human kind is heir to, when the whole trouble is caused by a weak nervous system not being able to give enough energy or force to have the organs of the body per- form their functions, on which they must depend. Since each of these nerves unites with the spinal cord at its own particular point and no other, by pressing on the joint which receives the nerve of the heart, a soreness, perhaps a sharp pain, will be experienced by the patient at the joint; in this case it is inflamed, or a numbness is felt when it is inert, and so of all the other intestinal organs. This test of disease is infallible and tells at once which part is affected. Nerves pass through these joints to the hands, feet, muscles, bones and every portion of the body; another nervous track is called the great sympathetic nerve, which travels the cavity of the chest, 482 FUNCTIONS, STRUCTURE OF NERVES 483 from thorax to abdomen. Thus a double nervous inter-communion of all the other organs of the body is maintained, both with each other and with their common center, the brain. These nerves are always found in close proximity with blood vessels, both arteries and veins, the three always accompany each other. Every nerve shred, every muscle, and even every fiber, is similarly supplied with both blood vessels and nerves. Wherever there is life there will also be found nerves, and the more life in any animated thing or part the more nerves. The functions of these nerves are of three kinds-sensation, vol- untary motion, and involuntary motion. Those of sensation proceed from the back half of the spinal cord and those of motion from the front half, and unite soon after they pass through the joints, becoming encased in sheaths and can not be distinguished from each other. Yet cutting that nerve which goes to the hand, which starts from the front half of the spinal cord, destroys all sensation in it, so that the hand can be cut, burned or anything done to it without feeling it; while cutting that nerve from the back half destroys all power of motion. The involuntary nerves go to the heart, lungs, stomach and other internal organs, in order to carry on their particular func- tions without the will, whether you are asleep or attending to the affairs of life. This arrangement is indispensable. The voluntary motor nerves are distributed to the muscles to enable us to govern them at will and move our hands, feet and body in accordance with its determinations, of which all are perpetually conscious; while those nerves of sensation are ramified mostly upon the surface of the body, stationed there, so to speak, as sentinels on the outer walls, to warn against the contact of all enemies to life and health and to tell us when we are too warm or too cold or in contact with anything injuri- ous. They are so minutely ramified that the finest needle can not be thrust through any part without lacerating or paining some of them. The minuteness of this ramification of the nerves in the skin is abso- lutely inconceivable. Nature is as infinite in her littleness as in her greatness. Our huge earth, compared with which a mountain is as a grain of sand, is but an atom compared with her planetary sisters Saturn and Jupiter 484 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and even this whole solar system is a mole-hill compared with its grand center, the sun; so massive is it as to baffle all known attempts at comprehension, while sun and planets, if rolled together into one mighty pile, are the merest hillock compared with that vast belt of suns and worlds perceptible to human eyes. And even all this is only a speck of the boundless universe. Yet divine minuteness descends as far below in littleness as it rises above in vastness. Infinite magnitude, infinite ramification, are both alike to him. Words utterly fail to describe and the human mind to conceive the fineness of these capillary formations as in the structure of the lungs, blood vessels, pores and nerves; in this infinite littleness of nervous ramifications in the skin sensation takes place. These nerves give off an infinite number of little papillae or feelers, which cover the entire surface of the body and create sensation of which all are conscious. Hence in amputations and all cuttings and bruises, boils and sores, the greatest pain is nearest the skin, it being comparatively light after a cut or hurt has fairly passed below it. More nerves are stationed at some points than at others, especially about the eyes, hands and ends of fingers, the benefit of which is beyond all computation, as all know by perpetual experience; for without this sensation we could never know when we are too cold or too warm, when the flesh was burning or freezing or bruised or mangled, or experiencing any injury or destruction, unless we chanced to see it, so that pain thus becomes one of the most useful institu- tions of our nature. How healthy and diseased nerves affect the mind. Since the nerves all emanate from the spine and brain, then all their exist- ing states are transferred at once to the mind; while all mental states are likewise transmitted to them. The normal action of the nerves creates the most delightful glow of physical and mental comfort throughout, and a happy, ecstatic joy, better felt than described, which healthy children so well illustrate. None begin to realize how much pleasure inheres in the healthy action of the nerves nor how they are adapted to render us all inexpressibly happy. Their diseased action, however, creates a restless, crawling, awful FUNCTIONS, STRUCTURE OF NERVES 485 feeling, which makes its victims almost desire to jump out of their skin. None at all realize how much misery, steeped down, their dis- ordered action causes. Those who suffer feel as though they could neither sit nor stand, walk nor lie down, and would fain spring right away from themselves to get relief from this awful distress, which agonizes all these nervous victims. Their condition is indeed piti- able, yet nearly always self-induced. The mind, however, suffers the most, and in proportion to this nervous impairment. Morbid nerves create morbid, wretched feelings. All our mental operations partake of their states, good, bad and indifferent. Disordered nerves would make an angel cross. A naturally amiable, pious woman becomes peevish and fault-find- ing in proportion as her nerves become impaired. Most of her trou- bles are imaginary, "made up out of whole cloth," and real ones are magnified many fold; so whatever touches persons having dis- ordered nerves gives them misery where otherwise the same would have given them pleasure. Trifles weigh them down more than should the care of kingdoms. Their excited imaginations make mountains out of molehills and render them superlatively wretched from morn- ing until night, as though some terrible but unknown calamity hung suspended over them as by a hair. They retire, but can not sleep. The boiling blood courses through their veins, while their laboring palpitations shake the couch they lie on. Their incoherent thoughts wander to the ends of the earth, but to no purpose. They think and feel upon everything, only to redouble their mental anguish. If such a person loves praise, they feel as though neglected or despised by all and mortified and chagrined to death at imaginary slights. They see their path filled with lions and tigers and are even afraid of their own shadows. Hour after hour they turn on their couches, pros- trated and dying for want of sleep, yet unable to obtain it, or if at last they lose themselves in sleep, frightful dreams horrify their shallow slumbers and they wake enshrouded in impenetrable gloom. They feel most keenly, only to feel most wretchedly. They often groan out, "Oh, dear me!" and continually feel, "O, wretched man that I am!" Things which would otherwise be their joy become their misery and every sweet thing seems bitter to them. Their false excitement is most intense, yet they have no strength to endure it. 486 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Days and weeks roll on only to redouble their miseries by increasing their exhaustion. Let them do what they may, let their circum- stances be ever so agreeable, their disordered nerves extract only agony from all surroundings. The difference in talents, goodness and happiness between the same person when his nerves are healthy and diseased is heaven wide. None can ever know how great except by experience, nor begin to fully realize it even then. Disordered nerves cause more misery and depravity and blight, more immorality, than anything else whatever. Dyspepsia nearly always originates in nervousness. Indeed nearly all other diseases and ailments originate in the nervous system; because it, with the brain, fulfills the great functions of life. All else is its vassal, while the brain and nerves are lords imperiously over all the other organs and functions. Then please duly consider why they wield this supreme control and learn therefrom how disordered nerves work all this ruin. Neither rich nor learned, wise nor good, need ever expect to be happy any further than their nerves are healthy. An extra sweet, self-sacrificing, scrupulous wife and mother, by overwork and worry and over devotion to family, renders herself nervous and therefore becomes cross-grained, sour-tempered, so that she scolds husband, children, servants, guests and neighbors right and left for every little thing and often for nothing, and even for what was done as a kindness and was praiseworthy, solely because of her abnormal mood caused by their nervousness, and when all concerned are nervous, all scold and quarrel, accuse and slander back and forth with depraved unction and earnestness, making their home a bedlam and enduring bad feelings and animosities among themselves solely because all are suffering from nervousness. Nor can their sinful spirit be cured until their nerves are restored to normal action. Abnor- mal physical conditions have generated those depraved mental states which must continue to defile their feelings and actions until their nervous cause is removed. And, good wives, fretting perpetually, because of a nervous husband, and this because he is overworked; called hard names by the thousand, unable to do any one thing to please him, though you try your very best; should you not take stock FUNCTIONS, STRUCTURE OF NERVES 487 in restoring him to himself, yourself and your children by getting him out of this fussing, snarling, crabbed, rabid mood? How many wives live crushed and heart-broken lives and die many years sooner than they otherwise would, solely in consequence of that utterly hate- ful and repellant spirit of their husbands, which is due entirely to their nervous disorders ? And how many husbands, finding no domes- tic peace, no cozy, loving feelings in the female they are obliged grudgingly to support, go and seek relief in gambling or billiards, carousing and dissipating with other women, who would otherwise be pattern husbands if it were not for a wife's gangrene temper, due perhaps solely to her impaired nervous system? Why do so many wives and husbands who are naturally amiable, affectionate and every- thing desirable at marriage, become naturally disappointed with each other, say they wish they had never married, and become perfectly fiendish toward each other? Not from any natural ugliness, but because their noble, even heroic, struggles for natural interests has deranged their nerves and thereby infuriated their tempers and all their passions, and spoiled the dispositions and destroyed the lives of both, and that of their children to boot. Drunkenness depraves. This all concede, and all drunkards illus- trate the truth of it. Why? Solely by deranging and abnormalizing the nerves. Too much strong tea and coffee deranges the nerves, and sensitive, nervous individuals should abstain from them altogether; many a spiteful sentence is uttered by the excessive use of stimulants of any kind. Tobacco smokers, chewers and cigarette fiends (this means you, too), when you find that rampant, hankering, fidgety, snappish feeling in the morning before you get your tobacco, whisky or coffee, it is evidence to you that it is disordering your nerves and thereby creating depraved feelings of one kind or another. It takes sole leather persons to chew, smoke or drink much tea or coffee or alcoholic liquors without injury to their nerves sooner or later. Drunkenness depraves by deranging the nerves and making the drunken debauchee fight in frenzied rage one minute and seek the house and beg in frenzied passion of another kind the next. What is delirium tremens but wild frenzy ? Then, does not all this intoxication induce it in that proportion? Are not the swearings, fightings, murderings, etc., drunkards' 488 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE depravities ? Then does not intemperance create depravity, but how ? Solely by deranging the nerves; therefore, whatever deranges the nerves depraves in that proportion. Alcohol, tobacco and opiates cause this state, and thereby cause depravity. Whatever irritates, therefore, abnormalizes, and all abnormal action is sinful. Reader, please duly consider whether this does or does not' state a fundamental truth; and if it does, learn from it that whatever causes abnormal nervous action creates depravity physically, along with sinfulness of soul. Let the tremens they cause in proportion to their amount, together with the nervous susceptibility of their consumers, answer and let that answer be heeded; both proportions being true and taken together prove that these alcoholic and other stimulants, or whatever else impairs the nerves, thereby deprave the spirit. Excessive devotion to business, financial embarrassment, affectional troubles, waiting on the sick, reading novels, intense passional excite- ment, excessive study, etc., create and augment these same nervous conditions. In fine, let all bear in mind that deranged nerves create depraved feelings and actions. Whatever causes nervous disorders thereby engenders depravity. Where have been the eyes of ministers of religion, not to have seen this range of truth and used it to promote that moral excellence they are hired to preach? The causes of all this modern nervousness and therefore depravity are many and aggravated, and enter into all the usages of civilized society. They begin in the cradle. Long before it, in parental nerv- ousness; are augmented by maternal scoldings and chastisements from infancy; redoubled by early schooling and precocity; brought to a head by novel reading, false, fashionable excitement, aliena- tions and infidelities and remittent vices and wickedness. Make allow- ances, then, for nervous wives, husbands and children and acquaint- ances, especially for your own nervous sake, by remembering that nervousness distorts and depraves all it touches, and also learn the infinite practical importance of keeping or putting your nerves in a healthy state. The fact is, all should arrange their houses, lands, business, domes- tic affairs and everything around them, little and great, so as to render FUNCTIONS, STRUCTURE OF NERVES 489 themselves as happy as possible and by all means avoid occasions of sad feelings and vexations. And when trouble, as the loss of friends, domestic difficulties, failures of business, or anything of the kind, does come, banish it as far as possible from the mind and try to think on what gives only pleasure. Children also should not be crossed and provoked, and especially flogged, as little as possible. A tenderness on the top of the head, amounting perhaps to sore- ness, is one of the surest signs, because the nerves center at this point, so that irritated nerves create pain there. Unhappy feelings, a morbid, dissipated, churlish, ill-natured state of mind is one of the surest signs. Your state of feelings should tell you whether or not you are nervous and in which state. FREE WILL. Man is free, and there sits enthroned in his brain a great "free will," free to act out his nature according to his reason and his pro- pensities; while his reason and his propensities, according to their environments, necessitate his every thought, word and deed. The child comes into life the embodiment of certain hereditary laws-deformed, diseased, perhaps blind; or, if forces over which it had no control are more kind, beautifully formed, with high, prospec- tive face and brain; the plan of life is fixed, the outline drawn, the stamp of destiny set. The influence of parentage, a mother's love, subtle as the stars, fixing destinies by early education, influence, environments, all con- trol, mold and modify. Manhood finds character formed, seals of destiny fixed, and he is free. Incurable destiny has made his heart and brain a hotbed of devilishness to think thoughts and to do deeds of villainy and crime. Perchance manhood finds a noble soul impelled by a nature, a brain and heart divine, to feel and ask the part of justice, mercy and love. Like the magnetic needle trembling between various influences, man sometimes hesitates; he is changeable, fickle, unstable; but the stronger influences acting on his peculiar nature prevail and he is free to do as he thinks, to act as he feels; and these are the forces which determine his life and conduct. Men are always ready to give reasons for their acts; to point out their motives, which prompted given lines of conduct, and these reasons, these motives, are the magnets which fated their actions. Yes! These attributes of God are free to obey their fixed and impla- cable qualities. Yes! The forces of nature are free to manifest their activities, fire, water, gravity, repulsion, light, electricity, all are free to act according to their inflexible natures. Each element of the human mind is free; reverence, malice, self- ishness, love or hate, all are free to act according to the measure of 490 FREE WILL 491 their existence in a given brain. And varied combinations of faculties and propensities in a given individual produce, according to environ- ments, life or death. Show me a man whose towering head and intel- ligent, sympathetic face speak the possession of predominant high and noble qualities and I will predict for you his future life and conduct. Show me a man whose narrow, flat, receding, animal brain is a den where are evil, hissing, slimy serpents of lust and villainy and I will predict for you the general outline of his future life. But men are responsible for their acts and accountable for every thought and deed, and fate has fixed a law forever rewarding virtue and whatever is noble in human life, while pain and sorrow follow in the path of vice. Happy he whose heart, mind and soul, whose inward impulse and whose outward influences impel to paths of nobility, good- ness and sympathy. Unhappy he upon whose face, mind and heart has been written "Vile," in whose brain dwells evil, perjury and forked snakes of villainy and crime. How grand become the better social examples, with environments to save the tempted! How grand become the churches, by the halo of their sacred influ- ences, shielding the weak, saving the nobility of life, to virtue and to God, the otherwise lost in vice and crime! Hereditary law, a mother's love, early influences, education and environments, determine the heart and character of every man. The character with environments determine life and conduct. And given causes are followed by given results in human thought and life, with the same inexorable certainty as in the realm of the material universe. Cause and effect reign supreme. Think of it as we will, we are hedged in on every side by imperative necessity. The worm crawling at our feet, the world rolling in its orbit, or man grasping at the solution of mysteries, everything organic or inorganic, is driven only by destiny; and the march of sequences is as immutable as the attributes of God. This is based in the inflexible certainty of cause and effect on the fatalistic chain of sequences, which have followed of necessity through ages and which must of necessity follow in coming ages. OUGHT DISEASE TO BE TREATED? I presume many of the public, as well as the physicians, when reading this heading will take me for a crank or a lunatic. Some philosopher has said that in order to arrive at a correct understanding the first thing necessary is a correct definition. Then I take it the answer to the question at the head of this article, either in the nega- tive or affirmative, depends largely upon our understanding of dis- ease and its cause. I will not say a correct understanding, for each one of us if honest believes we are correct. I claim, however, that my believing a thing honestly does not make it correct, and the course you pursue and the treatment applied or given may be honest, but not correct; but by understanding the laws that produce disease we not only believe we are correct, but we also know positively that we are right. But how are you going to learn these laws? You say no one knows and therefore no one teaches them. I will show that they are simple to learn and that their simplicity is the cause of their having been kept in obscurity; they are easier than to learn to read, or any other single branch of study; they light up before us as plain as the noonday sun; no one need be ignorant of them, and all should know them. The trouble with most of us is that we see only that part of the world we have been educated to see, and that we do not see it then as it is, but as we are. Three men look at a horse; the first is a farmer and he pronounces it a good, strong, durable horse; the second is a jockey; he sees it in a different light; and the third is a zoologist and he sees it very differently from the other two. Does not this illustration prove that we do not see things as they are but as we are? Why? Because each one is only educated in a portion, and each of a different portion and characteristics of the horse; now if all three had been thoroughly educated about the horse and all kinds of horses, instead of by piecemeal, they would all, if honest, see the horse in the same light and all correct. We as physi- cians are no exception to the rule, and for the same reasons. I will 492 OUGHT DISEASES TO BE TREATED? 493 suppose a number of physicians to be examining a patient; the first, an allopath, sees the result and names it rheumatism; the second, a homeopath, sees the symptoms for the application of his remedies; the third, an eclectic, sees it in a far different light from either of the other two; in comes a Christian Scientist and a hydropath; each one of these differs from the other three. Each one of these five is honest, but neither sees it as it is, but as he is. The same picture of the horse is formed differently upon the mind and the retina of the eye of each, but how differently they view the object. They can all agree that it is a horse; the physicians all agree that it is a patient. From whence comes all these differences? From the knowl- edge we possess ourselves, generally called subjective knowledge. We classify things without according to what is within us. In other words, the thing to classify is without, but the power to classify it is within us, and we will judge the thing right or wrong-so classed in proportion as our knowledge is perfect or imperfect. It is this subjective knowledge that leads to so many errors in treating disease that is really no disease, but only an expression of a certain con- dition that exists. The right thing to do is to take hold of the under- lying principles of the system instead of firing away at their superficial symptoms, which are so generally and erroneously called disease. Many physicians early discard the general practice of medicine on account of its indefiniteness and turn their attention to surgery, because they think surgery is more tangible, more exact, and besides more profitable, but the truth is that if the laws and principles laid down in this work were taught in our medical colleges and the public taught the principles and laws that cause disease, then in the former the practice of medicine would be exact, and on the other hand the public would rarely need the services of a physician. Then for humanity's sake let us be generous and honest, and handicap their popular prejudices and stop cracking these funeral jokes in the grand old ancestral mansion, and learn the truth and follow it with the dictation of a good conscience then we will not be very bad fellows. APPENDICITIS FAD. Nearly everybody has heard of appendicitis or had experience, either actual or imaginary, with it, but very few understand what this disease is. The word means an inflammation of a little appendix-the word itis itself means inflammation, and wherever found attached to another word it means inflammation of that particular part, such as tonsilitis means inflammation of the tonsils, etc. So, plainly put, ap- pendicitis is an inflammation of a little piece of projection of a gut where the small and large ones unite; this little projection is called appendix. Now, if it is necessary to cut off this little projection of the gut every time it becomes inflamed, why is it that so many millions of other inflammations in the inside of the body get well without an operation-inflammations of organs that are made of the same kind of material, cover much more ground and are more dangerous to life ? For example, inflammation of the lungs, of the kidneys, of the bowels, bladder, brain and many other internal places of the body. Why not cut out the lungs or brain, etc., when they become inflamed? Why is this little insignificant appendix so necessary to be cut out? Just because the doctors think, or rather make themselves think, that the appendix is insignificant and of no use, and because they can get at it and cut it out with a certain percentage of success, enough at least to arouse no suspicions among the public that this operation is done for the money there is in it and purely nothing else. We can imagine a case where such an operation would do good, but then these cases do not occur once where the operation is performed a hundred times. The writer has never seen the need of an operation among his patients, nor has he ever lost a case by a death. But we do know of our own knowledge of dozens of youths that have gone to the "great majority" where the newspapers reported a very successful operation, and in a day or two the patient is dead-but not from the operation; from what, then ? Perhaps from the fright when told it would cost two or 494 APPENDICITIS FAD 495 three hundred dollars for the operation. About six months ago a family came after me to see their little girl about twelve years old; finding me out of the city they called in another physician (who cer- tainly has the respect and confidence of the community) to attend the case until my return, which was late in the evening. But a hack was sent after me, saying that I must see the girl that night, as she was very sick. After a ride of two miles with the thermometer twenty- five degrees below zero, the driver of the hack getting the worst of it, I finally arrived at the house and found what is called by our append- icitis authorities a typical case, the swelling in the region of the side being raised to about the size of an egg. The first question the mother asked upon showing her this swelling was, "What is it?" My reply was that it looked like a clear case of appendicitis. "Do you think you can cure her?" "How long has she been sick?" "About twenty-four hours." "Well, I said, "the inflammation must be checked within forty-eight hours, and if so the child can be saved." "Without an operation?" asked the mother. Answering this question in the af- firmative, the mother stated that "Dr. X was here this forenoon and he said that an operation was the only remedy to help the girl, and that he could perform the operation in about two or three days." We told the mother that if this inflammation was not checked within less than three days the chances were that nothing would save her, opera- tion or no operation; but if she wanted the operation performed I would step one side and she could let the other doctor do it; that if it was my child I would not operate; if she had to die, let her die a nat- ural death and not murder her for the sake of giving a doctor two hundred dollars for killing her in the name of science. In short, the decision was that we should treat the case without the knife, and as a nine-year-old boy across the road had been operated upon a few days before and died the next day, it helped to prejudice them a little against an operation. Our little patient was out of bed in four' days, by a very simple treatment, but let me say right here to the reader that the secret of success is to check inflammation within the first three days-that is, before destruction of the tissue has taken place, which can nearly al- 496 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ways be accomplished. People have been made to believe that it is a very dangerous disease, and often call a doctor for any pain in the abdominal cavity, and the patient is made to believe that he has ap- pendicitis when actually only gases have been the cause of the pain. Three cases to the writer's knowledge, where the skillful surgeon said appendicitis, that an operation was needed, but the patient consulted others and found that a good natural operation was all that was need- ed. It is safe to say that in ninety-five cases out of every hundred is the difference of a fee of two to five dollars for curing without opera- tion and two to five hundred dollars for curing with the operation, which is more dangerous to the patient than the disease itself, provided the patient is attended to in time. The following letter, supposed to be written by a Dan Fenton from the country to his friend, a physician in the city, is self-explanatory and would make a good addition to Mark Twain's library of humor, combined with sense: UPENDASEETUS-BY DAN FENTON. Deer Doctor Stephens: I want to tell you about a post mortem we had t'other day on the person of a young woman who had been operated on for this ere new fangled dizzease called upendaseetus. About eleven months ago Dr. Vermiformis amputated her upendix and she did not get along well, although she got along for eleven months by dischargin the amputator and gettin a unreglar doctor. But last night she died. The Lord giveth and He taketh away. The doctor had nothing to do with the takin away, you know. But what I was goin to say was that we-that is, another unreglar doctor and me, you know they call us unreglar, but jest what that means I've never been able to make out, for I give my medicine as reglar as any one else every two hours by the clock and sometimes every hour. Maybe it is four times a day, but it's alius reglar. I'm sure I don't know what it means, but I know some doctors that are reglar dam fools. But what I was going to tell you about that post mortem was, that the entire inside surface of the secum was inflamed and badly ulcerated. Also a couple inches of the small bowel (don't rickollect the technickle name fur it) was involved. Then about ten inches up APPENDICITIS FAD 497 the little bowel from where it empties into the big one there was a thickened, hardened ulcerating point. It was on that surface looking away from the omental fold. This looked mighty much like Dr. Vermiformis had cut a gut. But then of course we didn't blame him, as something had to be cut or science would have been outraged. I almost forgot to tell you that where the little tale was cut off-you know, the upendix-there was a pretty little hole which had never closed and through which no doubt some fluids found their way into the cavity of the belly. Another thing I was goin to mention was that there did not seem to be, nor to have been, any serious inflammation at the bottom of the blind gut, and if it wasn't goin against science I'd say I don't believe that there ever had been any inflammation in this ere upendix. Now, what I want to ask you, or rather suggest, is this: Don't you believe that in the majority of cases of so-called upenda- seetus the primary lesions is in the lower end of the colon or secum? Don't you think that the inflammation extends from there to the up- endix and that the beginnin of the trouble is seldom in the upendix? Don't you think that those cases that get well after the upendix is cut off would get well without and not have the additional lesion of the operation to endure and its effects to overcome? Don't you think that the death rate from operation is higher than it is from upenda- seetus itself? Do you think it pays to kill a dozen people who prob- ably would recover in order to save one whose upendix needed cuttin off? However, ef you can't trot at this gate-how would it do to make more careful selections and operate only on a certainty anyhow, even if you had to wait until the patient died ? Umph! Say, a little irrugularity in operation would save many lives, and while I'm tellin you I'll mention that a friend of mine was settin on my bench t'other day tellin 'bout a neighbor havin the upendaseetus and that a fizzishun was goin to operate in the reglar way. I said why don't she put on some wilted cabbich leaves, and by Jo the fool woman done it and the fizzishun got the reglar bounce. This is awful unperfessional, but I couldn't help it. She got well without an operation on bowels, I mean a surgical operation. She did have an operation, but it was natral. Now you know I've got no chance fur counsel away off down ere ex- 498 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ceptin my own common hoss sense and instink, but I say I have always treated these cases of upendasees with medicine and fomentations- ole woman like, you know they call it-and most often they get well. Of course, I don't know, but we was alius use to callin it tifileetus. May be tifileetus could be cured with medicine and hoss sense, but upendaseetus has to have a stronger treatment and less sense. Of course, I know I ain't an edicated man, that is scientifically, but I have had pretty good trainin and I know I have saved many a life by not tryin too. You know what I mean, yit I'd cut a gut if I thought it was necessary to cure upendaseetus, but I'd have to be mighty certain about it. Yours in haste, Dan Fenton. THE ANTITOXIN FAD. The antitoxin fad, like the Trilby craze, has just overrun the land like the grippe microbe, minus the grippe, and to oppose this foolish internecine strife, at which an angel would weep, antitoxin cures have been preached by prominent medical journals and the periodicals from penny port to pretentious proportions. The horse juice fad might be a better name, and they have it bad. One would think that these semiscientific praters had just found salvation for humanity's suffering, so loud and gracious are its hosannas. We have several times in other parts of this volume explained the law and the consequences of injected pus, disorganizing or otherwise poisonous matter into the system, and to show that the sensuous blood that runs in the veins of these pious greeds is after the filthy lucre and rotten fame, and that we are not alone in opposing this monstrous fad, so ruinous to health and constitutions of children, we quote Dr. J. H. Greer, of Chicago, Ill. "During the last few years the treatment of diphtheria by anti- toxin has gained considerable notoriety. Its character and effects when fully known by the people will place it where it properly belongs as one of the most dangerous and worthless medical humbugs of the age. "Antitoxin is a highly poisonous substance prepared by taking a portion of the virulent membrane from a diphtheria patient's throat and placing in boullion at the temperature of the human body for cultivation until it has reached its greatest virulence. It is then injected into a horse little by little until the animal (if he does not die) becomes thoroughly saturated with the poison, agonizing to himself, horrible to look upon and dangerous to handle. He is then in a condition to furnish to the medical profession the precious fluid which shall aid them in procuring money and fame at the expense of the lives of human beings. "The horse, after reaching that condition which hovers between 499 500 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE life and death, is bled for the benefit of humanity-that is, for the financial benefit of a small portion of humanity included in the medi- cal profession. The highly poisonous serum, or watery portion of the blood, is preserved in carbolic acid solution ready for injection into the bodies of little children, at the nominal price of ten or twenty dollars per injection. The method of operation and its purposes was well described by a Chicago physician, as follows: " 'Well, I had an opportunity to try antitoxin lately; the patient was a little girl, eight years old. I sent for Dr. Blank to help me, for you know if I did the work myself I couldn't charge them $20 and besides I wanted the cash. He and I divided the fee. Then there is another advantage in having a stranger sent for; it gives more importance to the operation and the parents think there is some- thing wonderful and dangerous about it to require such precautions. To make a long story short, we covered the dining-room table with a double blanket and then covered that with a clean sheet and with an atomizer sprayed it thoroughly with corrosive sublimate solution; we then had the child stripped of all clothing and laid face down upon the table. Yes, she struggled valiantly, sick and small as she was, to stop us, but I held her down while Dr. Blank performed the operation. He rubbed a spot on the thigh and one between the shoulder blades till the skin almost wore off, and then wet with the corrosive sublimate solution and injected the antitoxin serum with a hypodermic syringe. Say, do you know, I really felt sorry for the child; it used her strength up terribly. But I could hardly keep from laughing at the blind faith those parents had in it all. And the way in which the father handed out the $20 made me make up my mind that hereafter I'm going to recommend antitoxin every time.' " Such are the words of a practicing physician in Chicago, spoken to the author of this book. The child died, but the parents had the satisfaction of "doing all in their power." Let a grown man in perfect health submit to the injection into his circulation of the serum of a sick horse diseased by diphtheria poison and we would expect serious results. What can be expected when helpless and almost dying children are compelled to submit to the operation? THE ANTITOXIN FAD 501 Its most earnest advocates admit that it is valueless if admin- istered after the third day of the attack. How many cases of diph- theria ever came into the physician's hands before the third day? Very few. Reports are sent to the medical journals from every sec- tion of deaths directly ascribable to antitoxin. Dr. Winter, of the Willard Parker Hospital, New York City, when antitoxin was extensively experimented with upon suffering children, condemned it as useless and dangerous. The Medical Brief, of St. Louis, the most widely circulated medical journal in the world, denounces antitoxin as a dangerous humbug, and is doing all in its power to stop such horrible practices by the medical profession for mercenary motives. See volumes of the Medical Brief for 1895-1896. It may be thought that there must be some good in it or so many physicians would not recommend it. Mercenary motives actu- ate most of its advocates and the rest are blind followers of fads. Not long since Dr. Brown-Sequard proposed to rejuvenate old men by injecting into their circulation the vital fluids of guinea pigs; it seems incredible, but it is a fact that many thousands submitted to the foolish operation and many leading members of the medical pro- fession arose to prominence by advocating its use and performing the operation for a good fat fee. We may now laugh at the credulity of persons led to believe in such an absurdity which swept over the country, but it is far from a laughable matter when distracted parents are urged and almost forced to submit their dying children to mercenary physicians willing to inject into them the filthy and virulent poison from a diseased horse's blood, in order that the physicians can earn their fee and have the satisfaction of "doing all that could be done." Better far that the children should lie unattended and be left to the mercy of nature than be tortured and poisoned when life is hanging in the balance. Woe to them who attain riches and notoriety through the tortures and lives of the innocent." The following was taken from the American Medical Journal, August, 1898, and will clearly demonstrate that we are not alone in seeing the damnableness of these same poisons. "Half a century ago it was a fad to be bled at stated intervals to keep off sickness, and expectant mothers had to undergo the opera- 502 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE tion repeatedly. It has now become the fashion to vaccinate on the pretext of warding off smallpox; a thing that it never did. "It is a significant fact that, although every man in the German army is compelled to undergo vaccination over and again, the Emperor himself never permits the operation in the case of any member of his own family. "Indeed it would appear to any considerate thinker to be utterly preposterous to attempt to guard against disease by injecting the body with diseased substances, the product of retrograde metamor- phosis. "The folly stops not here; the passion is aroused to find new pretexts for poisonous inoculations. We waive the absurd project of Brown-Sequard as dead and exploded beyond resuscitation. Hydro- phobia, a disorder that occurs so seldom that many eminent medical men even doubt its actual existence, has been magnified into a terror. The name of Pasteur has been glorified as one of the world's bene- factors for having devised a specific virus for its treatment. So much excitement has been created by an assiduous effort that he made more than half a million dollars for his operations. It seemed to have become a fashion to declare every angry dog rabid, and when it was possible to do so to hurry those who had been bitten by him to the place for the Pasteur treatment. There were more cases reported of successful treatment than there had been occurrences of actual hydro- phobia ; but several persons had died and it was apprehended as a result of the inoculations. "Under the later fad of serum-therapy we are threatened with another invasion of blood poisoning as mischievous as any of its predecessors. The disease now known as diphtheria affords the pre- text. Some half a score of disorders like quinsy or tonsilitis, pharyn- gitis and sore throat, generally are somewhat likely to be palmed off as this complaint and subjected accordingly to the antitoxin, or more correctly, the toxic treatment. Death in an increased ratio is the result. We give due honor to Dr. Joseph E. Winters, of New York, for disclosing this. He was the first to give truthful statistics con- firmed by careful and conscientious observation. He published a paper giving only facts; then case after case was observed, of failure, THE ANTITOXIN FAD 503 injury and death. Dr. M. E. Chartier also noted carefully the treat- ment and its results in Paris and the United States and presented conclusions equally decided. " 'To begin with,' he declares, 'the serum used for the prevention and cure of diphtheria is altogether inert, without the least thera- peutic value, or it is exceedingly dangerous.' "He proceeds to give his reasons, and adds: 'As could have been expected, hundreds of deaths followed the injection of the serum. These deaths are a matter of record in the annals of medicine, and were undoubtedly produced by the toxic properties of the ptomaines or cadaveric alkaloids which are the results of the decomposition of organic matter contained in the serum.' "Dr. Chartier combats an argument which we have long regarded as often being one of adroit deception-that of statistics. 'The great argument of the partisans of antitoxin is the small percentage of deaths recorded in their statistics,' he remarks. 'As a matter of fact, these statistics are misleading, as they include all the cases of inocu- lation, which figure thousands of individuals inoculated simply for immunization. Last year in Paris 75 per cent of the reported cases of inoculation were not affected with diphtheria.' He continues: " 'The main trouble about this fad in regard to the serum is that it threatens to invade the whole field of medical therapeutics. . . . What surprises me most is that the medical profession does not see through the scheme. If the principle advocated is correct, there is no use to study the practice of medicine. We have in short order serums for all kinds of diseases, and the druggists will do well to prepare to close their shops.' "It is a rather remarkable fact in this respect that many physi- cians who use antitoxin on their clients would not have recourse to it in their families. The London Lancet ascertained this fact some time ago, and published a long list of prominent physicians who admitted that they were afraid of antitoxin, although they used it in their practice; personally they would have nothing to do with it. "Dr. Hausemann, the assistant of Virchow, at Berlin, affirms that 'no one has seen this antitoxin. It has not been produced in a test- tube ; it is not a fact, only a hypothesis; yet it is spoken of as if it had been isolated, and were a definite chemical substance.' " 504 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Some time ago we saw two copies of the Medical Record, a period of several months intervening between their dates. In each there appeared a list of deaths caused by diphtheria, and in the later issue the mortality from this disease had increased 50 per cent. Another medical journal cites further examples of this antitoxin fatality. The British Medical Journal gave two of them. The Cleve- land Medical Gazette one; the Journal of the American Medical Asso- ciation one that barely escaped. A writer in the Virginia Medical Monthly explains: "Antitoxin does not protect the organism against the diphtheritic poison for twenty-four hours after its use." This needs no comment; it is a confession of judgment. Another fad is the multiplying of petroleum products. They torture the Greek language terribly for names, and employ innumerable novices in medicine to puff and exploit them. Indeed, they bid fair to outnumber the legion of devils that Jesus is said to have cast out of one man; the seven with Mary the Magdalen do not signify. Surgery is becoming fearfully overdone. Women go to the sur- geon's table very much as they would go to the lying-in chamber before it became fashionable to abort the offspring; and men are becoming helpless before the modern madness for extirpating the appendix vermiformis. Private hospitals, as well as public, are mul- tiplying out of all good reason; and patients are abandoning physi- cians who keep offices in order that they may be treated at these establishments. Tramp doctors are vigorously legislated against; but the tramp patients who frequent these places are not so easy to suppress. The truth policy is steadily gaining ground in medical practice, as in other callings; and the physicians who adopt it coolly boast of their superior facilities, declaring to their less favored brethren that the people prefer to be cared for at hospitals and medical copartner- ships because they there find skill superior to that of the common practitioner. The pretext of raising the standard of medical institutions is very much of the nature of a fad. It does not seem so much to assure better physicians as to make expense so great as to preclude persons of moderate means from studying medicine. Such a dis- THE ANTITOXIN FAD 505 crimination would be anti-republican and pernicious. The medical legislation which has been procured for this end bids fair to yield a harvest of apples of Sodom. The old pretext, so utterly threadbare as well as untrue, of "protecting the people" may yet be found a weapon of the character of a boomerang. The more conspicuous fad of the time, however, is sanitation. It does not rely upon facts to support its pretensions, but upon force and terrorism. On no subject before the people, not even free silver, or the gold standard, or the tariff, do we find men so eloquent and yet with so little of substantial evidence to sustain them. Officials seem to be as numerous as the frogs of Egypt in the plague and as great a nuisance. Our houses are made uncomfortable and unendurable; millions of dollars are spent for water, sewerage and the killing of cattle, and yet epidemics are as regular as ever in their recurring and the death rates are as high as before and often higher. We have scrutinized annual tables of mortality and found this to be a fact. We made little account of what is assumed in regard to conta- gions. There is a little noxious emanation, whether from diseased persons or decomposing material that will not become harmless by the action of pure air and personal cleanliness. We would have pure food and purity of person, partly for the sake of health and whole- someness and largely because of our own fastidiousness. There are more epidemics than those of plague or other disease. There are epidemics of fad and there are epidemics of medical opin- ions. There is not any great progress ahead, but rather the recurring of some notion that has been entertained before. What is policy or dogma today, as with bacteria and medical legislation, was policy or dogma years ago. IMPROVING OURSELVES OUR GREATEST DUTY. The great inquiry of old and young, each and all, from childhood to the grave, should be, How can I make the most possible out of this life so infinitely precious ? How can I turn it to the best account ? How derive from it all the rich and various enjoyments of which it renders one capable? How to invest so as to obtain from it the greatest in- come of pleasure possible? Not only is there no income levied on this income, but nature rewards its improvement with the richest bounty possible for anyone to receive. Only one life lease is granted us; it can have no substitute; this lost, our all is lost; hence no man ever propounded, ever answered any other questions a thousandth part as practically important as, How can we derive the very utmost possible enjoyment from this life and escape all its miseries? We instinctively enhance whatever we consider valuable; in pro- portion to our estimate of property, reputation, etc., we seek to in- crease them; so should not our utmost exertions be directed towards promoting this life force, which should be towards self-development, by learning the laws that govern health and disease ? This should in- crease the value of life and add to all its mental and physical pleasures. Your eyes are the more or the less valuable in exact proportion to the amount of vision they put forth; if they could see as well again as now they would be worth twice as much; or if your visual power should be diminished one-half, their value would be lessened. How much then is your power to see worth? Ten thousand dollars? 'Would you be wise to accept that sum on condition that you remain in total blindness until you die? Of course, doubling the health and power of every individual function of the body doubles its value. Every mental and physical capacity is governed by this law, and in proportion as the physical organs of the body are injured or diseased, some or all of the mental organs will suffer in proportion. Your child is worth how much to you? To its other parent, to 506 507 IMPROVING OURSELVES OUR GREATEST DUTY grandparents, relatives and mankind generally? Then how much to its own self; the fact is the value of money, of diamonds, of every ter- restrial good is nothing in comparison with that of life, health and its functions. All other values sink into insignificance when compared to the superlative value derived from improving each and all our life functions. The improvement of this life entity then, by whatever is sacred in life, death and eternity, should be our one great paramount work. Our first duty to God and man centers in this same self-development; our fellow-men are likewise more effectually benefited by obviating our own faults and improving our own excellencies than by anything else we can possibly do to them or for them. In fine, self-interest, duty to God and Man, love of happiness and all the great motives of existence, inspire the eventful inquiry, How can this life entity be im- proved? Nature answers, By fulfilling its conditions. One childhood, yet only one, is allotted to each human being, and its perfection is indispensable to that of every subsequent period of life; whatever mars it mars the subsequent powers and pleasures of this life. A dwarfed, a sickly, an unhappy childhood, blighted by the violation of nature's health laws, either wilfully or through igno- rance of them, blights the entire after life. Oh! parents, be entreated not to mar their sunny season by neglecting to teach and impress upon them the fundamental principles and health laws, so conducive to a long and useful life of success and happiness. These natural laws do exist, and enjoyment must necessarily flow from their obedience, just as surely as water runs downward. This is the first fact, the first condition, and should be the first lesson of life; they are to life what the sun is to the earth; they constitute the founda- tion and motive power of all that is in life, and by means of them alone do we live, move and have our being. They pervade, permeate and govern all things. They originate all power and then apply it to all production of all results. Thus the science of anatomy consists solely in those natural laws which govern the body and its operations. The science of chemistry consists in those natural laws which govern or- ganic changes and their workings. This is equally true of each and all the other natural sciences. In fact all nature is made up of these 508 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE natural laws and their operations. What would she be but for them? Only chaos personified. What ends does she accomplish, except for their instrumentality? Absolutely none. They embody the live principles and the quintessence of all that is the binding power of all our duties and obligations to God and man; the means of all our en- joyments and the soul of all goodness and philosophy. All knowledge likewise consists in a knowledge of these identical laws and their effects. A knowledge of history is only a knowledge of the laws which govern human nature, and so also of all the other sciences. He alone is learned, therefore, who knows these laws and their operations, though he may be ignorant of ancient mythology and languages; while all those who do not understand them are ignorant, however good linguists they may be. They embody the Divine Will and Mandates and all goodness like- wise consists in conforming to, and all badness in violating them, for they alone constitute all right, and their infraction creates all wrong. They are God's tribunal of whatever is right and wrong throughout His universe. Love of these laws of nature should therefore be our first love; as we love our very being and our happiness, as we love God and all His commandments, let us love these His edicts written, not on tables of stone, but throughout all His universe, and interwoven into all our desires and instincts. Their author is my author, and their commands are His eternal rules of action, sent out unto all He creates. Let all legislative halls, all schools and colleges, all churches and human institutions, resound with these laws and let all press their energies into learning the educational value of their fulfillment. Pain is constitutionally abhorrent to man-is the only ground work of all his dislikes; he instinctively and universally shrinks from it as from poison; he shuns only what produces it, and for no other rea- son, and dislikes all things in proportion to the pain they give him; therefore obey these laws and be happy, or disobey and suffer; they are no respecter of persons; they will not be trifled with; are stern, sover- eign and immovable, but their only intent and operation is to do good. Their very inflexibility is notice to all never to transgress them. If they ever gave an inch, man would take an ell, but they never deviate IMPROVING OURSELVES OUR GREATEST DUTY 509 one hair's breadth; this being true is it not because of the universal lack of understanding them that our world, if a Pandora box, full of suffering and woe and filled with all manner of diseases and miseries; poverty, wretchedness, loathsome diseases, distressing sickness, the heart-rending decease of friends, children and companions torn away by a premature death? Millions suffer beyond description, and millions are or have been tortured into the wish that they had never been born, or that death with all its horrors would hasten their relief; at the same time this world is perfectly adapted to promote human hap- piness, while suffering forms no necessary part of any constitutional arrangement or function of man, nor of nature's ordinances; our whole world is one great round of beneficial provisions for human virtue and happiness, but the punishment for disobeying these natural laws is the alpha and omega of them all. Upon every mental emotion equal demands are made and we suffer for every single evil thought and feeling, desire and passion. For instance, one may obey the parental law in loving their children, but to violate the conjugal by hating their companions; enjoy in their children but suffer in their consort. One may obey the law of kindness yet break that of acquisition by giving or squandering a fortune and suffer ever after from poverty; whilst a miser may obey the law of acquisition in acquiring money, yet rob kindness and most of his other faculties by miserly penuriousness; so on all through the list of the mental faculties. Then by this under- standing of all these mental and physical laws, each can thus become his or her own teacher by studying out the causes of each and all his joys and suffering as they occur. Thus this twinge of mental anguish came from my breaking this law, or this or that disease from breaking one of the physical laws, and received a pleasure from fulfilling this law, and those must be genuine dolts whom this does not convert from the error of their ways! These natural law accounts are payable at sight and cannot possibly be avoided. Nature is her own lawgiver, court, judge, jury, sheriff and executive officer, and she sees that exact justice is meted out to its last iota. No ends of all this earth are far enough away, no hiding place is hidden enough, no one is high or low enough, to allow it to escape. How much enjoyment obedience to 510 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE these laws bestows or violation of them inflicts we little realize. This depends partly upon our capacities to enjoy and suffer, and partly on the relative value of each law. Then by our enjoyment and dread of suffering let us make ourselves just as happy by obeying just as many laws as possible and suffer just as little through their violation. THE DOCTOR'S REPUTATION MAKER. Excluding, perhaps, and excepting during a genuine epidemic that occurs once in ten or fifteen years, most of the so-called diphtheria is nothing more nor less than common quinsy. I have known several physicians to come into a new place and by their tact would claim nearly all quinsy cases to be diphtheria, and, of course, all would get well, and he would soon have established himself as a successful prac- titioner in cases of diphtheria, and, of course, he would be a good doc- tor to cure all cases. I will give a few cases to illustrate how nicely most of the public will bite at the bait of these scientific deceivers when they have a sick patient in the house and when all the friends of the patient are in ex- citement and anxiety. A lady drove to my door, excitedly directing me to come to her house immediately, that her only child, a boy of seven, had diphtheria of the worst kind, and it was the third time he had had the disease, and she had heard they surely died with the third attack. Her doctor was not to be found, and as I was a specialist in throat diseases I was her next choice. I drove to the house, found the boy with a bad looking throat, fever very high (104%), and almost bordering on convulsions, which of itself would prove that it was not diphtheria, because there is rarely much fever with diphtheria. The mother very excitedly asked over and over again if the boy could live. After the examination I told her to quiet down so that I could tell her what to do, and that the boy would get well; I asked if this was the kind of diphtheria he had had before, and she said "Yes, but he was much worse this time." I told her the boy did not have diphtheria, and likely never had it before. I gave the medicine needed, with instruc- tions, and told her that my service would not be needed any more; directed her to follow instructions and he would be well in five or six days. The sixth day she came to the office and paid one dollar and a half for the visit and said that her husband had to use all their savings 511 512 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE for two summers to pay the other man for his services, the charge amounting to nearly a hundred dollars. A few years afterwards I called the other doctor's attention to this. He said "Yes, it was those cases that made my reputation and money." He said, "I had seventy cases of that kind one spring and only one died, and that one was the only case of genuine diphtheria in the lot. "Doctor, you never will be a success in the doctor business, you are a d n fool. I can get more money and reputation out of a little case than you do out of a dozen big ones." Another and very amusing incident of this kind was when I called to see a young couple who had been married about a week, and the young wife had quinsy very badly, going to suppuration, as they sometimes do. The neighbors and her parents insisted that it was diphtheria. I said no, and by saying no I got the neighbors down on me and checked my influence over the patient and her parents; the third day another physician was called, a man that stood high in his profes- sion in the city; he said it was the worst case of diphtheria he ever saw and that he was called in the nick of time, and thought it possible to save her life; this satisfied the family and all the neighbors. The young wife recovered by a miraculous escape and the physician received his large bill spot cash. I never received mine, but was promised a good thrashing by the young husband if he ever met me- just for telling him the truth about his wife having simple quinsy, from which disease none ever die, except when caused by murderous treatment. I will give one more such instance, together with the other doctor's name as he is known by nearly every one in this and other countries. I had treated this boy three days for tonsilitis or quinsy and then dis- charged him; but there had been a continuous opposition from the neighbors and friends. They thought it was diphtheria, for all doctors claimed that when there were any patches on the tonsils it was diphtheria. The same day that I had discharged the case, I saw the great little Doctor Senn stop at this house, the home being only across the road from where I lived. I made up my mind to call there in the evening and see what it meant. Well, a colder reception I never received, and I was told I ought to be driven out of the city; that one of the neighbors had sent up Dr. Senn because she knew it was THE DOCTOR'S REPUTATION MAKER 513 diphtheria, and sure enough he said it was; that settled it-no argu- ment was of any use. The mother showed me the medicine' that Dr. Senn prescribed, and said it was given in life and death cases, and the boy sitting on the lounge looking well and contented, listened to me. I took the number of the prescription and went to the drug store to find out what was in this life and death medicine; here it is: twelve powders of pulverized white sugar with about enough salicin to make it taste bitter. These are the things done every day by the men whom the public swear by. I could fill a volume of my own experience among the most prominent men to whom the public look up to as authority, and usually because they can cut a man open and sew him up again, but to do which really does not take as much knowledge as it often does to prescribe accurately for a headache. This statement will seem ridiculous to many, but I am ready to face the statement publicly or privately with any one. When studying in Vienna, Austria, I roomed in the same house with an old lady and gentleman, the gentleman being one of the city officials. He came home one evening with a severe pain in the large muscles of the arm; his wife called me in to see if I knew what it was; I told them that there was a large abscess forming and the best thing to do was to put on a linseed poultice and in a week or ten days, when ripe enough, it would have to be opened, but he was liable to have much pain, and, being an old man, he might have to have some- thing to relieve his suffering and get some sleep; if so they should call in another physician to prescribe for him, as under their law I was not allowed to practice, being an American graduate. The next day one of the leading professors of the university was called in; he wrote seven prescriptions for salves, linaments, antiseptic washes, as he called them, some morphine mixture for pain, which was the only one needed out of the seven; and said that it would be from four to six weeks before the abscess was ready to open. I told the wife to put up a job on the professor and stated that if it did not prove true I would pay the whole bill; to take off the bandages after the doctor was gone and put on the linseed poultices and it would be fit to open in at least ten days, and to replace the professor's bandages every morning be- fore he came and to take them off after he was gone. By the eighth 514 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE day the abscess was ready to open, which the good Samaritan did with the remark: "That salve of mine is a splendid thing to draw." The fact was that it was no more than vaseline mixed with some little coloring matter, and the solutions were ten drops of carbolic acid in a large bottle of water. Reader, you know that all human experience will attest that where there is no opposition, no one to watch, no one with any knowledge of the affairs of a city or natural government, that corrupt practices of the worst form, even to the sacrifice of human life, are carried on. Are we as physicians any different than other human beings ? History shows the same results even among the theologians. Wake up and look around a little-create a public sentiment by showing up the truth; pay at least as much attention to this matter of life and health while you are well as you would give to looking around and posting yourself regarding a new building you are going to put up, so the con- tractors or builders cannot swindle you when you are ready to build. At least keep your eyes open and make your searches at least as good as if you were going to buy a valuable horse, then if misfortune should happen to overtake you you will likely know where to go to find some one who will tell you the truth about what is the matter with your darling child or beloved wife. Do this before they succumb to a premature death caused by the ignorance and unscrupulousness that exist today in the medical profession. TRUTH WILL OUT. Truth will out. Nature is a great discloser of unfinished truth. Her facts shine out, and so do her principles. She will neither falsify herself nor permit any of her children to do it. To her all truth is infinitely sacred. Nature labels all things and obliges each to carry its own label in full view; she gives amiable birds a pleasant appear- ance; alligators and the like are loathsome, while selfish creatures have a responsive aspect; peacocks are both beautiful and amiable; all good fruits look as inviting as they are delicious. This law runs throughout all creation, and by it all persons are obliged to report and show any abuse of these laws pertaining to themselves. For the proof of the correctness of this statement, note the appearance of the faces of your friends and acquaintances, and the general carriage of the body, and if the physician were competent to read them in both health and disease the abominable errors made by physicians, which increase suffering, shorten many lives, and often cause the death of the patient will cease. But the false education or ignorance of these laws which produce sickness makes the doctor a menace and injury to the com- munity, doing greater damage to society than all other crimes com- bined. The one is fashionable and tolerated by law and society; the other continually haunted by legal and social laws, and all have an inalienable right to know one from the other. If a man is honest or dishonest, smart or dull, or whatever else he may be, nature makes him tell all to all who can read the signs of disease as well as of character. Nature compels all to fly her flag at masthead, whether it be a flag signifying health, whether of disease, whether mental or physical deficiency, she labels all her children, good, bad and medium, accord- ing as they are, nor can these labels be wiped out or counterfeited. As screams of genuine fear and distress can be easily detected from spurious, so can all counterfeit and genuine looks, for nature will not 515 516 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE lie. So can all existing bodily states, whether healthy or diseased, be told instantly and correctly, for nature compels everybody to tell it to everybody else, if you only have the necessary intelligence to read this natural language. This great volume of truth all should learn to read. Just see how correct our first intuitive impressions of our fellow man are. Most of our physicians are not strongly endowed by nature with this faculty, and the trait is largely the cause of so much empiri- cism, mistakes and blunders in the practice of medicine. This intui- tive characteristic is an ordinance of nature; it is a law of things; it is a natural science; it even extends to animals and vegetables; they look inviting or loathsome and are just as they seem to be. This proclama- tion runs throughout all creation and pertains to all things; let facta attest its truthfulness. OVER EATING AND EXCESS OF CARBON A PROLIFIC • CAUSE OF DISEASE. The lightest and least amount of meat and drink a man can be tol- erably easy under is the shortest and most infallible means to pre- serve life, health and serenity. Nothing is more supremely ridiculous than to see tender, hysterical and vaporish people continually com- plaining, yet perpetually cramming, crying out that they are ready to sink into the ground and faint away, gobbling down the richest and strongest food, and highest cordials. Soldiers are more healthy and vigorous on scant than on full rations. Pugilists are fitted for the bloody ring and horses for the race by little food, combined with ex- treme exertions of muscle, which proves that moderation in eating facilitates labor. All facts and principles go to establish these two conclusions, that all eat double the quantity of food necessary for the attainment of the highest state of mental and physical vigor and en- durance, and that over-eating is a great cause of modern disease and depravity. Work more and eat less then the system can illiminate, etc. The well should abstain from eating too much to retain health; we should eat in proportion to the amount of physical labor performed; many are complaining and apparently ailing in many ways, the whole cause being eating too much, or not eating right; that is, they do not take time to chew the food enough to incorporate it with saliva of the mouth, which is so essential in digestion, at the same time relieving the stomach from the extra amount of labor produced by swallowing it in chunks, causing the distress, pains, bloating and forming of gases so much complained of one or two hours after eating. People with sedentary habits should be especially careful not to over-eat, but every- one should eat enough, for nature can cast off surplus food in health better than supply or endure a deficiency, but the exact quantity most promotive to strength, talents and happiness is preferable to either too much or too little. 517 518 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE We may accustom ourselves to eat less or more, with this differ- ence, that the former leaves the muscles and brain unoppressed and active; the latter stupefies the whole man by diverting the energies from all the other organs and concentrating them to the stomach. The Germans eat heartily, the Spaniards lightly, yet they are as hearty as the Germans and do not suffer from want of food, but eat all an unperverted appetite requires. Those who crave great quantities of food should deny their appetites and practice temporary self-denial. The two ends attained by eating are to supply the organic materi- als required and to create animal warmth; this warmth is generated by the carbon furnished from food, combined with the oxygen derived from breathing, which combine only in a fixed proportion, never more nor less than its fixed equivalent of the other; so this clearly shows that any excess of either destroys that balance which nature has or- dained. Therefore we should eat in proportion to our breathing and in proportion to mental or physical labor performed. This labor should be in proportion to the capacity of the body and brain, and not be- yond this limit. If the balance of these two life substances becomes too much out of proportion disorder must be the result. Every reader interested in their health or in the causes of disease should remember this great physiological truth. Under its proper head we will show that many of the diseases that our scientists are breaking their heads over, and concerning which they are spreading among the public all sorts of fanciful assumptions, are based upon irrelevant facts and contrary to Nature's indisputable laws, and that these laws are sim- plicity personified and easily learned and understood. Why is it that so many northerners on going South become sick ? Because they keep on eating as much there as at home, yet by breathing the warm air, which is more impure and contains less oxygen, they retain that surplus of carbon in the system, which generates southern fevers by poisoning the blood and system. Such people should increase their breathing and diminish their eating, in order to prevent the glutton of carbon in the system and its subsequent disease, for the same reason that we should eat less in summer than in winter. Most of all summer complaints of children and adults are caused by this identical excess of food stuff which nature tries to cast off OVER EATING AND EXCESS OF CARBON 519 through the bowels; if parents would give their children less food in summer, especially those highly carbonized, less fat, butter, cream, and sweets, many of these children that now die would then live. Many people are troubled with dyspepsia during the summer, but are better when cold weather sets in, and from this same cause. All those whose health is better in fall and winter than spring and summer may from this learn that their troubles are likely to be caused from this surplus carbon over-eating. The chemical analysis of the putrid matter of boils, ulcers and the like, absolutely demonstrates this truth, because they contain nearly sixty per cent of carbon. In fact, most irritations, inflammations and fevers are mainly caused by its excess. This would demonstrate that a large proportion of sickness is produced from over- eating and wrong eating. Unwholesome food does not engender diseases, especially of the stomach, so much as does an excess in amount. In other words, health depends more upon how much we eat, than what we eat. The majority of the people make gluttons of them- selves. Those who feel lighter and better by omitting a meal, or feel Stupid, inert and uncomfortable after a meal, eat too much. Most long lived people have been small eaters. Men of great talents and virtues usually practice rigid abstinence. A little food well assimilated yields far more nutrition and life than large quantities poorly digested; and there is a grain of truth in the saying, "You eat too much-it makes you poor carrying it around." The process of digestion is one of the most wonderful in nature; its results are simply amazing; just think of the inert mass, bread, meat, vegetables, drinks, etc., your dinner is composed of; and in a short time digestion has separated from this mass the proper chemicals of nourishment and sent it throughout the system, mounting to your brain and consumed in working, thinking, speaking, loving your family, adoring God, and all your other mental and physical opera- tions ; all accomplished by digestion and breathing. Whether breath- ing or digestion is the more important is difficult to determine, for both are indispensable. How effectually indigestion palsies the physical and mental energy, and how necessary is good healthy digestion to vigor of the body and mind. The stomach and intestines furnish these re- quirements and accomplish these ends. A coating of the stomach 520 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE called the mucous membrane secretes into it a clear, slightly acid fluid, but almost tasteless, called the gastric juice, similar in appearance to the saliva of the mouth. This gastric juice is previously secreted, but is somewhat increased by entrance of food in the stomach. The di- gestive juices are a most powerful solvent; capable of reducing to a milky homogeneous mass, called chyme, all those substances taken as food. It, as it were, sets free, or extracts, the materials from the food necessary to nourish the body, such as carbon, fibrene, caseine, nitrogen, hydrogen and electricity included, which food is composed, and sup- ports life. The solvent powers of the stomach and intestines are most astonishing. Some animals will eat wood; some eat bones, fur; others the whole of their prey, and digest it. Man's solvent powers by nature far exceed what we imagine possible. How surprisingly some stomachs bear up, some times for a century, under the continued abuse daily heaped upon them, even by the most temperate; much more by the intemperate. How often and outrageously do all abuse it by eating too fast, or eating too much, or by eating unwholesome kinds of food, partaking of alcoholics and nar- cotic poisons, and yet retain much of its vigor. But in most people however, abuse weakens its solvent powers, which causes its contents to lie so long in the stomach that its heat induces souring or fermenta- tion, which aids its dissolution and helps to relieve the stomach of its load. This is incipient decomposition, or, to call it by its true name, the beginning of the rotten process. To ferment is to putrefy. Nor is it possible for food to sour in the stomach without engendering corrup- tion. Especially is this true of the fermentation of meat. All know how vast the putrefaction is caused by the decay of meat. Is it any wonder that the rotten meat in the stomach should cause its victims to feel so wretchedly? This is a strong argument against meat eating, when the stomach or system is not perfectly healthy. I include the system, for real disease of the stomach is very rare (see disease of the stomach), and not common as most people are made to believe. Meat or any food putrefying in the center of the body, to be sent all through it, is frightful to think of, and yet this very process is going on in a more or less degree within the stomachs of those afflicted with dyspepsia. This embraces the American people more than any other OVER EATING AND EXCESS OF CARBON 521 nation, for they eat more meat than any other and are as a rule in a more unfavorable physical condition to eat meat. This chemical fact, that the souring process is incipient rotting, is the cause of most of malignant ailments, and of many other diseases which bring suffering and premature death on the mass of manhood. Therefore, men cannot guard too much against any cause which will prevent the healthy action of the stomach and to assist it to perform all its functions normally. Its healthy and vigorous condition is indispensable to life and happiness. The scholar who is impairing digestion by over study is undisciplining instead of disciplining the mind, and in the most effectual manner possible, and by the very study, which would other- wise strengthen the mind, effectually prostrates the brain; such should stop studying until they have effected a cure. Those whose stomachs act weakly, or who have disordered stomachs should stop or abstain from whatever they find impairs it, such as over brain work, worry, fast eating or wrong eating. The motion of the stomach produced by breathing greatly facilitates digestion. Every inspiration hauls down the stomach to make room for the ingress of air, and every expiration redoubles this motion by allowing it to return to its place, and as breathing is perpetual so is this stomach action. Unless this had been very important, nature would never have devised so effectual a means of securing it, and those who arrest it by tight lacing or otherwise do so at their own peril. The bile and pancreative juices have a very important function to perform in digestion. The bile acting upon the fatty matter in the large intestine, which it renders soluble and fluid and helps to convert the chyme into chyle, also stimulates the bowels and their evacuations, and relieves the blood of its superfluous hydro carbon, out of which bile is mostly formed. The bile and pancreative juice mingles with the chyme, separates its nutritious from its innutritious portions, somewhat as rennet assorts the whey and curd of milk from each other, forming chyle. This chyle in composition is almost identical with that of blood, requiring only contact with the oxygen to impart to it a red color and make it into blood proper. The importance of these two glandular secretions shows how absolutely indispensable the healthy action and the function of each is to human life and the conse- quent evils of their absence. SCHOOLS. Our present method of education is utterly unworthy the name of system. It is fundamentally defective; first, in not being adapted to call out either the human mind as a whole or its several powers in de- tail. Not that existing educators are blamable for its faults, except that they themselves have not learned them from nature, and are only perpetuating the educational methods handed down to them from the dark ages. But when this far better way is developed they should adapt and impart it. The palpable existing defects are, it rarely in- terests its pitiable victims, for the chief end sought in mental dis- cipline consists in that state of intellectual organs in which a free flow of blood through them fits them for vigorous action. Does our pres- ent system of education effect this? Instead, does it not really pre- vent it? Only what interests benefits, because that alone calls blood to the brain and thus disciplines it. How exceedingly dull and stupe- fying this union of sitting still on a bench learning this dry, meaning- less ABC, the forms of letters and spelling of words. This continual sitting is its first fundamental error. The brain cannot act vigorously when the body is sluggish. This almost perpetual action is wisely written into the child's constitution, and can be only curtailed to their lifelong damage; yet sitting curtails it most effectually. School con- finement is awful to them because so injurious. They must be dogged to school, except a few who are precocious. Those who love to go to school should not go, and all the rest hate to go and are overjoyed at every intermission. Education should promote bodily activity and not prevent it. The present system violates most of the health laws. The Ancients christened their school "Gymnasia," because their great educational motto was "a sound mind in a sound body," and until modern educa- tion returns to this natural educational platform it will do them more harm than good, or at least comparatively little good. More attention 522 SCHOOLS 523 should be paid to developing the muscles of the vocal organs, for good speaking requires a good, strong voice, and this requires good, strong muscles by means of which to utter sounds; for poor vocal muscles produce poor voices, and proper gymnastics applied to the vocal muscles produce clear, strong power of voice, and our thanks are due to the few who are introducing gymnastics into our American schools. The foul air of most school rooms, caused by so many young breathers, breaks down constitutions by the millions. Observation is the pedestal and vestibule of all education. Sight is the great in- structor; seeing is believing. What children see they know. Object teaching is the true educational basis, for it is adapted to excite intel- lect, for mental discipline is the main end of all education. What and how much pupils learn is of small account in comparison with improving their future capacities to learn, which their action alone can effect; action delights, and what delights gives action, where most studies do neither, but are as hard and dry as a seasoned log. This obliges them to forced action, and forced action is almost worth- less. The true ends of government are entirely misapprehended and neglected. It should furnish all these kindred educational facilities instead of only enacting tariff and bankrupt laws, creating monopolies and chartering banks, and the like. The tariff is insignificant com- pared with public education. Criminal jurisprudence is now begun at the wrong end by being based in fear, whereas it should be founded in love. Its motto should be "An ounce of prevention is worth pounds of cure." Pursuing this system of intellectual education and moral training, combined with the study of nature's laws, would banish all disease, ignorance and crime by educating all by these principles to recognize talent and worth instead of demagogues. It would elevate all above that cheating, robbing, money-grabbing capacity which now constitutes the mainspring of crime and disease. The government should be parental; then the people will love her as children their parents, and because it cares for them and in addition a love of the refining study of nature, of which two things are more effectual to wean them from vice and promote virtue. The great educational motto of the Ancients was, "A sound mind 524 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE in a sound body," and until our modern education returns to this nat- ural educational platform, which in a few instances in the higher grades has been inaugurated, many children will receive more harm than good, on the fundamental principle of the law of balance. Chil- dren differ in constitutions, temperaments, environments; hence some are quick in observing and learning, others slow; some are mentally and physically evenly balanced, while in a portion the mental abilities are superior to the physical, and the converse. But all these various mental and physical conditions are exposed under practically the same conditions all day while at school; is it any wonder then, that there must be at times a mental and physical clashing; that is, that some will overwork while others take it easy, and the natural stimulus given the children whose mental powers are above the bodily are over- doing ; and these same children are the ones, often ambitious, are con- tinually studying and leading all the rest. This sapping the already poor physical strength at the expense of the mental must, in time, weaken the already weak body and the vitality, so that upon the least provocation they take cold; or if the air in the schoolroom should not be extremely pure, combined with a little cold which they readily take, and retaining their own bodily secretions, under this debilitated state scarlet fever or diphtheria is the result. There is a class of children which are usually spoken of in the neighborhood as the "smartest" children; often the well-known re- mark is made, "That child is too smart to live long." The parents feel proud of hearing what a smart child they have, and also recognize the fact themselves, and often assist the child to keep up this reputa- tion. When this child (which too often happens) becomes sick, it usually dies, because it hasn't vitality enough to resist or pass through any serious illness, the prediction is fulfilled that the child was too bright to live long. All this is wrong and inexcusable. The mistake is usually in the parents not obeying or understanding this law of bal- ance, which is the fundamental principle that constitutes health. Par- ents should in such case follow out just the opposite rule from what is usually the case; instead of assisting or even allowing such a child to follow out its mental ability it should be held back and not sent to school before eight years old, or even much later; never allow them to SCHOOLS 525 study at home; keep them out of doors; use every means possible to interest them in outdoor exercise; teach them the breathing principles already described, and when old enough explain to them the necessity of these things; that when they become older and by training up their bodies they will be healthy and strong, while otherwise they become nervous and are continually ailing. Too much stress cannot be laid upon parents that they should study their own children's environ- ments, peculiarities, their weaknesses, as well as their strong tenden- cies, and by every means possible hold them back from the strong men- tal inclinations, unless combined with a strong and healthy body; otherwise sickness or death is sure to be the result. During an epidemic of any kind parents should be very guarded about children not very robust; better keep them at home than to run any risk. At this time, as already explained, sunlight has not been sufficient, with perhaps lots of damp weather outside; the air in a schoolroom, even with plenty of ventilation, with a hundred children breathing in the room, becomes foul, when finally one after the other of those with the least resistance to this exposure of foul air, come down with scarlet fever or diphtheria, when the school is closed on ac- count of the contagion among the children, which is the prevailing and the most absurd opinion that could be invented; but after the school closes the epidemic among the children usually abates. Why? Be- cause they were taken away from the cause. Foul air in the school- room, either from existing outside conditions, as above stated; or, as often happens, from the carelessness of not having proper and suffi- cient circulation of air in the school is often the cause, and it has been traced to defective sewers, or to children drinking impure water from a well near the school. When the time comes, which surely must come, that every teacher will have to be proficient in the study of the uni- versal laws of cause and effect pertaining to health and disease, as they are in any other branch of studies, and make the study of these laws a part and even the main study of the curriculum of every school then these principles that promote health or produce disease will be- come a part of themselves, as much so as reading or writing, and we will not, as we all have to do now, learn by sad experience what ruins our constitutions and shortens our lives, or even sacrifice our life, 526 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE which would have been avoided if the laws of health were impressed in youth upon our memories as was spelling or arithmetic. When public sentiment once becomes aroused upon this most valuable subject of life they all will fairly ache with surplus health and vitality, all the way from the cradle to three score years and ten, and then gradually sink, like the setting sun, into twilight's balmy shades, without an ache or pain or even weakness, conscious only of the still increasing pleas- ures of existence and scarcely knowing when they breathe their last. And death itself, the crowning luxury of life-yes, literally a crown- ing luxury-will come as life's fitting close. The great trouble with our educational institutions is that they have grown up, like "Topsy," without father, mother or teachers, and the old fogy element in man has perpetrated those errors from time to time immemorial. It is high time that these errors of society were laid out on the square-that is, time that these institutions were con- formed to nature and her laws. To parents a right educational phil- osophy is very important. They annually spend millions of money, along with untold anxieties, in scholastic education, without really any guiding principle; often even killing their children by a well- meant but ill-directed education, and actually making them worse by trying to make them better. All parents as well as schools need some text-book to teach them how to prevent disease and how to strengthen the virtues in their chil- dren and themselves, as well as to weaken their faults and make them the best possible. When this kind of education becomes the all-ab- sorbing interest, as fortune and money making now* is, then neither workingmen nor tradesmen nor fashionables will remain ignorant upon the laws of health. Merchants, instead of spending all their time in rolling up wealth, half wrecked in constitution and health, will devote part of their time to study that will promote long life, healthi and happiness. Our dainty, sickly parlor-cured fashionables, sniveling over the last love story and wasting their life force in novel-reading, dress and powdering to look well, instead will read and study healthi laws that inspire natural beauty, that blooms to old age and is always ready and always pleasing both to the possessor and onlooker. This natural truth needs no comment; it is its own commentator; SCHOOLS 527 it is a law of things, and is always self-rewarding by its obedience and self-punishing in its neglect. Why this decline and what is its cause ? Inaction, usually due to being shut up in a school-house, pinned fast to a bench and stifled by the inability or refusal of parents to feed these inquiring minds. The parents become anxious for their children to get the studies they are required to pursue; many of the children being whipped or otherwise forced to school, and chastised at school, creating a dislike for the teacher and a hatred of books, which ends in inaction and decline of the physical and mental laws. This condemns the present system of training the young mind and is more calculated to deaden the intellect or to stunt their energies; our imperfect system of education mainly causes this poverty of intellect. The former does not cultivate the thinking and reasoning faculties, and hence this lamentable decline of man's crowning capabilities. These reasoning faculties are literally starved during childhood and even through life. How can this future of intellect be instructed and the blessings conferred by a full and well- developed intellect be secured? One means is answering children's questions, of which they are continually firing a string at you, what questions, and their wherefor questions, which if properly answered will render any child educated, even if ignorant of his letters. The continual string of questions asked by children furnish many oppor- tunities for explaining important truths and teaching valuable lessons; yet strange as it is, parents often become angry at them for asking questions; but it is really one of the best means of imparting instruc- tion; but the answer given to this little inquisitive child is, ''Oh, do hold your tongue!" or "Don't ask so many questions!" or "Children should be seen, not heard!" But answering their questions is as essential to their intellectual growth as food is to their bodies; and yet our present educational system discourages instead of answering them. Allowing children to ask questions in school and answering them conveys instruction, develops the mind more than anything else; let them ask all the questions they think of, and teachers and parents should not bluff them off with shuffling answers. Another method of developing the young mind is to teach children to think for them- selves, for they are often taught to believe instead of to think. Give 528 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE them a correct starting point and let them investigate for themselves. It will gradually improve these reasoning faculties to act accordingly as if by intuition; if left unbiased it will always draw correct conclu- sions; "it whistles itself"; but if you do their thinking for them they will get it done by others when older; hence they can be led blind- folded in politics, religion, literature and everything. Children should also be taught to answer their own questions; have them recall former answers; tell them to put matters and ideas of things to- gether and form their own judgment. Are not these educational directions in perfect keeping with common sense and the laws of mind? The intellectual capabilities of children are relatively superior to those of adults. Observe their remarks-how pithy and full of ap- propriateness and meaning, and how often they detect and expose by quaint remarks the absurdity of the things often taught them by adults; they often evince quickness, sagacity, penetration and in- tuitive perception of things rarely observed in them in growing up. Their contrivances and ways and means for accomplishing their ends are often extraordinary. Has the reader never observed the fine, highly expanded foreheads of children and admired those noble de- velopments so often seen at the sides of their upper and middle portion of their foreheads? Cast your eyes over one hundred children and then over one hundred adults, and behold with pain the marked su- premacy of the former over the latter. Why do these reasoning organs grow more deficient as the child grows up, when if the actual order of nature were carried out they would grow relatively larger in- stead of smaller? For progression and not decline is nature's method; therefore these finely developed foreheads of children should when grown up be still relatively larger, but it is the actual fact that children have one-fourth to one-third better intellectual powers rela- tively than adults, when really it should be in favor of the adult. EVOLUTION OF SPECIAL CREATION. Derivative creation is nothing more than development under the action of the laws imposed by their creator upon the elements of which all in nature is composed. This is as far as the human mind can reason or go scientifically, and we can but believe that some su- preme power created these elements and gave them by an inherent law the power of affinity, attraction and repulsion under certain con- ditions to form whatever has been formed or existed in the universe. In other words, the elements have the power to make things make themselves. The best illustration we know of to demonstrate this law is the tracing of these elements up to the time they form food for man. When meat, bread and vegetables are taken into the stomach of man, where it is digested and absorbed into the blood, then it is attracted to certain parts or functions of the body and formed into living cells and into living germ. Have we not here a splendid illus- tration of the law of evolution? But wait; have we not more than that? Have we not a special creative or spontaneous creation of life through the law of evolution, and will not the same food evolve into another special form of life, if given to some animal like the dog, hog or bird? Have we not made plain the law of special and spon- taneous creation by the law of evolution? and a different form of life created by evolution under different conditions by the same iden- tical material? This same law holds good in the causes of disease. When this law is recognized and used to trace the cause of disease we can then see why the same identical material will give you health today and perhaps disease tomorrow, because it came in contact with different conditions. What will cause yellow fever in the South will cause some other disease in the North, only because the conditions and surroundings upon and under which this cause acts are different. Evolutionists antagonize those who hold to the theory of special crea- tion, and those who are more liberal say that much can be said in 529 530 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE favor of both theories. As already stated, to follow out those laws that we can see and observe all around us every day and which are proven and established will show that both evolution and special cre- ation exist, and must exist in order to evolve and form what does exist. The inherent law that the elements have from their Creator "makes them make things make themselves"; this law of necessity implies both evolution and special creation. LONGEVITY A FEATURE OF TEMPERATE CLIMATE. During 1896 the death of 188 persons over 90 years of age, four- teen of them being over 100, was recorded in Great Britain and Ire- land. It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the average longev- ity is greater in Scotland than it is in England, and greater in Ire- land than in Scotland, the birth rate being largest in England and least in Ireland. Of a thousand persons, men, women and children, resident in England, the average number over 60 years of age is seventy-two, or somewhat more than 7 per cent. In Scotland the pro- portion over 60 years of age is 7.7 per cent, and in Ireland it is 10.5 per cent. Ireland stands second to France as regards the longevity of its inhabitants, the proportion of men and women in France over 60 years old being by the last census 12.7 per cent, or 127 in each 1,000 of population. The official figures of the census report show that longevity is to a considerable extent regulated by climate; that is, in countries within the temperate zone, the duration of life is greater than in warmer or semi-tropical countries. The average number of persons over 60 years old in 1,000 inhabi- tants in the United Kingdom is seventy-seven and in the German Em- pire, the climate of which is similar, it is the same. In Holland it is also seventy-seven; in Denmark, eighty-four; in Sweden, eighty- eight, and in Norway, ninety. In Russia the longevity of the inhabi- tants is greatest in the northern provinces and lowest in the southern ones. The average of European countries in the north temperate zones, England, Germany and Holland, seventy-seven to a thousand falls to seventy-one in Austria and Portugal; in Spain, where the climate is generally milder than in Portugal, the number over 60 years of age in a thousand is fifty-eight only, and in Greece it is only fifty-six. In the East Indies, as far as there are any authentic fig- ures, the average is only forty in a thousand inhabitants. In South America the average is about fifty, though there are of course many exceptional cases.-(Journal Amer. Med. Assoc.) 531 WORRY. Josh Billings finds in the religious thought of the average Hindu a certain utilitarian quality, the outcome of a crude philosophy. "How did you get your English?" he asked his bearer. "Is it an acquire- ment, or just a gift of God?" After some hesitation, piously: "Yes, he is very good, Christian gods very good; Hindu god make two millions and one. All mine; two millions and one god. I got a plenty. Sometimes I pray all the time at those, keep it up, go all time every day; give something at shrine, all good for me, make me better man; good for me, good for my family, dam good." The breakdown in American life comes from worry, and worry has almost come to be a national disease. If an American has no money he worries himself into a state of mind and when he gets any money he worries himself to death for fear he will lose it. He wor- ries at his work, because he is afraid he will not accomplish what he is given to do. He worries about his meals; they are not on time, or they may disagree with him, or they may be costing him too much. If he pays for a thing in advance he is afraid it will not come up to the specifications, and if he gets it on credit he is afraid he will not be able to pay for it when the bill comes in. He is afraid to leave his money in the house lest it be stolen. He is afraid to carry it with him lest somebody should borrow it from him, and so he worries about it. He worries about his business, whether it is going smoothly or not. He worries about the nation, about congress, about the two political parties, about the national con- ventions,, about the gubernatorial elections, about the tariff and finan- cial questions, about the resolutions of '98, about the decadence of politics, about civil service reform, about the future of democracy, about sanitation, the water and gas questions, the paving of streets, the street car system, the class of plays at the theater, the nomination 532 WORRY 533 for mayor and the election for school visitor in the seventh civil dis- trict. He either sleeps too much or too little. He has an idea that life is a conspiracy and that he must preserve eternal vigilance or the con- spirators will get him. He lives so much on his nerve that he gets an- gry on slight provocation and thus wastes more tissue. The true secret of health and life and success is cheerfulness. The man who does his appointed task without being fussy will live a good deal longer. "Don't worry" and "don't be afraid" are two very good rules to observe. The American people must learn these rules by heart and put them into practice if they wish to live long and pros- per.-Memphis Commercial-Appeal. People everywhere are waking up to these facts. Worry is wrong; worry is unnecessary; worry must go; so must it be. The sooner this unnecessary, wrongful demon of fretfulness is given his "walk- ing papers" the better for the world. Worry certainly has no place in the life of a believer-a worrying Christian is, indeed, a solecism. Helen Hunt wrote thus of the sin of fretting: "There is one sin which it seems to me is everywhere and by everybody underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuation of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is common as air, as speech; so common that un- less it rises above its usual monotone we do not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people and see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets; that is, makes more or less complain- ing statement of something or other which probably everyone in the room or in the car or on the street corner, it may be, knew before and probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it?" Don't worry about something that you think may happen tomor- row, because you may die tonight and tomorrow will find you beyond the reach of worry. Don't worry over a thing that happened yester- day, because yesterday is a hundred years ago. If you don't believe it, just try' to reach it and bring it back. Don't worry about anything that is happening today, because today will last only fifteen or twenty minutes. Don't worry about things you can't help, because worry only makes them worse. Don't worry about things you can help, be- cause then there's no need to worry. Don't worry at all. If you want 534 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE to be penitent now and then it won't hurt you a bit to go into sack- cloth and ashes business a little; it will do you good. But worry, worry, worry, fret, fret-why, there's neither sorrow, penitence, strength, penance, reformation, hope nor resolution in it; its merely worry. One facetious philosopher extracts much fun from the historical and descriptive accounts of the Australian aborigine that he finds in the white man's official records. According to these this "black fel- low" is everything that a human creature can be. He is a coward; he is brave; he is deceitful and treacherous; he is faithful, loyal and true. He kills the starving stranger who comes begging for food and shelter; he harbors, feeds and succors the man who took a shot at him only yesterday. He takes his reluctant bride by force; he courts her with a club, and then cherishes her devotedly through a long life; he gathers unto himself another wife by the same unceremonious methods, beats and bangs her for his daily diversion, and then lays down his life to defend her. He will face a thousand perils to defend one of his children and kill another because his family is large enough without it. His delicate stomach shudders at the white man's dainties, but he enjoys overripe fish and brazed dog and cat and rat, and will partake of his own uncle with relish. He is genial and sociable, but will hide behind his shield when his mother-in-law approaches. He is afraid of ghosts, but fairly revels in physical pain and death. He knows all the constellations, great and small, and has names for them; he has a symbol writing by which he conveys information to the tribes far and near; he has a correct eye for form and expression and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive by traces which the white man's eye cannot discern; he invents a missile that the white man's science cannot duplicate, and with it he performs miracles that the mathematician just gapes and wonders at; and yet he has never been able to count beyond five or make a vessel to boil water in. "He is the prize curiosity of all the races." The very heart of Mark Twain goes out to the savages, whom he regards with affection and almost tearful sympathy. They are wasted, these natives; they ought not to have been wasted; they should have been crossed with whites. "It would have improved the whites, and done the natives no harm." THE MIND OR WILL POWER OVER HEALTH AND DISEASE. Some superior power or executive officer must preside over every- thing, to promote harmony of action and control all those individual parts of which the whole is composed. Some head must preside over life and all its functions, the same as the monarch does over his realm, or the president over the Republic. Nor can the body be without its head center. Life must then have its presiding officer to issue orders, to keep the machinery in existence and in good run- ning order, repair damages and keep all functions running until they can run no longer. The will is specifically invented for the express purpose of resisting and assisting to cure all forms of dis- ease and prolong life to its greatest possible extent. As a city must be defended from within, so must the fortress of life; it is the best of all remedies and cures, is very pleasant to take and is dirt cheap. The Divine Creator of this world knew very well that men would outrage his health laws and become sick, and knew that they would need a remedy that was always on call the best restorative he could devise, and hence invented this. Its curative principle is based in the power willed by the mind over the body and each of its parts. This great truth cannot come up too often or be cited too forcibly. Those who think they are sick, are sick, and often very sick, and are the hardest to cure; in fact cannot be cured unless this will power or mind is brought into action in the opposite direction. This will power and tenacity for life is as different in people as there is dif- ference of other traits of character in different individuals. To illus- trate: Two persons may have the same constitutions and the same disease and in the same degree, except that one has this faculty or will power to live more than the other. The one struggles and clings to his love of life and fights with might and main against death and the disease and lives through it; while the other does not seem to 535 536 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE care whether he lives or dies and does not try to stem this down- ward current nor brace himself against it, but yields to its sway and is swallowed up in death. What physician who is a clear observer has not seen this principle demonstrated, especially where business reverses, or trouble of any sort, was perhaps the inventive that brought on, or often, perhaps, the only cause for his sickness? But a down-hearted person will take cold, close up the pores, retain his own poison, which ought to be eliminated from the system, develop disease and is sure to succumb to it, unless this will power is revived in some way. To illustrate: I was called in a hurry during the night to visit a well-to-do family; the man was said to be dying, the minister being called at the time; found his circulation down to forty- eight pulse beats to the minute; could find no organic trouble of any kind, but he said, "Doctor, I am too far gone; you cannot help me any more." I asked his wife if there was any business trouble, or if their relations were unhappy: "No," she said, "nothing of the sort." Well, I said, there is something troubling him, and if she did not know what it was, we must find out; that is all that will save him, that is to correct the cause; she finally admitted that her son was going to be married to-morrow to a lady that he strongly objected to; by having several of his friends talk to and assure him that the son would relinquish the girl, rather than see his father die, he picked up his courage and in a few days was about the house and in one week attended to his business. A story is told of a wealthy lady, where the heirs had been wish- ing she would die, finally became sick and when nearly breathing her last, heard one of the bystanding heirs congratulate another that she was dying and that they would soon be enjoying her fortune; she became aroused and said, "I won't die; I will live to spite you," and by putting forth a powerful mental struggle for life, recovered and lived many years, evidently from this powerful determination to live. A Mrs. Rojf, struck with a serious illness, kept trying to per- suade her husband to promise her in the event of her death not to marry again, to which he kept replying evasively and that they were trying to cure her and hoped to succeed. When almost dead she THE MIND OR WILL POWER 537 determined with her last breath to extort from him an answer. He finally frankly replied, "If I should make such a promise to a dying wife I should feel bound to fulfill it, and I would rather not prom- ise." "Well, Mr. R., if you don't promise me not to marry again, T wont die," and she didn't die; didn't because she wouldn't; and, so far as I know, she is alive and well to-day, just because she wouldn't die. (Hadn't the old goose better have promised her!) Mrs. Gunn, of Painesville, Ohio, was taken seriously ill; she was a devoted mother, and tried to induce her husband, in case she died, to keep the family together, instead of putting the children out; but he would not promise, and when, her extremities already dying and her sight failing, replied to his "don't know" answers: "Well if you won't keep this family together, then I will," and putting her action to the word, by a powerful effort of will, her blood went bounding through her system, and she recovered because she willed to. She lived to keep her family together until all were married and lectured many years to ladies on health. The world is full of these kind of facts, and most people likely know of similar cures. This will power cure is literally magical, that is, when the disease is a mental disturbance, and without it medicines are many times useless, and many times with it medicines are unnecessary. Nature can beat doctors, for what she undertakes to do she does well. Then whenever needed, put yourself under her care, and don't mix it up with doctors' drugs, but assisted many times with the proper medicine in the .right direction the two will do almost wonders. The let-alone cure, on the other hand, has saved thousands of lives, when growing worse all the time by doctoring, until finally having no more means or lost hope and given up, waiting to die, kept on living to their own astonishment and finally got well. A calm and serene knowledge and trust in the recuperative powers of nature is one of the best cures. The faith cure is only another form of this will cure and let-alone cure combined; laying-on-of-hand doctors all cure by this same will principle, by arousing to activity this faculty or executive officer by loud advertising and strong assertions. The credulous and easily 538 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE led minds, if they would have but put forth their own exertions, would have saved the large fee paid to these pretending miracle performers and at the same time could give themselves the credit of curing themselves. All these crutches and canes left by those who could hardly walk without them are effected on what princi- ple? By inspiring this hope and desire of life. No one can dis- pute the large number of these cures. Doctors cure many patients because of the extreme confidence and trust the patient has in his medicines; because the patient thinks he knows precisely what to give, perhaps no more than a little colored water, where, if this same medicine was given without hope or confidence it would be entirely useless; and if the patient would have aroused his own con- fidence and hope, would have become well without the medicine. If every reader will respectfully scan this will power faith and let alone pathy and apply it to keep well, and if sick, with a quiet but a firm and resolute mental clasp hold on, determined to live by resolv- ing to get well and fight off disease and how by sending this life force and blood bounding to your lungs, head, stomach, hands, feet and even to the little toe, by strong efforts of breathing of fresh air through the whole system, it will wonderfully assist all other pathies and yet interfere with none, if the dose of the pathies don't interfere too much with your will power. This motor wheel of life, like that of all machinery, has its cog belts and other means of transferring this power to all its functions; this grand life executor must somehow be interrelated to all the functions, so that when this will power bids them to start and work that they will obey its man- dates; and one of the chief cabinet officers is breathing; yes, breath- ing; the most important function of terrestrial life, from first to last, is deep, copious breathing. The first post-natal function of every new-born babe is to take a good long electric breath, which sets the blood bounding off through its system with a rush and starts every other function into instantaneous action, without which life would be extinct. The contemplation and study of this one suggestion of the affinity of the air upon the new-born child, carried out to its full meaning, is the grandest lesson that human physiology can give. It demonstrates plainly that it is the reinvigorator of life and all its THE MIND OR WILL POWER 539 functions. If you want to get and keep warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this increases that consumption of carbonic acid gas all through your system, which is the creator of all animal warmth. I cannot dwell too long or too often, in order to get every one to realize its importance, that the oxygen inhaled by breathing pure air is what charges the system with all its life force, and this will be demonstrated more clearly in the chapter on blood diseases. If you want to cool off in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will throw open all those myriads of pores, which by converting the water in the system into perspiration, casts out heat, and refreshes mind and body. If you want to work hard with brain or muscles, without exhaustion, breathe abundantly of pure air, for it is the great invigorator of life and all its powers. Deep breathing is your great preventive of fevers and consumption, and nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to; if you want to break up fevers or colds, espe- cially if you want to unload the system of impure matter, or save your constitution and doctor's fees, cover up warm, drink plenty of water, sufficient to produce reaction, then breathe, breathe, breathe, just as fast as you can, and as a rule you can forestall and prevent the worse attack of disease that you can ever have. This will unload the system from disease impurities through the pores of the skin and lungs, and infuse and charge the system with oxygen, which will grapple with and expel disease in all its forms and restore health, strength and life. All nature has no remedy equal to it. Try the experiment and it will revolutionize your whole condition and change your idea of the present existing scientific but false theories of the cause of disease, existing and now taught so universally all over the world. Nature knows no politics; she is the same to-day, she always has been and will remain the same for all time to come. Even if you have the blues, deep breathing will dispel them if you add vigorous exercise. If you want to put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action. In short, deep copious breathing is the Alpha and Omega of all physical, and therefore of all mental, functions and enjoyments. The elements furnished to the blood by breathing are more THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 540 indispensable to life than those derived from digestion, because we can live longer without food than without air; starvation is terrible, but suffocation dispatches its victims a hundred-fold quicker and with more certainty. Indeed mankind can live but a few minutes without air, showing clearly that without it all the other materials from food would be of no avail, and it must be perpetually renewed in large quantities to keep up the vital process to a health standard; as fire goes down with the scarcity of oxygen and goes out as it dis- appears, so the fire of life goes down just in proportion as the sup- ply of oxygen disappears. Think what this statement means. When this is fully understood we can understand the importance of having continuous circulation of fresh air in all rooms, and particularly in the sick room. The office of the lungs is to bring the air in the air cells just as closely alongside of the blood in the blood cells as possible, yet keep them separate. The main body of the lungs themselves con- sists of a gauze membrane, containing, if spread out, from fifteen to twenty thousand square inches, according as the lungs are larger or smaller in different persons. This membrane is folded up so as to form two sets of tubes or cells by means of cartilage on one side of which is the blood, and on the other the air is constantly rushing in and out by inspiration and expiration. Nature economizes every- thing, space included, and by this folding contrivance of this mem- brane presents a large amount of surface in a small compass. A similar contrivance is that by which she has folded the intestinal canal, and still further folded its mucous surface, so that a great amount may be contained within a small compass. But for this arrangement the size of the lungs needs be immense. Thus a large surface is provided for the circulation of the air in the air cells, side by side with the blood in the blood cells; the right lung is some- what larger than the left and the two envelop the heart, which facili- tates their combined functions. The lungs resemble the finest gauze membrane, the inter-lacings of which are so fine that the oxygen or electricity of the air, but not the air itself, can pass through it into the lungs and the carbonic acid gas pass out through it, but not the blood, nor can they commingle. This guaze resembles a strainer, THE MIND OR WILL POWER 541 so fine as to keep the air in its air cells and yet allow the gases, oxygen and carbonic acid gas to pass in and out at pleasure. Mus- cular fibres ramify throughout all these cells to contract and ex- pand them. One-fifth of the air in the lungs is expired; an ordi- nary pair of lungs when inflated, contains about one hundred cubic inches, while the amount expelled at each expiration is about twenty cubic inches, so that one-fifth of the air is changed in the lungs at each breath, which is probably for the purpose of keeping a per- petual supply of oxygen in them, and possibly to keep them from collapsing. REASON. The faculty of reason is to man what the conductor is to a train, the manager and director of all; who orders all what to do and how to do it. This power of reason helps to whip up the laggard faculties and hold the reins on the rampant ones. It tells us when we are in the right and when going astray; it adjusts all, and takes the short cut and best road to desired ends. How impressive the lesson that is taught us by this reasoning faculty, and we should place and use it in our conduct, where God has placed it, in our heads-above and before all else. It is the guide and engineer of all; the chief justice, the su- preme court whose decisions overrule all and are final. With the per- ceptives as an aid to bring facts, furnish data, to serve as pages and spies, to prepare its cases and convey its decisions, it is king over all, to whom all else human bows in meek submission. It descends deeper into nature's hidden mysteries; it soars higher into eternal truth, than all other faculties of the brain. Man owes his chief superiority over brutes, civilized man over savage, the great men of all times and races over their inferiors, the Caucasian over all other races, philosophers over fools, mainly to this faculty of reason. Memory is a good thing, but judgment based upon reason is better. Knowledge is valuable, but philosophy is to it what gold is to silver. Reason is the helm by which you reach the center of action; the mainspring from which all power is derived. The impressions made on perceptive intellect are useful and last- ing, but those made on the hard sense of man are much more so. The former is like a fire made of shavings-blazing, crackling and bril- liant; while those made on reason are like a fire of hard coal, slow to kindle, but when well started pours out a heat that is penetrating and lasting. Give men reason in the morning, sense at noon and philoso- phy at night, day by day, in the morning, noon and evening of life, and take what else you like. Let me work on the thought of mankind, 542 REASON 543 and I care not who works on their feelings. Let me teach them truth by reason; give me their understanding and I do not care who has the remainder, for this will control that. I prefer to study philosophy while others are studying history or whatever else they like, with no reason to envy them; let reason guide and govern all my family ties, all my business movements and projects, my tongue and pen; in fact all I do and am, and when I die let my reasoning powers be last to lie down in death and first to rise up in immortal splendor and sit in the chariot forever more. Throughout the past century the grand idea is perfectly apparent that the reasoning powers of man have begun to be generally perceived and admitted; but even this great truth, palpable as it is, is still prac- tically, if not absolutely, denied in the matter of health and sickness, especially its causes, which so many ascribe to providence instead of regarding them as a violation of an absolute law. The great mass of mankind get their thinking done by proxy, and medical leaders ride into power on any trolley, no matter how unrea- sonable their fads or fashions may be. The same statement holds good in our politics, as well as in our religion. Leaders do most of the thinking of mankind. The masses are incapable of forming their own opinions, and must take them already formed for them by an- tiquity or by their present leaders. Is not this a virtual surrender of independent thinking, and the fact that so many follow their sectarian leaders in the various medical sects is positive proof of their own feebleness or reason ? Especially is this true in medicine and politics, but if men thought for themselves would these differences exist? This very sectarian diversity presupposes error, while if men did their own thinking they would perceive and abandon. The same holds good in the fashionable world. Does it think ? No; as well look.for "a needle in a hay-stack" as for an original thought among our fash- ionables. Business men will think on money matters; they are shrewd in- deed, but they rarely put a thought in searching out these great prin- ciples of nature. If they did so they would give to themselves and family robust health and an increase of ten, twenty or thirty years of life. This can be done by investigating those fundamental laws of 544 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE things and the observations thereof, on which really all human happi- ness depends. Deduct the business world, the fashionable world, the religious world, the political world-well, the whole world; then sub- tract from this balance the ignorant and debased who do not even try to think at all, and what a miserable moiety remains. It is this lack of reason among the laity which allows designing men, by flattering the prejudices and catering to the passions, to con- vert these laws into mere tools by which they accomplish their selfish and wicked purposes. It enables the few to control the many, starves those who live by honest labor and intellect, but showers honors and fortunes on those who live by feeding the animal, social or selfish pro- pensities of mankind. It renders what we call polite conversation perfectly nonsensical. It rates riches higher than talents and renders man a creature of blind passions. When will men learn for them- selves? When will they govern their opinions and conduct by the principles of true philosophy? When will they place manly thought at the helm of both public affairs and private opinions, and especially to this most desirable good, continued health and long life? This will be when they begin to cultivate the reasoning faculties of man commensurate with its great importance. The deficiency of reason is well nigh as great as is its indispensa- ble usefulness in all the affairs of life. What mental blindness, al- most imbecility, characterizes much that is said and done around us! What stupidity in the choice of subjects of pursuit, as well as modes of their prosecution. How few ideas men possess. What littleness of thought. Man boasts of being possessed of reason, yet, alas! how little he uses this noble God-like power, which should stand at the head of his nature, guide and govern his entire conduct, but which is thrust, alas! into the background; its voice is stifled amid the roar of his animal passion; he does not heed the warning of his reason and refuses to be guided by it. Behold what utter folly characterizes the opinions and conduct of most men. HYPNOTISM, Hypnotism is not a power; it is a weakness in yourself. It would be better to say a fineness of the vibrating sensibilities of your nervous system. Hypnotism is not produced by any particular power by the so-called hypnotist; it is the effect of a suggestion. We know the effect of talking through a telephone a thousand miles away; it is due to the effect of your voice through this instrument called the telephone. It is the same identical law that hypnotizes you when the operator says you shall do this or you shall do that; you do it, not because the operator has any particular power, but because of the fineness and sensitiveness of yourself. You hypnotize yourself; every hypnotist knows this to be true, but makes you believe the power is in him. When you know this you know you can do it as well as any one under the same circumstances; the trick is to select the right instrument to talk to; that is to select the right person. This is short, but it is all there is to this wonderful humbug called hypnotism. Humbug because what little truth, and often beneficial truth, is mis- represented in order to catch the dollars of the credulous and curious. 545 THE SKIN. "There's a skin without and a skin within, A covering skin and a lining skin, But the skin within is the skin without Doubled inwards and carried completely throughout. "The palate, the nostrils, the windpipe and throat Are all of them lined with this inner coat, Which through every part is made to extend- Lungs, liver and bowels, from end to end. "The outer skin is a marvelous plan For exuding the dregs of the flesh of man; While the inner extracts from the food and the air What is needed the waste in his flesh to repair. "While it goes well with the outside skin, You may feel pretty sure all's right within; For if anything puts the inner skin out Of order, it troubles the skin without. "The doctor, you know, examines your tongue To see if your stomach or bowels are wrong; If he feels that your hand is hot and dry, He is able to tell the reason why. "Too much brandy, and whiskey, or gin, Is apt to disorder the skin within; While if dirty or dry, the skin without Refuses to let the sweat come out. 546 THE SKIN 547 "Good people all, have a care of your skin, Both that without and that within; To the first you'll give plenty of water and soap, To the last little else besides water we'll hope. "But always be very particular where You get your water, your food and your air; For if these be tainted or rendered impure, It will have its effect on your blood-be sure. "The food which will ever for you be the best Is that you like most and can soonest digest; All unripe fruit and decaying flesh Beware of, and fish that is not very fresh. "Your water, transparent and pure, as you think it, Had better be filter'd and boil'd ere you use it, Unless you know surely that nothing unsound Can have got to it, over or under the ground. "But of all things the most I would have you beware Of breathing the poison of once breathed air; When in bed, whether out or at home you may be, Always open your windows and let it go free. "With clothing and exercise keep yourself warm, And change your clothes quickly if drenched in a storm, For a cold caught by chilling the outside skin Flies at once to the delicate lining within. "All of you who thus kindly take care of your skin And attend to its wants, without and within, Need never of smallpox feel any fears, And your skin may last you a hundred years." PATENT MEDICINES-THEIR BENEFITS AND INJURY- WHAT THEY ARE MADE OF. About the same amount of money is paid out by the public in the United States annually for patent medicines as there is paid to the physicians for treating disease. The question naturally arises, "Why so?" Is it because the physicians do not have the skill to treat dis- ease, or is it on account of the shrewdness of the manufacturers of these nostrums so as to be able to humbug the people in a manner to get them to buy their stuff, or do they really help the patient more than the legitimate physician's medicines? There are "yes" and "no" an- swers to all these questions. My experience and observation has been that although the public are largely to blame, the doctors are more so; first, because the doctors as a rule are humbugging the public about as much, if not more, than the patent medicine men, and the public, generally being ignorant in anything pertaining to medicine, often try anything, hoping it will do them good. I venture to make the statement that nearly every patent medicine sold is utterly of no value to cure any disease. At the same time I have known many cases where the patient has tried the best doctors for months with- out any benefit, and often continually getting worse, but finally would see some patent medicine advertised that just described her case, and would finally say, "I do not believe in patent medicines, but doctors do not help me, and I will just try it"; takes one bottle, thinks she feels a little better; takes a few more and thinks she is cured, and why? In the first place there was nothing much the mat- ter with her when she went to the doctor. Nature cured her ailment, but the doctor's medicine kept her feeling badly until she took the patent medicine, which was so harmless that she got over the effect 548 PATENT MEDICINES 549 of the doctor's strong medicines and she was well and gave the patent medicine the credit, on the same principle that we doctors often get the credit of great cures when nature really cured the case, but the harmless and useless medicine gets the credit. When doctors will begin to be honest with their patients and not humbug them, and the public be honest with their physicians, the patent medicine hum- bug will die its natural death. Let us see what some of our most prominent patent medicines are made of. When we know the trash they are composed of it would shame the most credulous person to think of buying any of them; it is safe to say that most of them are not worth the bottle they are put up in. Take, for instance, "Warner's Safe Kidney Cure." Its principal ingredient is said to be saltpeter and buchu, and with five dollars' worth of material about a carload of the medicine can be made. The widely advertised "Piso's Cure for Consumption" is said to be composed of Lobelia, Tolu, Canabis Indica, Chloroform, Morphine, Tartar Emetic and Spearmint. Now, this is nothing more than one of the old-fash- ioned gunshot prescriptions for a cough from a cold, and at the pres- ent time is even a poor cough mixture. Shilo's Consumption Cure is quoted to contain muriatic acid, herbane, morphine, ginger, wild cherry, chloroform, peppermint, alcohol, tar and sugar; this mixture is warranted to cure consumption. Just as Piso's cure, it contains the ordinary remedies prescribed for a cold and will make the patient feel relieved for a time, but will hasten his consumption if he really has it. Pierce's so-called "Favorite Prescription" is published to contain cinchona, agaric, cinnamon, acacia, sugar savin, digitalis, opium and oil of anise; nothing in the form of a prescription could be put to- gether that would be of less value, and yet in all the newspapers you will see depicted, to catch the eyes of the credulous public, skulls and skeletons, and with the advertisements following you would imagine this prescription could almost bring dead flesh and blood back to life. Kennedy's Medical Discovery is composed of sneeze wort, bitter root, wintergreen, licorice, sugar and alcohol. This is advertised to be one of the most powerful alteratives known to science. If a per- 550 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE son knew he was paying a dollar a pint for such stuff it would cer- tainly alter-a-tive his opinion of its value. Pain's Celery Compound is of a similar type. About the time that the public began to think that celery was a nerve tonic this medicine sprung up, and it is the name of celery that sells it, but mighty little of it it contains. It contains from 16 to 18 per cent of alcohol, ac- cording to a reported analysis; this is four times as much alcohol as lager beer contains. No wonder it makes some people feel good. One more is Lydia E. Pinkham's Compound. This preparation is said to contain cramp bark, partridge berry, poplar bark, unicorn root, cassia, beth root and alcohol. The first two remedies have some influence and are a value as a uterine tonic and have been prescribed by intelligent physicians for perhaps a century, but it is certainly an impossibility, as is claimed for this remedy, to jerk a womb back into place when misplaced, or cause a suffering female of ninety sum- mers to dance a jig after a few doses have been taken. The remedies I have mentioned are a fair sample of the patent medicines of the present time. If the public knew that when they pay one dollar for patent medi- cines, they pay one penny for trashy stuff and ninety-nine cents for the humbug, it would soon be a thing of the past. In Germany secret patent medicines are unknown, for the formula must be printed on every bottle or package. If the makers of the thousands of different patent medicines in this country were made to put the formula on each bottle it would disclose the fact that more money has been spent by the people to sustain this, the greatest hum- bug that ever was sprung on the American people, barring the scien- tific medical humbug. The practice of medicine and the drug business are of the same nature, only different in degree. Why is all this? Because neither have any opposition from the public. All history tells us that where there is no opposition by the public the greatest corruption always ex- ists, let it be politics, religion or medicine. The regular physicians do not object to patent medicines, because they claim that a large proportion of the sickness they are called upon PATENT MEDICINES 551 to treat has been caused by taking these patent nostrums, the effect of these medicines not showing itself sometimes for months or years afterwards. Say nothing about the ordinary newspapers, the relig- ious press, even some of the prominent doctors, ministers, as well as senators and congressmen, will recommend these patent medicines just for the dollar there is in it. LA GRIPPE. Of all the scientific blunders since the time of blistering and bleed- ing, nothing is equal to the ignorance shown in the handling of La Grippe. Again is the maxim "The old woman's remedy was the best" proven true. Nowhere could better evidence be adduced to show that guess- work and pretense and the tact to make it appear that you understand and take interest in the case, and that the physicians have been in- competent to diagnose the condition, even when the symptoms are so plain that with any knowledge of physiology it would seem almost impossible to blunder, as they have done in recognizing the real con- dition that existed where anyone was taken with the disease called "la grippe," or as it is commonly called, influenza. As an illustration of this paucity of information, a leading authority, in a president's ad- dress before a medical association, says about la grippe, that: "The year was ushered in by a strange disease that swept over the country and defied the microscope or the analysis of the chemist to explain." The tacit admission that is given of the epidemic is to be found in his characterizing it "a strange disease." Nothing was said about its cause or the real condition existing or the treatment. Is not this in keeping with the inordinate pretenses of our brethren who claim the possession of a monopoly of scientific knowledge? Have we not the right to expect that such an august and learned body of men would not have been so derelict in their duty to the public as to leave it in total ignorance respecting the nature of la grippe, that has de- vastated the country so long? But this is one of the usual illustra- tions of what is called "progress in medicine." It looks very well on paper, but I fail to see where it contributes to the world's stock of knowledge. Influenza is caused from the same conditions that produce a cold, only they are more severe. The atmosphere is more damp or humid, 552 LA GRIPPE 553 and usually eastern winds prevail. In 1889 when the severe epidemic existed it started on the eastern continent and gradually, after spread- ing over Europe, crossed the ocean to the United States; the news- papers described the symptoms before the disease had reached the middle states and from the symptoms thus described I came to the conclusion that it was purely a disease of the nervous system. The symptoms are, in severe cases, a feeling of general prostration and pain, which in common parlance would be called "ache all over"; head, spine, arms and legs, with chills, followed by high fever, some- times bordering on delirium. If, during the severe epidemic of 1889, not a drop of medicine had been given and only the usual good "old granny" nursing and her hot cup of ginger tea had been used (not considering this the best treatment by any means) the results would have been a hundred fold better (and this is putting it mildly) than were the methods followed by practitioners. This is a strong state- ment, and I propose to make it good. Thousands of patients under physicians' care were seriously ill from one to three months; then slowly recovered in as many more in the fortunate cases, while the unfortunate gradually sank into consumption and generally from the treatment that was injurious; not that the medicine alone was at fault, but because it did no good; I mean by this that if the disease, in most cases, is not broken up between the first and the third day (which can be done every time), a long and tedious recovery will follow, if not death. Being located in a large city during the "epidemic," I treated eighty-two cases, and made less than one hundred and twenty-five visits, where most physicians would get that many out of two to three cases, and often out of one. In relating my method of treatment to physicians and the success I had in treating la grippe, they said, "Doc- tor, you are a big fool; now is the time for your harvest, and you are a fool for not taking its benefits"; these same men are great professors in medical colleges, and of course opinions are no good, as a rule, among the physicians, and much less among the public. Medic savants talk glibly about the many symptoms in "influ- enza," all the way from a cold in the head to sensation down the back, chilliness, chattering of the teeth and general tremor, flashes of heat, 554 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE dryness of skin, pain in chest and extremities, depression of spirits, tendency to vomiting, with diarrhea or the converse, etc.; then comes the different descriptions of tongue, pulse, temperature, color of sputa, the body cold and clammy, with sticky sweats, together with many other symptoms, and a final sympathy and hope of the ultimate re- covery of the patient; but that it would be slow, discouragingly so, and the weakness continue for so long a time that it makes the heart sick. Now instead of describing all these symptoms, if they had studied and learned to understand the condition that caused all these symp- toms the treatment would suggest itself. Oh, no, poor fellows, they can't put on a thinking cap that would tell them that all pains due to colds are nerve obstructions; that in la grippe the obstruction is gen- eral, affecting the main wheels of the vital machinery; that is, the spinal cord and brain; that this affects the functions of all the organs, which means the retention of large quantities of waste matter, poison- ing the system with urea and other excreta; and that unless this nerve obstruction is quickly removed, general prostration must be the re- sult ; but when large doses of quinine are given and remedies of simi- lar action it only adds fuel to the fire. Is it any wonder the results were so unsatisfactory, of long continued suffering and in many cases death from consumption in some of the strongest constitutions ? I said these severe aches of la grippe was nerve obstruction and should be removed as soon as possible, at least within twenty-four to thirty-six hours; unless this is accomplished a long and tedious recovery is liable to follow, often leaving serious after results. How is this nerve obstruction to be relieved in the shortest possible time? By relaxation; that is, by getting the patient into a good sweat asi soon as possible and keep him in a steady but slight perspiration until the pains subside; the simplest means are the best to produce this ef- fect; hot drinks, with jugs of hot water laid around the patient; if any medicine must be given, give the following prescription; no other medicine is needed until the patient is convalescent: Sodii Bromidi-One dram. Pulv. Hyoscyamus-Grains ten. Make into five powders and give one to an adult every three or LA GRIPPE 555 four hours until relieved, in a little water as hot as can be taken; weak and delicate people give one-half the dose, but the patient should be put to bed, brought into a sweat not too severe, but kept up steadily until the symptoms disappear, which in milder cases occurs in from six to twelve hours. It is not the object of this book to treat disease, but we have di- gressed from our rule on this one occasion on account of the great harm that is being done, as well as the many lives lost, in not under- standing the condition really existing and what should be accom- plished, and that success absolutely lies in removing this nerve ob- struction immediately or serious results are almost sure to follow. At least a long and discouraging recovery is the best to be expected in severe cases. CATARRH: ITS CAUSES AND CURE. According to the noble and grandly orthodox doctors, as well as to the advertising fakes and the patent medicine man, catarrh is a most dangerous disease, and will lead to most any of the fatal dis- eases, from consumption down to a simple sore throat. This is not true; catarrh of the nose is not a dangerous disease. There has been a hundredfold more harm done in treating catarrh than has been done by the disease itself. Compare the conditions of those who have never used any treatment and those who are continually spraying their nose with some remedy that makes them feel good for a time; all of that class of remedies are dangerous. Catarrh never should be treated during the day time while different temperatures of the air are coming in contact with the mucous membrane of the nose. Those cases needing a little treatment should only be treated at bed time and an even temperature, not too cold, kept in the sleep- ing room. Most people are frightened into treatment for catarrh by the large amount of advertising put before them; and our goody- goody doctors serve their patients no better. Sufferers from catarrh are usually sensitive people, and this is why they are so easily led into believing what doctors, quacks and advertising sheets say. Per- haps by giving my own experiments will make this more clear; for ten years I have followed the specialties of treating the eyes, ears, nose and throat; during those ten years thousands have consulted me as to treatment for catarrh; the most of them I gave advice, a few I have given treatment, but never need they consult me but once. I give them their medicine and tell them how to use it; that ends it all; all improve and get well and I am sure that during the ten years I have not made as much money in treating catarrh as specialists and quacks make, as a rule, in one month, although charging the same rate. To catch the confidence of the people remedies are studied out which will make the patient feel good while using them, but the 556 CATARRH : ITS CAUSES AND CURE 557 patient is sure to fall back to worse conditions shortly after the treat- ment is stopped. Of course a dry atmosphere is the best remedy, but we can't always have this; the object must be to overcome this sensitiveness of the mucous membrane, and to this my attention has been devoted and I have finally succeeded in finding such a remedy, but its good effects are slow, sometimes weeks elapse before much benefit arrives, but the results are permanent, with reasonable atten- tion to sudden exposures and changes of atmospheric temperatures and conditions. Every person does his own treating, making it con- venient and inexpensive. Chronic deafness is usually due to catarrh, and to check this condition and improve it is the main object of my treatment, but anyone noticing that the hearing is affected should begin at once, and, as before stated, the medicine should only be applied at bed time. This method is simple, and the medicines can be mailed to anyone. THE EXERCISE CURE. As a prevention and cure of disease exercise has no equal, because it promotes every function of the body, by virtue of that law of bal- ance already demonstrated. It compels the lungs to breathe more, thereby sending the blood along through all its minute blood-vessels, using up and demanding more organic material, increasing the action of the eliminating organs, such as the skin, bowels, kidneys, relieving constipation by this increase and balanced blood action, and ferreting out and fortifying all weak spots; hence, is one of the most efficient of all cures. Two hours of vigorous muscular exercise every day is as little as is compatible with first-rate health. Of course, excellent constitutions may endure close confinement for years, but will finally run down in health. Again a lower degree of health may be pre- served on less exercise, but the order of nature really is to spend a large share of the day in the open air. For the perfection of health a great amount of muscular action is required; several hours' labor per day will suffice for exercise, if well expended by each person on something pleasurable or productive; this would supply the human family with physical and mental comfort, artificial wants and extrava- gancies excepted. How admirably adapted is the amount of labor requisite for health to that required to provide man with the neces- saries of life; how much exercise it requires for the time being can be determined better by the feelings of each at that time, just as a normal appetite is the infallible guide to the quantity of food required, so is muscular appetite, unless rendered abnormal by inaction and will say when and how much exercise each one requires at that time, and will tell when we are taking too much or if at improper times. To deter- mine whether we need it is just as easy as to determine whether we require food; that is, we should have an appetite for it. Those re- quire exercise who are benefited by it, who feel better after taking it, who sleep more sweetly and experience an increase of appetite. This 558 THE EXERCISE CURE 559 adds cleanliness to the mind as well as an agreeableness to the dispo- sition, and it will surely do this for those whose business confines them much indoors, and for those who feel a craving for work. A great mistake of those who are convinced of the need of it is that they are apt to take it in excess or unseasonably, or too violently, but that same appetite which demands, if closely watched, will advise you the instant this occurs and should then be stopped at once. A kind of trembling, excited or hurried feeling will tell you when to stop, or instead of exercising or playing easily it seems to be forced; this would indicate excess, which always injures; therefore stop exercise the instant such trembling or other unpleasant symptoms commence. Fitful, excessive or violent exercises, especially for those of sedentary habits, is injurious; such should exercise deliberately, as well as eat slowly, or exhaustion will set in before a due degree of exercise is ob- tained ; thus all overwork of brain or muscle stupefies their minds and blunts their fine sensibilities. Such should restrain themselves, and change from mental to muscular, and muscular to mental. Walking is one of the best kinds of exercise; it is very cheap and easily taken, and is even well adapted to the existing states of all. When brisk it affects every muscle, as well as all the functions of the body, but invalids should take it more leisurely. In taking it walk erect, allowing the arms to swing at ease; keep the shoulders well set back, taking a full inspiration at every breath to charge the blood with oxygen and send it to every blood-vessel to perform its great function of recuperation. Do not neglect this most important part. When walking, if convenient, walk with a friend, and all the better if of the opposite sex; a wife or daughter, son or lover, so as to impart to it that mental luxury which greatly improves its utility; yet walking alone and musing over some pleasant subject will benefit both body and mind together. Walking, to be useful and beneficial, must at least be delightful, and the more parts it brings into co-operation the bettter; hence adding conversation improves it. Dancing can be made as beneficial as it is delightful, although dancing all night in a hot and ill-ventilated room once in weeks or months and going out exhausted and exposed to colds, together with most of the associations of the ball room, are most pernicious. But if 560 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE you will select your company and meet at each other's houses in the afternoon or evening, always avoiding over-exertion, and retiring by ten o'clock, if practiced often, will supply in part, if not the whole, that deficiency of muscular action which causes so many to sicken and die; if properly carried out this would restore many an invalid now perish- ing by inches from pure want of exercise, and it would often preserve and even invigorate the health of many now going into a decline. The great trouble is that it rarely is, and yet might be, conducted to prove very beneficial, instead of the evils so often induced by dancing; in fact, it is found in the nature of man and can therefore be turned to a most excellent and practical account in a great many ways; especially to the sedentary young women this kind of exercise can be particularly recommended, yet all should dance to their own music and also in company with parents and elders; young people should rarely dance exclusively by themselves. Although our present purpose is more to point out to the sedentary a feasible mode of taking exercise and not to guard against the evils associated with it. Laborers who sit or stand much in one position can in this way change and diversify their actions, remove fatigue, promote their health and even render un- healthy occupations healthy; such as dressmaking, shoemaking, jewel- ers, and many others of like occupations, should dance daily with as much regularity as they eat, providing they have no other substi- tute. It is too bad that more of us do not realize the beautifying value of proper exercise, and there is no exercise better than walking. Of course you must be properly dressed and you must enter into this with the right spirit. Make it a pleasure not a task. Have a new or con- genial place to go, and while you are going don't tie bow-knots of wrinkles in your face fretting about the fourteen pairs of stockings that you have to darn when you get home, or the flub-tubby caller you must entertain in the afternoon. Pick up your feet when you walk and hold your head and shoulders well back. Then stride along with just as much sunshine in your heart as the woes of this troublesome old world will let creep in. Walking beautifies in more ways than one. It makes the blood hurry and scurry through the veins and the result is bright eyes and THE EXERCISE CURE 561 blush rose cheeks. The changing scenes of the streets bring animation and thought, and thus you acquire an expression bright and pleasant to behold. If your clothes are tight and pinchy you will waddle along like a little duckling in a three-gored skirt, but if your gown is com- fortably loose, as it rightly should be, the exercise will give you grace and carriage. And besides all this, it stirs you up; it animates; it makes you glad you're here with the rest of us. So my dears, put on your bonnets, as the white haired ladies say, and get out into the sweet refreshing sunshine of spring. Exercise means health and health means beauty. There you have it in a nutshell, and a small nutshell at that. Work of all kinds by a law of things becomes excellent exercise, providing it is inviting, but all kinds of exercise taken as a task or drudgery is injurious. We should select some kind of work that we enjoy or like and try to like whatever we must take. Farming and gardening to those who like to see things grow is one of the best forms of exercise. Man was really made to raise his own food and fruits and I think most of us like to see things grow. When not over-done, nothing will develop the muscle and promote all the bodily functions like planting, hoeing, nursing, gathering fruits, flow- ers, vegetables, etc. Working the ground, which is highly electric, has a strong influence to restore and regulate those magnetic currents which manifest life. A reverend gentleman some years ago consulted me as to what he had better do for a change, as his health was completely broken down from preaching. I told him that all he needed was exercise, and to breathe good fresh air, charge his blood with oxygen and to arrange for cultivating a garden, and to retain his position as pastor and he would regain his health. Three months later he called again and said that his health was rapidly recovering, that he could preach now with- out difficulty, and his parishioners said his sermons were much better than before. Gymnastic exercises are excellent when not carried to excess, as they usually are; the great trouble being to try to out-do someone else, thereby straining the muscles and leaving them inert. Mingling in company with the sexes, with gaiety and laughter, and 562 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE many light little things are good and heartily recommended. The best time for exercise is in the morning before work begins, or just be- fore retiring, but it should be regular. Those who use their brains mainly in business or professional life will find a good smart walk or lift to rest them amazingly; such persons should walk to their work or business, instead of riding in the street cars, as most of them do, for this has a tendency to equalize the circulation and divert it from the parts oppressed; in this kind of exercise the recuperative facts are indeed wonderful. A good evening walk or some other exercise will improve both your night's sleep, and next day's work. Adapt your time to your circumstances, but take some time for exercise. The benefit derived lies in its restoring an equal balance of actions upon the system of the sedentary, literary or business man. Many who are now so run down that they think they must absolutely quit business or die, might, if they would spend fifteen or twenty minutes daily in walking or lifting judiciously, work on and work themselves rich and well. But most of all, it wants to be remembered that your business hours, your pleasures and your exercise hours added together should constitute a day's work, and not more; otherwise it would be even better to leave out the exercise and go to bed and sleep. The healthy object of exercise and pleasure is to bring into action those parts that lie dormant during business hours, and balance the circulation of the body, but all this uses up more or less energy, therefore pleasure, exer- cise and business hours added should be a day's work. SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK? When shall we learn that the end of labor is to gain leisure? and that it is possible to be just as injuriously addicted to overwork as to other evil indulgences, and that an equal amount, although of a differ- ent kind of mischief, can accrue to one's self and family in one direc- tion as well as in others. The modern revival of the dogma of the nobleness of work has been pushed too far; its worship for its own sake is so deeply implanted that it has become almost pernicious and extreme as the "old and now unfashionable worship of idleness." We believe that a protest was never more urgently needed than at this hour; everywhere men are killing themselves by overwork, by constant exhausting labor, and a remonstrance to bring mankind back to the law of balance that is midway between the two extremes cannot come a moment too soon. The life of the present day is lived to a fever heat, caused by this fierce struggle going on in all the departments of labor, and the mental wear and tear is enormous. There is no more deep rooted cause for American disease than overwork of the brain and overexcitement of the nervous system, which are the legitimate consequences of their intense activity, hence nervous diseases, con- sumption, insanity, dyspepsia, and all of its brood of disorders that fall in its train. In other words, the American works himself to death. The employer crowds his workmen beyond natural endurance, wreck- ing constitutions and families by the same; while on the other hand the employer keeps his mental strain at such a high pitch that in the end he suffers even more than his laborers. The body has its claim and is a good servant; treat it well and it will do you good work. The same is true between employer and his laborers. Treat them well so that they will do their work with pleasure and they will perform more work with less friction and wear upon their own system and health, at the same time giving the.employer more work than by keeping them under a constant strain and excitement, able to do less work under the 563 564 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE crowding system than under harmonious and pleasing relations be- tween laborer and employer. Give a little attention as to wants and re- quirements, with kind and patient hints, and these little indulgences and considerations will be repaid with compound interest. But task the man half suffocated, making him a slave instead of a servant, and he will not complain much, but he will be like the "camel in the desert," lie down and die, perhaps ten, twenty, or forty years before the time allotted him by Nature. Life in all of the professions is literally a battle, and men are falling by the hundred in the thick of the fight. The desire to get rich in a few years, the pride of doing an immense business, or being the leader of the bar or the medical profession, leads thousands to work double gait. They are continually robbing themselves of sleep, rest and play until they break down and go into an insane asylum or into the grave. Should we not then welcome the gospel which would pro- claim that work is not the end in itself, much less the highest earthly good? Work may, indeed, like all human affections, be turned into a blessing if not abused; work when worshiped, as it sometimes is by its servants, or when governed by avarice or impatience or early folly, too often degenerates into drudgery; then it certainly is not a blessing. No, there is nothing in drudgery that is fitted to produce happiness, health or beauty of character. On the contrary its tendency is to mar all that is fair and lovely in all our nature. Of all the nations of the earth, there is not one among whose people this doctrine of "grind" has taken deeper root than among us Americans. From our earliest days we have been too excessively fond of work. Formerly it was as a means of providing a living only, in recent years we continue to drudge like galley slaves, even after we have provided for the ever dreaded "rainy day," and the pressure of bread getting has long passed; hence we have so few holidays and seasons of rest and recrea- tion that when we do have one \ve hardly know what to do with our- selves. For this same reason these days are so grossly abused by many in riotous dissipation and drunkenness, swamping themselves with abominations, and laying the foundation for serious and sometimes fatal diseases. This is the result of seldom taking lawful pleasure and alternating a long spell of excessive labor with a comparatively SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 565 short spell of excessive repose, and is about as rational as that of a man who is taking a bottle of brandy one day and a quart of water the next day, then claims to be drinking brandy and water. It is time that the old theological idea that mortals are only sent here for chastisement and mortification should be scouted from our minds; it is time that this everlasting drudgery should cease among us and that some higher lesson should be impressed upon the brain other than the old saw about "work, industry, money-making and the like." Let us abolish a portion of our devotion to the "almighty dollar" and regard the world as something better than a workshop in which we are to toil unceasingly until death stops the human machine a score of years or more before our allotted time; let us learn that the surest and best way to get on in the world is not to travel in this lightning sort of way but to hasten more slowly. It is actually a libel on Providence that we live and abuse our physical being; wasting our lives in such a plodding way and be simply mill horses, treading this same unchang- ing round continuously and all for grist-grist and still grist, until we have become as blind and stupid as that most unhappy of all animals, "the mule." It is still more absurd to suppose that to work desperately and to be intensely employed is in itself praiseworthy, especially if it be by something in which there is no truth, beauty or usefulness, and makes no man happier or wiser. The truth is, that to work with this unsatiable greed requires much more strain than to work judiciously, and it takes less courage than it does to refuse work that cannot be done honestly. We have to some degree harshly scouted the prevailing idea that we must exercise in order to be healthy. One of the most common assertions to be heard in the office or among some of the members of the home is that we cannot or do not have sufficient physical exercise. This statement is true, and again it is not true; so far the teacher of physical culture has only looked upon one side of the question and therefore many erroneous conclusions have been formed. We do not dispute the fact that proper exercise is beneficial, but we claim that the effect of proper exercise, as generally understood by the public, is injurious. Exercise means the loss of physical energy, and to carry this beyond your natural capacity of supplying this life element means 566 _ THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE you are overdrawing your physical bank account, which usually means the loss of credit and at last bankruptcy, sickness or death. Exercise must only be considered upon the same fundamental laws and principles of supply, demand and endurance, just as a railroad engine can only be exercised in proportion to its capacity for energy it is capable of supplying. Every move made by the engine exhausts just so much energy, therefore uses just that much more fuel. When a certain amount of work is to be performed by an engine, steam is generally brought up to its fullest capacity, thus leaving an allowance, or rather, a reserve, to assist it with its load over the up-grades of the road. Man is a much more complex machine, but in many ways a more perfect one, and guided by absolute and certain laws, which are the natural laws, while the steam engine is guided by the human being, and is more liable to err than nature is liable to err in the human being. Another difference is that the human being from birth until death is always active to greater or less degree, never at rest, therefore must be continually exhausting energy . Each human being, according to his constitution, has a power or function to create a certain amount of energy; this amount of energy is used up in several ways; by physical exercise, mental exercise, and the necessary amount for growth and nourishment of the body. The body during the day, or rather during waking hours, even under the ordinary conditions, uses more energy than the system is able to generate, while during the hours of sleep the system generates more energy than is used, and like the engine, when steam is brought up to its full capacity, giving it a reserve for any extraordinary draught that may be made upon it; so we should wake up in the morning with an extra supply of energy for any extraordinary draught that may be made upon us during the day. We said that the body ordinarily uses up more energy during waking hours than is supplied; just in the same proportion does the system create more waste matter during waking hours than is gener- ally eliminated. This excess of waste is generally what makes us feel tired. If it were not for this peculiarity sleep would be unnecessary. This is why a person who comes down with typhoid or kindred diseases always feels tired and loggy, because of the excess of waste matter or similar poisons taken in and retained in the system. The SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 567 existing ignorance of the subject is due to the neglect or failure of mod- ern writers and teachers upon this subject of exercise to consider the ne- cessity of this law of balance between supply and demand, the power of creating and using of energy, and the power of creating waste and the power to eliminate this waste. In short, we should learn to live, and employers should be compelled to allow each working man to live in such a way as to get up well every morning, because every human being goes to bed sick every night. The essential point we wish to make in this chapter then, is Ihat every individual, in a sense, is a sick person every night and a well one in the morning; that is, he is a well person in the morning, provided he did not make himself too sick the day before, so that he could re- cuperate and be well in the morning. This again only demonstrates this law of balance and proportion which nature demands, and has been used as our text in so many explanations of the different orders of nature in defining the normal and abnormal functions of the body, as well as those of the whole universe. The man who can perform ten hours' work in a day, and get up in the morning well rested out, but who finds that, when occasion de- mands, he puts in a few extra hours, he feels fatigued instead of rested, as is usual in the morning, such a man should not work ten hours a day, but rather a few hours less, in order to give nature an opportunity to accumulate a little reserve fund for use upon extraordinary occa- sions, and should make it a rule to not overdraw his physical bank account beyond its reserve force, although nature, like a good business man, will give credit to an honest individual where she knows he will pay up his debts. Nature will allow an occasional little overdraught without injury, provided he will not delay in taking an extra amount of rest in order to again recuperate to his normal state, and still better, to rest long enough to again have a little reserve energy for a rainy day. There are some business men who candidly admit that this ever- lasting and tense devotion to business without rest or recreation is nothing more nor less than slavery, but he will tell you that he does not intend to keep this up, that he thinks he can endure it for the present, hoping to earn a competency so that in the future he may 568 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE throw up his drudgery of exhausting brain work and tedious labors, hoping in consideration for the future, to make it all up in one long "play day" of gallant and luxurious enjoyments. But we do not have to look about us very far to note how uniformly these dreams or ex- pectations are doomed to disappointment. Usually life slips through the fingers of such persons without enjoyment. In the hurry and bustle, especially in this country, it would be safe to say that in forty-nine cases out of fifty, the long looked for pleasure for which these sacri- fices were made is never realized. Even those few who are successful find the period of leisure, when it comes, to be one even more of misery than enjoyment. The impression we wish to make is that nature cannot be outraged with impunity; nature is a most generous giver, and she is also a hard bargainer, and the man who tries to crowd the work of fifteen or twenty hours into ten, thus practically burning the candle at both ends, will find in the end that he has gained nothing by attempting to cheat nature. It is said of Leyden, a Scotch enthusiast, that when warned by his physician of the consequences if he continued studying ten hours a day in his then poor physical condition, he replied: "Whether I am to live or die the wheel must go round to the last. I may perish in the attempt but if I did without surpassing Sir William Jones a hundred fold in Oriental learning, let never a tear for me profane the eye of a Bord- erer. Is it any wonder that by this madness and self-killing, for it can be termed nothing else, that he sank into his grave in his thirty- sixth year a self-murderer? The most astonishing fact about these cases is that they occur among the merchants, professional men and scholars, who are at least supposed to make it a part of their business to acquire knowledge, and thoroughly acquaint themselves with the laws of physiology, yet the facts show that they are either ignorant of even the elementary principles or they let other ambitions blight their judgment, or lack the self-command and stamina that anything that calls itself a man ought to have. The most serious and important of all rules and principles re- lating to exercise has been left out of all the literature upon this sub- SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 569 ject, and only general rules laid down, without showing how these rules can be applied to each individual. We must measure exercise as we would measure the difference in anything that must rely upon a supply to furnish it with power, as the supply for its power depends entirely upon its capacity to receive its supply, and upon its capacity for using this supply when received, as for instance, if a furnace should be forced to heat a third or one-half more space than it was really intended for, under these circumstances the furnace would wear out and be unfit for use many years before the natural allotted time, while if it had been used to heat only the amount of space for which it was intended it would have lasted much longer. At the same time the service of this furnace would not be as beneficial as the one which could have furnished the necessary amount of heat without needing to force it to the full limit of its powers. Just so with the human being; he must not compare himself or measure his capacity for power or endurance by someone else. He must learn to measure his own power, which means that he must not use up more energy than his body is able to supply. To preserve good health we should always try to place the limit below our natural power to sup- ply, thereby storing up a little reserve power, ready at our command for emergencies that arise so often during the life of most of us. It is through the violation of this law that we so frequently see the strong man breaking down during middle life, because of his exerting himself beyond the capacity of even that marvelous constitution with which nature endowed him, good evidence of this is that our best and most powerful athletes are usually short lived, while on the other hand weak and even feeble constitutions are so often long lived that it would seem as though feebleness was a guarantee to long life. All have seen numerous instances to prove the correctness of this analogy. We find that ambition does more to deteriorate the race among civil- ized people of the world than almost any other ailment. The am- bitious man with ten pounds of energy, so to speak, trying to keep up with the man whom nature has endowed with twenty pounds. We know very well the excuses given for this neglect of paying attention to our welfare. We know, too, that generally the poor busi- ness man excuses himself under the pretense that he must overdraw 570 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE his bank account with nature in order to maintain his position in the business world, in society. We often hear the remark, when calling attention to their fallacy, that they enjoy this unceasing work or study, and some even seem to be aware that this overdraught upon their constitution will ultimately have to be paid with compound in- terest, which would mean a miserable existence from the suffering of some chronic disease or the shortening of their lives, perhaps from ten to forty years. It is simply absurd that sensible people should maintain or up- hold the present sentiments existing, that you must keep up with the pace set by our social and business band-wagons, and that unless you do keep up with this circle or band-wagon you will lose that degree of respect from those around you. No one is so unjust even to a brute, and a man who would expect as much from the eight hundred pound horse as he would from one weighing sixteen hundred pounds, or if any one should reason that the one ought to draw as heavy a load as the other, under the same circumstances, he would be considered more than unreasonable. Why should not man at least create the same sentiments ? Even more should he insist that his human brother should be shown at least the respect and consideration that he shows to the brute animal, and really this is all it needs to accomplish the most necessary of reforms needed to bring back culture and educa- tion the health and constitutions of our forefathers who came to this country a century or more ago. This trying to keep up with someone else of twice your strength and endurance is nothing more than a wretched vanity underlying these ambitious pretenses. As long as we are determined to gratify this low passion of deliberately overtaxing our bodily and mental en- ergies, month after month and year after year, we should not be astonished or even surprised if we should some day suddenly, before we have lived out half our allotted time, be a physical wreck, coming in the form of apoplexy, nervous prostration or mental derangement, and often ending in insanity. In fact, almost without exception, our chronic sufferings are but the result of overdrawn energy in some form. No one will dispute that a large percentage of overdraught made upon our system is not due so much to the actual work per- SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 571 formed during business or working hours as to the draughts made upon our body after completing our day's work, and from the various forms of dissipation or through performing necessary social func- tions, which have been created by ambitious leaders, who are generally the creatures of public sentiments. These errors will not be remedied until public sentiment demands that our social and business functions should be performed in harmony with the ever exacting laws of the Creator, commonly termed the natural laws. How many ministers are mere physical wrecks of their former self at the age of forty or fifty? How many lawyers, especially in the large cities, who just about the time they have required the mastery of the necessary intricate knowledge of jurisprudence their nervous systems, and thus the faculties of the brain, are a wreck about the time they should be in their highest vigor? It is surprising, even astonishing, that so many stuff themselves with so-called knowledge but do not seem to know, and too often will not try to know, that crowding any machinery to perform more work than it can do with ease must at least shorten the duration of its usefulness more than one half, and the human machinery is no exception. Men differ in their capacity and power to supply energy just as a ten horse-power boiler cannot supply the amount of energy that a fifteen horse-power boiler can, without danger of shortening its days of usefulness, if not wreck- ing it entirely by explosioti, while the other will perform the same amount of work with ease and without danger to itself. This is the essential and most important point to be remembered regarding the law that governs each individual and the amount of work or exercise with any person or anything except his own physical capacity. Study your own self; learn to measure your own strength; do not try to per- form the same amount of labor as your neighbor, because he can do it with ease, in fact with benefit to himself. Your own body will not endure the amount of labor without injury to your health or physical welfare; in other words, do not try to stuff as much into your quart measure as your neighbor does into a two-quart measure. There is really nothing but a wretched vanity underlying all these pretenses of humanity in trying to defend and excuse the crimes com- mitted upon their own physical body by thinking that they are com- 572 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE pelled to attain a particular status in society, that they must move in this or that circle, or that they must maintain this or that degree of respect from those around them. We are also aware that the poor slave in business so often says that he must overdraw his bank account with nature, and for which nature will ultimately demand a settle- ment of every draft with compound interest. It does not take a very close observer to see that these same business men or society women with a little good management could accomplish much more without injury to themselves. How often do we see a comparatively weakly man accomplish the work of a giant without injury to himself, just by a little good management, and not allowing little things nor big things to worry or fret him. He keeps his bodily machinery always well bal- anced, but running steadily, allowing no friction to bear upon one organ or function of the body. It is friction that wears, and a con- tinual irritation upon any organ of the body will wear out this organ, or at least severely injure its normal function. Bad temper, melan- choly moods, or overloading the stomach, especially the most impor- tant of all, to fail to supply the lungs with this element of pure air which is the vital steam and power that gives life, motion and power of existence to every human cell of the body, are the chief producers of this irritation that is so injurious. It is urged by a small set of workers that it is better to wear out than to rust out; that it would be better that a ship be foundered on the rocks or sink in the deep water than to rot without fame or glory at the wharf. These few selfish and ambitious workers sometimes defend the position that a life depends more upon the value and amount of the work done than upon the number of years it has lived. It would seem that the shortsightedness of these men could be easily proven. If a man killed himself by doing good work for twenty years, it would be a rare instance when this same individual could not have accomplished more in forty or fifty years, at the same time enjoying a long life, and making his labors a pleasure instead of a drudgery. Another error committed by so many of our active men and women is that they will work at high speed for many years in order to live and enjoy the results of their labors. Both of these are pernicious and injurious to health or a long life, because both SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 573 are extreme measures. Labor and pleasure should go together in order to reap the benefits of either. We all often see a gradual physi- cal decline of the active business man when he has retired from work and simply devotes himself to what are so erroneously called the pleasures of life. Again here, as in every other chapter, we run against the same old law of balance and proportion between our individual physical powers and surroundings in which we live. Thousands upon thousands of our people at the present time make it a particular business of going through certain exercises every day; that is compulsory exercise. The express purpose of this compulsory- exercise is to benefit his physical condition. He may spend several hours in the gymnasium or take long walks, but as a rule this does not produce the desired results. Why is this ? Because exercise taken consciously, just for the purpose of exercising, and no other aim, seldom does any good. For instance, the act of walking until your nerves have been brought up to a certain degree of fatigue, or a dull walk without any company to give pleasure and relief to the mind, thus drifting perhaps into a dull melancholy. This kind of exercise degenerates into a task and does not give the desired relief sought. A man might as well attempt to train himself for a game of foot- ball, or try to rest his brain by a'night's hard study, as to try to recuperate his overtasked brain by trying a four or five mile walk. The gymnasium has been thoroughly tested but has been found wanting, and is so admitted by most of its enthusiastic followers. It is a failure as a medium for exercise for grown people, especially for hard thinkers, for brain work is absolutely incompatible with such recreations, for every man has a certain fixed amount of energy or capital stock and there are very few who have so much that they can afford to have the candle burned at both ends. Intense and long application to one subject, exercising one faculty of the brain at the expense of the rest, is generally the root of all the mischief that produces the various troubles affecting the brain or nervous system. Your body may be active during the whole of the day if these actions are sufficiently varied, and so can the brain, as a general rule, work all day at varied occupations. Just hold the arm out at full length for ten minutes and its muscles will be more fatigued than in an 574 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE hour's hard work. The same principle holds good with the brain. The truth of this will be clear to most anyone, and it must be remem- bered that even brain work thus varied has a limit beyond which it cannot be safely tasked. Again,, the total neglect of exercise is harmful, but not nearly so much as the reckless rushing of physical or mental work. The proper remedy for the overworked individual is rest. But this best remedy is like all other remedies applied for the relief of humanity; it is safe to state that they nearly always fail to attain the desired result. It is not upon the use of the remedy, but upon how it is used, that depends its results. In other words, in applying any medicinal remedy we should mix a little brains with it; otherwise it is generally a fake. A day or two off, or even a week or two, is of very little benefit to a really overworked person. Such a person needs months to recuperate an overtasked and abused brain or nervous system, while overtasked muscles will generally rest up in a few days, or at least in two weeks. These intervals of rest should be of an easy, amusing and sort of "I don't care" kind, rather than of the laborious kind. But for the professional man or brainworker frequent holidays and vacations are the best safety valve, even if lasting but a few days. He who will grant himself just an occasional rest will live longer, enjoy better health and do more work than he who dredges and makes a slave of himself the whole year around. Man, like the farmer's land, needs an occasional rest in order to be fertile. Oftentimes rest may be gained by simply changing your work, just as the boy at the grindstone rests by changing hands, provided the change gives activity to parts of the brain which were practically at rest during activity of the already tired ones, as, for instance, the man who is occupied in the use of his reason and thinking faculties may gain rest by turning over and giving a little activity to his social propensities, thereby withdrawing a portion of the blood from the congested individual faculties to be distributed to the other organs engaged. This illustrates plainly that it is not work that hurts, but the perseverance in work after nature has hung out her danger signal. Nature will not be outwitted in any manner, and in hanging out the danger signal she shows her fairness, and no man need try to cheat her. SHOULD WE WORK OR NOT WORK 575 If our children were turned loose to amuse themselves sponta- neously, to run, skip and jump as the desire is supplied by the instincts of their own innocent natures, and if our great big chil- dren from twenty to sixty years old would turn themselves loose more often in the same manner, we would have very little reason to expect a gradual decline of the constitutions of the race and of all the concomitant diseases that follow a weakened and depraved con- stitution. Pure air, pure water and sunshine should be the inalien- able right of every child in this land, but so many of our girls and boys are shut up for ten or twelve hours in the sweat shops and fac- tories where pure air and sunshine cannot reach them. Thousands of our men and women, whether of high social or humble position, suffer for the want of these primal elements to all human life. Exer- cise should not be taken like quack medicine, but should be regu- lated with sense and judgment, which only means that it should be in harmony with nature and her laws. The Greeks were regulated and governed largely by such laws, which made them the ideal physical race, but in our present condi- tion it behooves us to consider a little more carefully our physical needs and how best to meet them. Much is written and read about associations and conventions, but it is often more misleading than helpful, for it, too, frequently happens that those who talk and write most know the least about the subject upon which they discourse. COLDS AS THE CAUSE OF DISEASE. Colds are the cause, directly or indirectly, of at least three-fourths of all the diseases in the temperate and cold climates. A cold consists in suppressed perspiration, or in other words, is caused by closing up the pores of the skin and nothing else, because a cold always con- tracts. This is an established fact, and clearly shows the necessity of keeping the skin active, which really means active circulation in the skin. When this is done, animal heat abounds at the surface, which fortifies the body against these changes of temperature, which mainly affects the skin. Probably no part of the body has such a great ac- cumulation of blood vessels at the surface and is so abundantly filled with them as the skin, hence its warmth when a vigorous surface circulation is kept up. This enables one to resist the action of closing these pores by the external cold. In such cases the sudden atmospher- ical changes can do no harm; they can only close the pores of the skin when the surface circulation has become impeded. By keeping the cir- culation vigorous it will ward off all colds and their bad results (ex- treme cases of exposure excepted). Whatever, then, tends to promote the activity of the skin thereby fortifies the system against colds. The means to promote such action are to keep up a good, circulation in general by activity of the body, especially charging the blood by strong and full inspirations of fresh air, and if artificial means are necessary it should be by application of friction or exercise. Children rarely sicken until they take a cold. For the accuracy of this asser- tion let all experience and observation be the test; all colds do not make them down sick, yet they rarely become sick until they have taken a cold, so keeping them from the latter almost guarantees them against sickness. Even when the disease appears to be in the stomach or other organs, its origin will generally be found in suppressed action of the skin. 576 COLDS AS THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 577 Catarrh is always the direct product of a sudden change from heat to cold; so are most all bowel complaints, brain fever, influenza and almost all ailments in children, therefore keep the young from taking cold, or at least break up the cold as soon as contracted, and they will rarely be sick. The sudden change of temperature of the skin from heat to cold cause the pores to contract and many of them to close, which shows why we perspire so little in obdurate colds and fevers. The injury that is thus afflicted arises mainly from the shutting up of the waste matter within the system; the reason that during colds the lungs, nose, etc., discharge freely is because by this means nature is trying to dis- charge through their channels this corruption that has been shut in by the closing of these pores of the skin. Sometimes the action of the kidneys and bowels is increased so much as to produce diarrhea, and if these discharges should be checked without opening the closed pores of the skin, more serious results would follow, hence the bad results so often followed by the taking of medicine to check the dis- charges of the nose and lungs without paying attention to establish the normal secretions of the skin. Experience will attest that these colds are exceedingly troublesome, and if this contraction of parts is not relieved, how dull, restless, feverish and miserable they make us feel and how full of aches and pains. They are the principal cause of toothache, neuralgia, and rheumatism, and bad teeth rarely give trouble until after a cold; the way to cure them is to cure the cold that caused it. Fevers, too, are mainly the result of colds, and those neighborhood epidemics which sweep every city and country, affecting nearly all, prostrating many, and cutting off more or less in the midst of life, are generally only colds which certain states of the tempera- ture have occasioned by acting upon those systems that do not keep up enough active skin circulation to resist them. The easiest way to resist them is to get well every morning; avoid colds and these plagues will .pass you by; fevers may be caused by other violations of the laws of health, yet colds are usually their usher. Many of our attacks of sickness, where the system is not in a perfect state, would gradually pass off were it not for the slight cold which checks the activity of the eliminating organs, such as the skin 578 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and kidneys; where if the slight cold had not been contracted these organs would have been able to carry off this surplus corruption without much apparent or serious results, but these outlets being closed by a cold, these poisons are retained in the system and are continually accumulating, which obstructs, poisons, and after a while prostrates and perhaps destroys life. Indeed, when food or drink is taken into the stomach, which would impair their functions if it were not for the active and open skin carrying the waste matter off as continually as it is produced, little damage is done; but shut up these pores and all the corruption and poison created is also shut up and destroy health. Keep clear, then, of colds and you are safe to escape nearly all diseases, because other causes will rarely be sufficient to induce them. When you realize that five-eighths of the waste matter of the human system escapes through the skin, is it any wonder that the closing of this channel causes that proportion of all diseases? Yet those who think that not as many diseases are produced by colds than really belong to them, should note the universal fact explained in our Chapter on Consumption, where it is demonstrated that they nearly always precede and induce consumption. If you will observe closely you will find very few consumptive patients whose attack did not set in after a cold; this, if true, and it is as true as the noonday sun, no matter how little hereditarily predisposed to consumption you may be (which really only means that your lungs are not as strong com- pared with the other organs of the body), a cold will attack those lungs, and if the attack is severe enough to destroy the vitality of the lung tissue (which is the beginning of consumption), this plainly shows that avoiding these colds insures your life against the disease itself, and those thus predisposed should in a special manner guard against contracting a cold, and if taken it should be broken up as quickly as possible, for your life depends on your attaining that end. Another important cause that makes the individual susceptible to taking cold is grief and sorrow, which often itself creates a sluggish circulation, especially in the skin, so that any little draught or cold which under ordinary conditions would have no effect, while the mind is grieved or in sorrow the effect of external cold is far more injurious. This has so often been demonstrated at funerals. While attending the COLDS AS THE CAUSE OF DISEASE 579 funeral of one a person takes a bad cold which in a few days or weeks sweeps them into eternity. Such coincidences are often the cause of disseminating or spreading the foolish idea that the disease or fever that caused the death are contagious. Perhaps dozens of the relatives and friends take a bad cold while attending funerals recover, but all are distinctly traceable to this one cause, cold. Therefore, people attending funerals, particularly in unfavorable weather, should be doubly careful to keep up an active circulation. Does not experience and observation prove that colds are the chief causes of disease ? The prevention of colds then becomes as important as they are injurious. To those inclined to consumption it is life, and these colds are death to them unless immediately broken up. The essential thing for preventing a cold is to keep the skin active so that animal heat will abound on the surface and fortify the body against those sudden changes of temperature. Frequent washing or sponging of the body with cold water and brisk rubbing is very effective against colds; this form of right bathing will help wonderfully to stave off consumption, no matter how great the hereditary tendency. Any reader not accustomed to these frequent cold sponge baths accom- panied with rubbing would actually find a greater prize in their judicious application than if he should inherit the Vanderbilt wealth, because by removing disease and their causes and prolonging life and the general enjoyment it would promote would be worth more than all the money in the world. It actually keeps you "cold proof," and disease at bay as well, doubles your ability to enjoy both physical and mental exercise; even as a luxury it is equaled only by food and sleep. Still they must be rightly managed, or they might result in evil instead of good. They never should be taken except where sufficient energy of the body remains to produce that delightful reaction and glow which is the sign of their being beneficial. These sponge baths with friction are preferable to all others, because they are easily applied. They give much bodily exercise, bring on this required reaction, and can be instantly discontinued when a chilly sensation, beyond which no bath should be continued a single moment, comes on. Opening these pores of the skin which have been closed by a cold can be accomplished by washing and rubbing, but sweating forces 580 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE them open more effectually than any other means whatever. In fact, it is the great antidote for colds and all their consequences. It is immaterial how this sweating is produced, so that it is copious and does not result in another cold. Where the patient is able to exercise sufficiently to open these pores, whether he does this exercise out doors or in a room, is not material, so that he induces it; in short, get into a dripping sweat, cool off by rubbing the body and do not con- tract more cold and you will drive it off and feel much better. Insipient colds, taken before they prostrate the system, can be broken up the best by drinking large quantities of water, cold or warm; warm lemonade is good; at the same time keep up with hard and steady exercise, meanwhile pouring down plently of water, even by the quart if necessary; these large quantities of water must have some exit and will reopen these closed pores, thereby preventing disease. The same course followed with water, going to bed and cov- ering up warm, answers the same purpose, but more care must be taken than if in daytime with exercise. Many children cure a cold un- consciously by their activity in running and romping. The warm bath followed by friction and exercise is also excellent and will generally prove beneficial, yet here, too, care must be taken to guard against renewed colds; not by staying in the house or muffling up, but by exercise, which is the very best means to induce a sweat because the most natural. LET THE GIRLS ROMP. Let the girls romp as well as the boys. It Will do them good, strengthen the muscles, expand the chest, make room for the lungs and the heart; give vitality to the blood; grace to the carriage; freedom of motion to the limbs, and is worth all the dancing schools in the universe. Hot-house plants always droop when exposed. Remember that. Don't be afraid because your daughter can ride, swim and skate, she will not be a "lady!" There was never a more mistaken notion. Stamina never ran counter to gentility, but lifted and sustained it. Tending flowers does not in the least militate against fingering the piano, and mirthful laughter gives strength, volume and flexibility to the voice. The red roses of health are better upon the cheeks than sallow lilies. The future of girlhood is something higher and nobler than white hands and a smattering of French and music. They are to be the mothers of the nation, and upon them rests its history for weal or woe. Let the girls romp, and out of doors. Dress them warm that they may do so. Don't be afraid of seeing them in thick shoes. Don't let them wear tightly laced corsets. The ideal Venus, the chosen models of the most renowned sculptors is no wasp-waisted beauty! Cleopatra loved the sun, and her peerless loveliness ripened beneath its warm kisses. Health requires freedom of action and out-of-door exercise as much for girls as boys. Their limbs should never be dwarfed by keep- ing still. Better to turn them loose like colts than confine them to play the lady. The time will come when they will need all their strength; when untrammeled growth will be a blessing; when they will be bowed with care. Give them all possible freedom while young. Let them romp. Maiden modesty will keep them within bounds. Racing with their companions, roaming the woods in search of flow- ers, was what the great Maker intended. Don't try to make dainty 581 582 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE plants of them. Sun and winds are better cosmetics for the com- plexion than any you buy in the shops, and a man with brains had far sooner kiss warm, rich, natural flesh and blood than a sickly skin and paint and powder. Let the girls romp! Give them an equal chance for life and health and happiness with the boys. Suppose their "lilly hands" should be soiled, there is plenty of soap and water; suppose their dresses should be torn, there is plenty of thread and needles. There is much wisdom in the old saying, that "it is better to pay the butcher than the doctor." Think of their future when called upon to take up the burdens of life; when taxed to the utmost by maternity; when families require all of strength and nerve, and do not compel them to endure the confinement now that will be a curse in the hereafter. Let the girls romp. There is no more beautiful sight in the world than a bevy of bright eyed, rosy cheeked girls, with flying feet and flying hair, indulging in innocent mirth, happy, whole-hearted, sunny faced, lightly laughing, storing up health against the days when trial and fears shall come. It is your duty to give your daughters free- dom-to let them revel in the pure air of heaven; to give full play to the intricate machinery of the human frame; and the foolish mothers who shrink from a little "tan," from vigorous expansion of waist, and all the other blessings given by Providence, are only wise in their own conceit and entail untold pain and misery and finally death upon those they pretend to love. Let the girls romp! Marcia. FEVERS ARE FRIENDS. Are fevers our friends? Then the inquiry would naturally arise, why? But they are, because they burn up the waste and poisonous matter of the system and help to clean out the stables of physical cor- ruption; in other words, if by neglect or accident the system is con- taminated by poisonous matter, nature takes the helm in her hands and endeavors to get rid of it by burning it up. These fevers would not have been instituted unless they were beneficial, for an all-wise God ordains nothing for torture and nothing in vain. Fever means the consumption of that surplus carbon, which together with other poisonous matter is the chief cause of disease. They always generate heat; consumption of matter is the only source of all artificial heat, and whatever burns thereby produces it. Carbon is the base of all that burns; coal, wood, charcoal, vegetables, meats, gases, etc., con- sist mainly of carbon. Oxygen is the burning agent, as carbon is the burned, of all combustive processes. Carbon and oxygen combining with each other and ignited by the vital force create that animal warmth which maintains the equal temperature of the body; when an excess is retained in the system and a fever obtains, the breathing also increases, even to the extent of making the suffering victim fairly pant for breath; this fact has been noticed by all. In order to obtain sufficient oxygen required for consuming this surplus carbon, nature makes a way to secure it, and the combination of this oxygen and car- bon generates the heat which we call fevers; surplus carbon is clogging and crippling all the functions and nature must unload it or succumb to it; she cannot eject it, because it is all through the body; she must set up a fire to burn it up. She can do this only by increasing the breathing so as to increase its fixed equivalent of oxygen, so this ex- tra breathing means something. Means what? Means that extra oxygen is wanted. Wanted for what? To burn up the surplus of carbon. Reader, think out the problem and see if nature has not a better method than we doctors have. We will have much more to say about this under the head of zymotic or blood diseases, such as 583 584 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE typhoid fever, scarlet fever, etc. When these poisonous carbonaceous compounds are in excess of the poisonous uric or uric acid compound, we have the various forms of fevers, such as typhoids, typhus, inter- mittent. The natural make-up of each individual, such as their nerv- ous or other temperaments, dictates largely what kind of disease, or perhaps better the kind of name that is being attached to it. But when the uric acid condition predominates, combined with the proper nerv- ous disturbances, then we usually have the eruptive forms of dis- eases, such as smallpox, scarlet fever, etc. CONSTIPATION: ITS CAUSE AND PREVENTION. We believe it is safe to state that more medicine is poured down the throats of the people of this country as a cathartic, and mostly for the purpose of relieving constipation, than for any other com- plaint or affliction of mankind. On the other hand, it is just as safe to state that for no other complaint should less medicine be taken. People who are seriously annoyed with this complaint have splendid digestive organs; in fact they have the very best. This statement will seem strange, as nearly all have the overweening idea that poor di- gestion is the cause of constipation, when the very opposite is the case. Persons suffering from indigestion are not, as a rule, suffer- ing from constipation, but frequently the opposite is the case. Of course drugs taken to relieve constipation will, in course of time, cause disturbances and often serious consequences. Constipation is rare among those inclined to be lazy. The suf- ferers are mostly among the strong, energetic and hard working peo- ple; this especially applies to those among whom the complaint is chronic. Thousands of people who are in splendid condition, but have the idea, which has been taught them by the doctors, that an ac- tion of the bowels each day is necessary to be healthy. This belief has caused many people to dope themselves with cathartics so that in a short time they cannot get along without them, where originally nature would have attended to matters once in two or three days, and with perfect health. No rule can be laid down except a general one. To form a regular habit at regular times is probably one of the best, combined with attention to foods, which must be adapted to each indi- vidual. In those chronic cases, where digestion is good and a remedy must be used, use injections of water or a tablespoonful of sweet oil at bedtime; this will lubricate the bowels and stimulate them to action in a few hours. Medicine will never cure habitual constipation. Good 585 586 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE and regular habits will almost invariably overcome the trouble, but overworking the system, overdrawing the physical bank account, is one of the great causes. Mothers nursing children, in addition to working hard, often demonstrate this. Study your own condition and remove the cause. Drugs will only injure you and cannot cure you. YELLOW FEVER. i ellow fever is a disease only found in warm climates, and rarely prevails as an epidemic in places where the mean temperature is below 65 degrees Fahr. As a rule the fever does not develop at a lower temperature than 75 or 80 degrees Fahr., and the approach of cool weather always checks the progress of an epidemic. In those places where it occurs annually, as down in Havana and Vera Cruz, it is es- pecially a disease of the summer months. That a moist damp atmos- phere is an essential factor is indicated by the fact that the disease does not prevail in dry regions, where other conditions appear to be favorable, hence it is found so much along the seacoast and margins of rivers, where the temperature is warm and the more apt to be moist. Heavy rains, especially when accompanied by thunder and lightning, seem to exercise a favorable influence in checking the dis- ease. The disease is generally found to prevail in the large cities and the real cause is due to a long continued spell of warm weather, with damp cool nights, where the atmosphere ranges steadily from 85 de- grees upwards during the daytime. This fact is conceded by all who have made a study of this terrible disease, and at the same time they admit this fact, that they have been looking high and low, and finally, after a number of years of wrangling, they have found what they term the hypothetical "yellow fever germ." This statement, trans- lated into plain English, would really mean that a germ had formed in their own visionary minds. This is usually considered, judging from past history, a sufficient claim for the cause of disease changes, thereby keeping the public in ignorance; and worse still, that they are showing to the world a gross ignorance of themselves, for it must be plain to any reasoning mind, and is a conceded fact, that like causes produce like effects. That is, a certain condition acting upon another condition will always produce the same results. The action of our outside forces, especially the atmospherical condition acting 587 588 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE upon local conditions, such as decomposed animal and vegetable mat- ter. The gases developed by this process are inhaled by an imperfect systemic condition; that is, the system is usually not in a perfect stand- ard of health; and while inhaling this impure air the system does not get enough oxygen, which causes glandular obstruction, and this is all that yellow fever is. A person may be in a fair condition today, but through some neglect or accident may cause a sudden change in his system, either slight or great, so that the existing outside or at- mospheric conditions acting upon the existing systemic condition would develop the fever, where the outside condition alone would not have produced the fever without the assistance of the internal or bod- ily condition. This might have been produced by overeating or drinking, which is one of the greatest causes of the disease during an epidemic, caused by the system not receiving material enough to burn up even the normal amount of food. In other words, there is not oxygen enough in the air to sustain the functions of the body; for, as we have already seen, a deficiency of oxygen will soon deteriorate and thicken the blood and produce obstruction of the glands of the sys- tem. This glandular obstruction is what causes this yellow appear- ance of the skin, from which "yellow fever" derives its name. What is commonly called "yellow jaundice" is produced by a similar proc- ess, but under more favorable outside conditions. The fault lies mostly with the patient in this case. When in a melancholy, down- hearted, brooding state of mind, breathing is not active enough to charge the blood with sufficient oxygen to keep up a perfect function of the organs of the body, thereby producing the congestion above stated. No better proof than this could be given to show positively that in various ways this neglect of not breathing enough oxygen to balance the amount of material to be burned up in the system is the cause of disease, oxygen is the only element that burns up the carbon of the food, the element to be burned. Of course yellow fever, like most other diseases, is considered a very contagious one, but the the- ory is as erroneous and wrong here as in all other diseases. I think more than half of the cases in this country are produced by the ex- cited state of mind that is induced among the public by the physicians and health authorities, who are constantly howling about its conta- YELLOW FEVER 589 gion. They might just as well say that a snowstorm produced by atmospherical changes in the northern latitude, we'll say up in the Alaskan regions, is the cause of disease; this storm gradually sweeps further south across the United States to New York. While this storm is passing over this territory many people not prepared to meet it take cold, some of them even being killed in the gale. Now why don't our health departments and great doctors say that all of this suffering produced by the storm as it passes from state to state was a contagious disease produced by some microbe cause? The identical laws and forces that develop this storm will pass around into the southern and tropical regions with their accompanying atmospherical conditions. Or the storm, if you please, passes through these south- ern countries up through Cuba and into the United States, sweeping upon those not prepared, some taking a light form of yellow fever, others succumbing to its ravages; but as soon as this so-called atmos- pheric storm passes over the north into a lower temperature, another change takes place and it gradually becomes colder and reorganizes itself, ready to sweep another blizzard over the northern country. In this way a continual change of disorganizing and reorganizing of these forces in the universe is taking place, and at the same time the same process is going on in the system; these acting upon one an- other and being dependent upon one another, and producing as many different conditions and results as there are differences in either when acting upon another. This is the same law that we hold throughout, that all is cause and effect-by one elementary condition acting upon another, producing these results everywhere throughout the world. The West India Islands, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast of South America and a limited section of the west coast of Africa constitute the present home of yellow fever. This is the so-called yellow fever circle, and the disease is frequently transmitted to adja- cent or distant countries, but I claim, and it ought to be clear to any reasoning mind, that no disease can be transmitted; that it is only a condition of the air acting upon'the existing condition of the human system that is the cause of all diseases called contagious. Our best authorities claim that yellow fever is not indemic, and probably never originated in the United States. They go on and state how terribly 590 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE contagious the disease is; after getting our minds convinced of this fact, they turn around and say that the disease cannot be communi- cated by a person sick with it; in the very next sentence these authori- ties say that strict measures should be taken to prevent the introduc- tion of a person to one sick with the disease. For centuries the cause of yellow fever has baffled whole nations, as well as individuals and science. Why is this true? Just because of the lack of knowledge of the real force that circulates the blood. The blood and its circulatory force is the key to all blood diseases, so-called-is the essence of the whole subject. In our chapter on "The General Causes of Disease," we have given in detail the cause of yellow fever and we are willing to stake everything on the correctness of the explanation made therein. As stated in that chapter yellow fever is due-first, to the want of sufficient oxygen, this being due to local or general conditions, which causes extreme sluggishness of the blood through the liver; second, to the continuous extremely relaxed condition of the skin during the day and the sudden coolness and dampness of the night air, combined with the excess of waste matter retained in the system under these conditions. In short, yellow fever is only a natural process existing under certain natural conditions. To put it in other words, it is the same law in the North as in the South, but the difference lies in the different forms of organization and dis- organization of the internal and external elemental forces, and these differ only as the environments and your systemic conditions differ. The only preventive is to breathe oftener of the purest air possible, eat very moderately and to work but little. Carry out these simple rules, in order that you may get up well every morning, for you surely go to bed sick every night, and you should see, at least when the atmos- pheric conditions are favorable for yellow fever, that you get up well every morning. FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. "You must also bear the complaints of your patients. If you call frequently to see a patient, you are trying to run up a bill; if you don't, it is shameful neglect. If you manage to get to church and are called out, you are working the Bob Sawyer dodge on Sundays. If you are so busy you cannot go you are asked: 'How is it that you doctors are all atheists?' If your wife calls on people, it is because she is trying to get patients for you; but if she don't, she is too stuck up. If you cure a case quickly-get the credit, you say, 'Oh, the patient was not as bad as you tried to make out.' On the other hand, should the case develop severe complications, Ah! you never under- stood the case; in fact, he was worse after taking the medicine a week than when you were called in. If you suggest a consultation, it is only because you don't know what is the matter. If you pooh-pooh the idea as unnecessary, you are afraid of showing your ignorance. "You will be expected to cast a horoscope of a baby's life and tell its mother what ailments it will have for the next six months to come. If you cannot, you won't know very much. You must forecast all the ills that flesh is heir to. All cases that get worse, the fault lies in the medicine. If you send in your bill, you have gotten into a terrible hurry for your money. If you don't, you are no business man. If a doctor gets paid for one half he does he don't live long after; he dies of shock. You may suffer for bread, for money to pay your tailor and to pay your rent, but with it all you must hold up your head and look like an owl. You must withstand all the buffets and not feel the scowl. You must be keen in perception, methodical in business, broad in convictions and just in your conclusions. Your success will depend upon your ability and your energy. Up and doing, time waits for no man. Only one Joshua that ever commanded the sun to stand still. "P. S.-It is the old story, the man with the tricks and tact wins and not skill. R." 591 SCURVY. Scurvy has prevailed in all latitudes, as well in the southern as in the northern zones; it has no geographical limitations; it affects alike all races, the Caucausian, Malay, Negro and Indian; all classes of society, rich and poor, high and low are equally liable whenever surrounded by circumstances to preclude the individual kind of the proper mixed diet. The greatest hardships have been undergone without the slightest evidence of the taint of scurvy affecting the sufferers as long as proper food could be maintained among them. All sorts of theories have been held as the cause of scurvy, such as depressing emotions, despair, fear, impure water, individual pecul- iarities, etc., but from all the facts, both positive and negative, it is now well established that the essential cause leading to the development of scurvy in the immense majority of cases, if not in all, consists in a deficiency in the variety of food, that is to say, that there is not the required proportion of animal matter with a diversity of vegetable substances. It is usually understood that scurvy is due to eating salt meats, but it is not the salt meat, but it is for the want of vegetables. In other words, it is not what you eat, but what you do not eat. When fresh meats are used in the same manner as the salt meats, the result of scurvy is the same; that is any line of diet that does not contain suf- ficient amount of the various chemical elements needed for the nourish- ment of the body, kept up any length of time will produce the disease. In the epidemic that occurred at Carlisle and its vicinity, according to Dr. Longsdale, some of the railway excavators were affected though they breakfasted on beefsteak or mutton chop and partook of dinners composed of bread, boiled beef or bacon, pea soup or broth and suet pudding containing currants, but there were no potatoes, nor fresh vegetables. It is clear, therefore, that in order to obtain the proper variety of materials required for nourishment we must resort to sev- 592 SCURVY 593 eral of the natural groups; those particularly which comprise the suc- culent vegetables and fruits. It is the fresh juices and pulp of these articles which are a preventive of scurvy and are of very little benefit when cooked or dried; all the acid fruits, such as oranges, lemons, apples, grapes, and of vegetables, potatoes and all green vegetables stand prominent, and goes to show still stronger the necessity of the system of a largely vegetable diet to furnish the system with the proper materials or chemical elements needed to preserve health. TYPHOID FEVER-ITS CAUSES. This dreaded malady is sometimes epidemic, but in old and set- tled countries it is usually local; that is, it may be widespread in a city or any community, but the cause is usually traced to local origin. Impure drinking water is responsible for a large percentage of cases. The drainage from sewers and vaults often finds its way into wells and contaminates the water, especially where the under ground is of a gravelly nature. It takes but very little of this animal decom- position to render the water of a well highly dangerous for drinking purposes. Most people usually resent the statement when it is suggested to them that perhaps the water in the well is not pure: "Oh, Doctor, we have the finest water in the neighborhood or town." In one instance in my practice seven persons were taken down in one house, these being all in one family, except a child of six months old, which escaped, its food being boiled before taken. After examining the cellar and other conditions and finding nothing wrong, I asked them if they thought their well water was good. I found that I had tread on dan- gerous ground. Being a town noted for its pure water, it was almost an insult to mention impure water. But I insisted that there was a cause near by that produced the sickness of this whole family, and I must know the cause in order to save the patients, for they might be eating or drinking it every day. Reluctantly they gave me a bottle of water with the remark that it was pure. The analysis proved it to be badly contaminated by organic matter as is rarely found, and was traced to a vault which was over a hundred rods from the well, standing on a high elevation, and it probably took a number of years for this matter to drain through the gravelly soil to the well. The patients were given plenty of pure water and proper nursing, with very little medicine, and all recovered in a few weeks. The following summer they cleaned out 594 TYPHOID FEVER ITS CAUSES 595 the well thoroughly, thinking that was all that was needed, but after using water out of their well for five or six weeks diphtheria developed in the whole family, four of them dying. This was likely due to the increase of the flow of poisonous matter, showing how the same cause produced typhoid fever the first time and diphtheria the next; and shows that, as already stated, these blood diseases are all due to about the same causes, the differences being only a little in the nature or degree of the poison acting upon the condition, or, rather, the indi- vidual acted upon. Another cause of the disease is sewer gas in houses, caused by defective plumbing, decaying vegetables in the cel- lar, or the inhaling, eating or drinking of anything that is composed of decaying animal or vegetable matter. Another, and usually the most fatal, cause of typhoid fever is a body or mind worn out by grief or melancholy. Usually such a person sits around and mopes and gets very little fresh air, the gloomy condition of the mind caus- ing slow and inactive circulation, hence preventing normal elimina- tion of secretions of the body, and these being retained, have the same effect as animal matter taken into the system, but these cases are usually fatal on account of the low conditions of the nervous sys- tem. Then keeping the mind cheerful and clear, the body clean, with plenty of pure air and food, will prevent this serious disease, typhoid fever. Typhus fever is more serious and is essentially a filth disease. Remittent and intermittent fevers are different names for the same disease, their names being derived from the differences in their degree, but many of these names of diseases are very misleading; they are all one form of disease, the severity in each case creating their names. DYSPEPSIA-ITS CURE. Dyspepsia, or rather the cause of dyspepsia, creates probably more diseases than any other, though it seldom proves fatal, yet is father to many diseases that do prove fatal. It consists simply in improper performance of the process of digestion, producing irritation or acid- ity or dormancy of the liver, bowels, or any of the functions aiding perfect digestion. It is not, as commonly supposed, a disease of the stomach; in fact, some of the best stomachs are our greatest sufferers with dyspepsia. Its main cause is mental worriment; of course, fast eating, not sufficient chewing of food, eating irregularly and wrong kinds of food aggravate it, as do all wrong habits. But an overworked or worried mind has exhausted the energies of the brain, which has gone on a foraging expedition in quest of vital force. It finds it in the stomach and enormously appropriates to sustain the brain, and which is needed for digestion; in other words, it draws the blood and ap- plies it to the work of the brain, thus leaving the food in the stomach without its proper blood and nerve supply undigested; that is, it sours. You business and professional man who has launched out so largely that debts and debtors, credits and creditors, give you a world of trouble, lie awake nights thinking how you can work through this dilemma; you snatch meals and lunches, work early and late, rush here and there, everywhere grasp at this and that and read the papers, eat, sleep, and do business-in fact everything by steam. The effect of these outrages the laws of balance which nature demands do not produce the same proportionate result in each individual. This largely depends on the natural resources or vitality and constitution, in which people differ so greatly, but if all worked according to his natural reserve capital all could have health. These six men have a bank account; A having two thousand dollars to his credit; B four, 596 DYSPEPSIA ITS CURE 597 C five, D ten, E twenty, F thirty and G fifty thousand dollars; if each one of these draw on their bank account every day a little more than they deposit it is plain to see that A and B would have exhausted their reserve, while Messrs. F and G would still have a large reserve left with good credit, while the former had lost their credit and are bankrupt. So it is with the individual in health; some that have a smaller amount of vitality try to keep up with those of a large amount of physical endurance, break down in health and become dyspeptic and physical wrecks, where if each would only draw upon their phys- ical bank account each day as much as he is able to deposit, thereby retaining good health and vigor, each could live to a good old age, although differing widely in their constitutions. So it often happens that the man with fifty thousand reserve energy draws beyond it and the result is dyspepsia, other diseases and premature death; while the one with two or five thousand reserve energy has studied himself, un- derstands the laws of balance, economizes his physical bank account by not worrying or fretting, working every day steady, enjoys good health and lives to a good old age, although by nature he was not a strong man. You are a broken-spirited woman, confined by family cares; you lost your darling child, husband or mother, and keep nursing your grief, or your marriage has completely disappointed you; where you expected so much, you find a great deal worse than nothing; you sip impatiently of your embittered cup, and nature gives out; your sad, disappointed feelings kill your appetite, kill your interest in life and in everything but your love of that child, and life is one ceaseless round of worriment. Your nerves and brain naturally become irri- table and feverish; you must have vital force, but this robs your stom- ach and breeds dyspepsia. The brain and nervous system of dyspeptics suffer most, and they always feel irresolute, gloomy and wretched in proportion as their dis- ease is aggravated, however favorable for enjoyment all their external circumstances may be. Dyspeptics, however wealthy, respected, be- loved or otherwise capacitated for enjoyment, are poor, miserable creatures; poor because they cannot enjoy however much they may possess of the bounties of nature, and miserable because this disease 598 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE turns even their facilities for happiness into occasions of pain. They would go mourning in Paradise. Some outrage of the health laws has induced it; probably fast eating is one great cause, yet even this is only another phase of that mental anxiety in which dyspepsia chiefly originates. Mental hurry and flurry rush you pell mell to meals, then rush you away on the keen run after this or that, thus leaving the food unchewed, and of course unsalivated, and then working up in other directions the vital forces demanded for digestion. Confinement indoors and in a sitting posture, thus leaving the bowels inert, is another frequent cause; perhaps something you eat, or do or don't do, causes it. At all events, hunt all around you and keep on hunting until accumulated evidence assures you that you have finally found out and spotted the identical cause or causes, for there may be several. Their signs show whether your complaints are caused by indigestion, for it generally emaciates; those who are per- petually growing more and more thin, and especially sinking in at the abdomen and cheeks, know that this disease is approaching. You may also feel a gnawing, sunken, fainting sensation of the stomach, or are unable to postpone their meals without inconvenience, or feel a ravenous appetite and still continue to crave after you have eaten freely, or feel prostrated, inefficient, listless, misanthropic or irritable, hating or hateful and fretful, or belch up wind frequently, being a gas formed in the stomach by the souring of food. Dyspeptics are usually cramming, yet virtually starving, because their stomachs do not extract from food its nutrition, and it seems that the more they eat the more they starve. In old chronic cases the reverse takes place, and instead of a craving appetite, it becomes dainty, and even loathes food. To remove the cause, whatever it is, will cure every case. If wrong eating is its cause, right eating is the antidote. If a craving appetite is combined with it, starve it out; without it nothing will help it; follow the rules in this work touching on circulation, mastication, respiration, sleep and exercise, especially plenty of fresh air, and by following these specific prescriptions they will soon be cured. WHOOPING COUGH. Whooping cough is distinguished by its characteristic and peculiar convulsive cough. It attacks both sexes and usually children, rarely occurring more than once. In no other disease do we meet with such a cough; it has a character peculiar to itself, and every mother recog- nizes it when once she hears this kind of cough. We are told that the disease was known to the Greeks and the earlier writers on medi- cine. Before I give the real cause of this disease I will quote the leading authority (Cyclopedia of Diseases of Children), which says that it is a highly contagious disease; that whooping cough never arises spontaneously, and that as sure as a thistle rises from a thistle seed, a fig from a fig seed, a grape from a grape seed, so does whooping cough arise from an antecedent whooping cough; that it may be car- ried in the clothing and spread from house to house; further, that it is a disease caused by germs and is thereby classed in the list of zy- motic or blood diseases; hence, the necessary measures to prevent and check the spread of the contagious disease, and the usual ones em- ployed for the blood diseases are rigid quarantine and isolation. Regarding the treatment, they say that no scientific physician would pretend to cure whooping cough; that it will run a regular course, and naturally tends to recovery. This authority claims that one-fourth of the deaths among children in London were from this disease. It does not seem possible that any set of men, especially those who pose as the highest authority, could show such ignorance of physiology and the laws of cause and effect as is shown in the above statements regarding whooping cough. In the dark ages disease was supposed to be due to evil spirits and devils, and in the time of witch- craft, when everyone's fortune or misfortune could be just as effec- tually explained, it was believed that the evil spirit caused the disease, and that the witch could be traced as the cause of some enemy's mis- 599 600 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE fortune, but now medical men explain how every disease is due to some germ; and when the public become educated as to the real cause of disease the germ theory will vanish, as did the evil spirits and the witches. There is just as much foundation for one to be true as the other. Whooping cough is plainly a local disease and not a blood disease any more than quinsy of the throat is a blood disease. The cause of whooping cough is sometimes purely a local and more often epidemic, due to the general conditions. The main cause is what is commonly termed damp conditions; when epidemic we find damp, dreary and changeable weather, with insufficient sunshine. This explains why one-fourth of the. children in London die of whooping cough; no- where can the atmospheric, and hence the local conditions, be more favorable for this disease than in that city, there being rarely any sunshine, hence the living apartments are very damp. Local cases are often due to children sleeping in damp rooms; especially in hot summer days children will find some place under buildings or under trees where no sun can penetrate, and sit or stand on the damp ground, perhaps after being warm, the effect being that the functions of the nerves supplying the air passages become ob- structed, on the principle that standing with wet or damp feet will produce other throat troubles, such as quinsy or bronchitis, etc. But in whooping cough I find in most cases a tenderness of the upper por- tion of the spine, where the nerves branch off to the throat and lungs; by this nerve obstruction these convulsive attacks are caused, which, when nature has cleared her way, the symptoms cease. It is practi- cally a bad cold, just as you find that in some seasons of the year there are epidemics of cold when nearly all attacked have terrible dis- charges from the nose; the next time it will be opposite, the mucous membranes all being dry; the next season it is in the form we call la grippe; the next season it will be nearly all sore throats, all being due to cold, only the conditions of the air producing them just a little different; therefore the effects a little different. All must agree that children who are in otherwise good health will, while having that disease, feel and eat as good as ever, except when these spells of cough- ing and whooping come on; many become weak towards the latter WHOOPING COUGH 601 stage, caused by the strain produced from the whooping, and often lose nourishment by vomiting after meals. No better evidence could be produced that it is a local disease of the nerves of the upper portion of the spine and not a zymotic or blood disease. On children under two years of age the physical strain is more severe; however, it is very rare to note a death from this disease in children of two years old or over. These are plain little facts and everyone can see their outworkings in some form every year. I was taken with the whooping cough when I was eighteen years of age, caused from sleeping in a damp steerage while working about a steamboat. My work during the day was near the severe heat of the kitchen stove; therefore I was more suscept- ible to colds than was the other five cabin boys who slept with me in the steerage; no others took the disease, but this was before the germs were discovered, which perhaps accounted for it. Medical books say that nearly every medicine known has been tried and have proven worthless. No wonder, for they are as far away from the location of the disease as the remedy is from curing it. Clothes wrung out of hot water, kept up hours at a time, (applied according to the strength and age of the patient) and placed around the neck, spine and chest, being careful not to take a second cold, will do more than all the drugs in existence, excepting one, which is nux. vom. This given in very small doses frequently repeated will often break it up in twenty-four hours. Try it, using good judgment, and you will not be disappointed. EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES AS A CAUSE FOR CHOREA (ST. VITU'S DANCE), SEVERE HEADACHE, CHRONIC NEURALGIA, SLEEPLESS- NESS, INDIGESTION, CONSTIPATION, ETC. In this article I propose to discuss one of the most interesting and one of the most neglected subjects-one that is little understood by the public, as well as by the medical profession, even though it be shown (as it has already to the satisfaction of many) that a thorough relief from eye strain has alone produced a complete and permanent cure of many cases of St. Vitu's dance that were chronic and appar- ently hopeless. In my own experience every case of chorea (St. Vitu's dance) that has come under my observation has always been due to some defect or strain from the eye upon the nervous system, due to reflex action, but I doubt if the majority of intelligent physicians will concur in the belief that purely local treatment, confined to the mus- cles of the orbit and the refraction of the eyes, would effect such results; they would be more apt to follow the present fad and believe that it was due to mere microbes that would have to be driven from the body or by neutralizing some toxic material in the system. Any such visionary theory is certainly inconsistent when it is demonstrated that the majority of the aggravated and chronic types of chorea should and do get well without the use of drugs and the patient remains free from any return of spasmodic movements of the face, trunk or limbs, whenever sources of reflex irritation that may arise from the eyes, are scientifically investigated and satisfactorily corrected. It is most important in medicine to ascertain what agent can do damage under favorable conditions, or to so improve the nervous power of the patient as to enable the body to resist disease. What have we gained from the standpoint of the sufferer by simply knowing the name, exact appearance, or seat of the disease. But I think that after the chaff has been eliminated and the wheat carefully collected, that per- 602 EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 603 haps in time these investigators, wno are going on with great rapidity, hatching and exploding these false theories which are the views of today and may not be those of tomorrow, will discover the truth. Is it not the duty of every earnest practitioner of medicine to listen with attention to clinical facts that are capable of absolute verification, that are often fraught with immediate results to suffering humanity, and which open a wide field with the treatment and relief of these obscure and nervous diseases? There are few medical truths that have been discovered that have done more good for humanity than this one that has been ignored by the great body of the medical profession. Per- haps the most common experience that I encounter in my office is to have patients tell me that their doctor, or sometimes even an oculist whom they have consulted, would say to them that their eye trouble is the result of their physical weakness, and not the cause, and that the relief of the eye trouble could have nothing to do with their recovery and assure them that by a long course of treatment they would be cured. But after continuous failure to get any benefit the patient will finally be advised to consult one of these "eye specialists" who claim that most of these terrible afflictions can be cured by the proper adjustment of glasses, or by regulating any defect of the eye muscles. Such patients naturally believe that abnormal eye refrac- tion in their own case has been sought for in their latest methods and found to be absent. If he be some "big gun" who stands high in his profession, they quote to their friends his positive assertion (whom they think infallible) that eye muscles are not worth investigating, and that settles the question forever, and other similar expressions, which are indicative of inexperience, ignorance, bigotry or prejudice. These expressions often come to my ears, when the fact is that in most of the cases no possible explanation of the facts here recorded can be suggested, except to admit that the correction of the existing eye strain caused a cessation of the leakage of the nervous force that had been going on for years, and by so doing the sufferer had been enabled to regain his normal health. These pitiful results are brought about solely by the indifference and prejudice of men of scientific reputation, and the resultant injury cannot be estimated. They give to others this expression of their opinion, which, because of their 604 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE high standing in the profession, is accepted, but they will not investi- gate for themselves or will not see, and this causes thousands of suf- ferers to be doomed to a life of misery. And it is for the purpose of demonstrating the counter proposition, of showing that eye strain may indirectly be the cause of obscure diseases and not its results, that I deem it wise to defend a method of treatment that so often accomplishes what drugs will not accomplish, and it is one based upon absolute scientific certainty rather than false speculations and empiricisms. The cases of St. Vitu's dance, headache, neuralgia, which I report here in detail I have selected from a large number, in order to demon- strate most positively the correctness on the point at issue. They have been seen from time to time by physicians, and many of these people have been given the opinion of prominent medical men, previous to my seeing them, that organic diseases unquestionably existed and that the eye had nothing to do with the cause of their suffering, but the results, after the removal of the eye strain, proved that all of their severe symptoms and suffering soon disappeared. Subjects suffering from St. Vitu's dance are usually rapidly cured by eye treatment alone, and the recovery of a large percentage of my patients during the past eight years has caused me to come to regard the prognosis a§ extremely favorable, and almost certain in every case. I also am aware that in exceptional cases organic diseases of the brain and spinal cord may produce these same symptoms, but it is wise in my experience to be slow in giving an unfavorable prognosis in any case until the possible reflex causes have been thoroughly inves- tigated and corrected. This reflex disturbance may be from the eye, or from the abdominal viscera and rectum. Sleeplessness and some facts relating to its cause and cure.-The loss of sleep is generally considered, and properly so, as one of the the most terrible of the human afflictions, and especially so when one considers the recuperation of the vital forces, which takes place during the natural sleep, and which constitute the basis of both mental and physical health. This balmy sleep is nature's sweet restorer; it comes as an unbidden but welcome guest to those who would otherwise be unable to bear the burden of their day's work; but those who are EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 605 robbed of sleep by causes that may seem obscure the struggle of life must sooner or later end in physical or mental disease. It entails upon them too often the distressing results of the opium or chloral habit and in many instances a sudden termination of their misery by suicide. I think the public will agree with me when I state that the educated physician is too often unable to successfully combat a per- sistent tendency toward sleeplessness. Thousands of this class are sufferers through medical advise; they are advised to travel for needed rest, or to endure a wretched existence, and often under uncongenial surroundings, far from their friends and home, and often it is a great sacrifice that they can ill afford to bear, because medicine, in their special case, proved a failure to obtain the eight hours of peaceful slumber that work demands. This affliction of sleeplessness is found chiefly among the educated and intelligent classes, by whom the great- est pleasure can be obtained from life and bestowed upon others be- cause of their mental and social prominence. These are the ones who too often in despair turn to the physician for relief from this dread enemy (sleeplessness), which shatters their hopes, impairs their judg- ment, imperils large financial enterprises, embitters life and casts a gloom over their present and future. The explanation of the fact that brain workers, more than muscle workers, are peculiarly disposed to sleeplessness lies chiefly in the constant strain imposed upon the organ of the mind, does not justify the conclusion (too often arrived at by medical men) that an actual disease exists in the brain or in the blood vessels which feed the brain cells. I feel that I cannot too often im- press my readers by repeating the fact that an expenditure of nervous energy in excess of that generated from day to day, no matter how this expenditure is produced, must in time deplete or lower the reserved capital of nerve force in any individual. This cannot but work some injury to some part or parts of the nervous system, although no actual diseased condition may exist. Now, this partial or complete nervous bankruptcy is apt to show itself in the weakest part or organs, just as an echo is heard far from the source of the echo. Let me illustrate what I mean when I speak of this expenditure, or loss of nervous energy, the depletion of the reserved capital or nerve force, and final bankruptcy of the nervous system. Suppose an upright business man 606 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE of a stated income has, from certain extravagances, etc., spent not only in excess of his income for many years, but has gradually en- croached upon his capital. He begins to grow moody, downhearted, reticent; imperceptibly he becomes a changed man; his friends, who are ignorant of the cause of the great change, have gradually become distant and fewer in number; he soon feels averse to society, because of the general loss of esteem; many other complications then begin to arise day by day, month by month, until the individual falls from the high position that he once occupied. Now, what has caused this fall, and what is the remedy? Unquestionably the underlying cause in the final result would prove to be his excessive expenditure of money. Now, the cure would certainly lie in stopping the initial cause, in the hope that time and prudent living would restore, not only the business capital, the cheery nature, but the honest manhood that gained the individual the high position, and that alone can restore it to him. Now, the reader may possibly at first fail to see the application of this illustration to the subject at issue and will see it in a clearer light when I submit the following proposition, which I shall endeavor to sustain by a report of cases that have come under my observation. Clinical evidence goes to show that a large proportion of subjects affected with persistent insomnia of long standing suffer from some congenital defect of the eyes themselves or from an improper adjust- ment of the muscles which move the eye. In many incurable cases of insomnia this constitutes the underlying factor that entails an excess of nervous expenditure from the date of birth until death (if not prop- erly rectified). In time it materially tends to exhaust the normal reserve capital of nervous force of the individual. When we stop to reflect we can understand how every letter on a printed page, as well as every object on the streets or in our homes, that we become cog- nizant of by the sense of sight, requires a more or less perfect adjustment of the complicated muscular apparatus that regulates the eyes in relation to each other so as to enable us to see with both and yet perceive a single image. The total aggregate of such visual perceptions during the sixteen hours of each day that we use the eyes is enormous, and it means a proportionate number of accurately performed adjustments of two EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 607 cameras (the eyes) upon a single object, performed often with mar- velous rapidity and involving in many of the adjustments a complete change of combinations in the eye muscles that are successively brought into play. It is not much of a task to lift a penny once, but no living being could lift a penny a million times a day. Now, nature has so accurately balanced the relative power of each of the various eye muscles in a perfectly constructed being, and has so beautifully constructed the eyes as regards their focus, that the expenditure of nerve power (in the case of such an individual) required to perform the necessary eye movements throughout each day is reduced to a mini- mum, although it is necessarily very large as compared to the amount expended upon any other organ in the body. But when the adjust- ment of the eye muscles or the construction of the eyes themselves is so imperfect that the maintenance of single vision (when both eyes are simultaneously used) is the result of an excessive expendi- ture of nerve force (far greater than nature intended in many cases), any individual so afflicted begins from birth either to draw from the reserve capital of nerve force that nature has stored up for emer- gencies, or the eyes must be run at the expense of a proper nerve sup- ply to some other part (Peter being robbed to pay Paul). Three factors enter into the proposition as to how long a time can elapse before the serious influences of such a leak of nervous energy will be felt in any given case where the eyes or the eye muscles are abnormal. First: How much excess of energy over the normal amount is required to compensate for the defects connected with the sense of sight. Second: How much "reserve capital" of nerve force the individual starts out in life with. Third: How much nerve force the individual can generate day by day to meet the daily expen- diture. A person inheriting one hundred thousand dollars at birth could have expended upon him one thousand dollars per year in excess of his income without feeling the lack of money for one hundred years, but if the excess of expenditure be increased to five thousand dollars over his income, bankruptcy would stare him in the face when he attained his majority. A serious defect of construction in one or both eyes, or a decided tendency of one or both eyes to deviate from 608 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE parallelism with its fellow, may entail upon an individual a leakage of nervous force that is apt in time to produce very sad results upon the general health. Within the next twenty years we shall see every specialist in nervous diseases more or less expert in testing refraction for himself and determining, without outside aid, the existence of defective equi- librium of eye muscles. He need not be an oculist, in the true mean- ing of the term. Diseases of the eye properly belong to a specialist and are best treated by those who see the most patients of that class. But the nervous specialist should know, and sooner or later, will be forced to know whether his patient has nearsightedness, farsighted- ness, or astigmatism, and whether the eyes tend to deviate from their normal and physiological conditions. The more he studies these con- ditions the more will he find to interest him, and he can then do much to relieve what is now too often recognized in the sufferers who apply to him for aid. He will cease to give to patients pills which contain from three to twenty poisonous alkaloids, combined on the principle that the sportsman adopts when he uses a handful of shot, hoping that one may perchance kill his bird; he will study his cases more intelligently and dig and speculate less in the works of healing. This view is not visionary, neither is it the result of rash enthusiasm, but is an earnest conviction that has come after years of patient inquiry and careful observation in treating a large number of patients suffering from nervous derangement. Not long ago a famous orator related the following famous fable: A well fed horse who in his greed scattered grain upon the floor of his stall became, in consequence, the constant companion of a rooster who picked up the scattered oats. One day the rooster suggested that friendly relations were desirable and would be put on a much firmer basis by the existence of a solemn agreement between them. The horse assented and was told that the basis of the compact should read, "Neither of us shall step on the other's feet." I do not desire to carry out in full what to my mind might be the true application of this fable. None of us desire to stir up discord if important facts can be insured a fair hearing without recourse to asperity, but the establish- ment of a great truth cannot be crushed by being "stepped upon." EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 609 The story is told that a selection of a pilot for a vessel, laden with precious merchandise, which was to enter a harbor full of sunken ledges and sand bars, was once being made. One by one the appli- cants told a tale of uninterrupted successes. Finally one pilot was accepted because he said: "I ought to know the channel, as I've wrecked a ship on every rock in this harbor." It has been most emphatically denied by some specialists of promi- nence, both in eye diseases and nervous affections, that the eyes or the eye muscles have any marked influence upon nervous diseases. State- ments of this kind are still made by some, both verbally and in print, with the same vehemence (based, it is to be feared, upon bitter preju- dices and partisan feeling) as they were years ago. Despite evidences to the contrary, they refuse to see what many non-partisan minds are seeing more and more clearly every day. They discard new methods of research into complex ocular problems; they prohibit the use of instruments (that alone allow of an approach to scientific precision) from institutions that they control, and in every possible way they appear to try to mislead the line of professional thought from the main points of issue. One thing is evident, viz., the view that eye strain can and fre- quently does cause serious nervous conditions, must be either true or false. If it is false, it has made steady progress in spite of its weakness and against organized and bitter opposition; if false, then the grow- ing list of converted advocates among the younger "eye specialists" and neurologists is capable of explanation; if false, then thousands of suffering humanity who believe that they have .cause for the deepest gratitude in the recognition and relief of an existing eye strain are deceived. It is contrary to all precedent that a mere "fad" should steadily flourish and gain strength year by year over a period of many years; neither does the statement that some cases have failed to be benefited by this treatment have any weight in argument. Eye strain I consider a serious matter, because the innocent effort made to fuse the images perceived by the two eyes into a single image, when a muscular defect renders such an act possible, yet one of extreme difficulty, is liable, sooner or later, to exhaust the nervous force of the patient and to excite some form of functional disturb- 610 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ance and perpetuate it as long as the factor exists. Now, if we admit the position that eye defects or anomalies of the ocular muscles are liable to become causes of impaired nervous energy, because they demand an excess of nervous expenditure, we are forced to the con- clusion that the earlier this physical depression is removed the better are the prospects of the person to escape diseases which this impaired nervous energy would hasten to develop. We have learned that the ovaries, the womb, the rectum, alimentary canal, the prepuce, and the urethra, in some instances produce serious nervous disturbances that closely simulate the evidences of organic diseases. Although quite a little has been written during the past few years in relation to the deleterious effects of errors of refraction, accommodation, and mus- cular insufficiency upon the functions of the nervous system and the viscera, the profession at large is not thoroughly awakened to the importance of the detection and correction of such errors, but the fact that ocular defects cause headaches has been recognized in an imperfect way for many years. I do not think that any skilled neu- rologists today can deny that the defects here mentioned are impor- tant, and are generally a neglected factor of causation. Why cannot the eye act as a disturbing element as well as ovarian irritation, phy- mosis, etc. ? I would say right here that to properly correct astigmatism by glasses is often an extremely difficult matter. It requires a thorough knowledge of the use of the ophthalmoscope and of optics generally. I would further say that any muscular insufficiency or error of refrac- tion and accommodation that are severe enough to produce any func- tional disturbance of the nervous system, such as epilepsy, chorea or any of the neurasthenic diseases, should be intrusted to skillful hands. This is a line of argument which apparently seems difficult to understand; it is a course of reasoning which many enthusiastic pathologists naturally prefer to discard, because it puts an end to a search for a pathognomonic lesion which no human eye or micro- scope has ever yet been able to detect in many hopeless and chronic cases of epilepsy, insanity, headache, neuralgia, hysteria, chorea and neurasthenia. It will be opposed by some because it comes in direct antagonism with the continuous use of the various bromide salts, but EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 611 the injurious effects of such administration are too often encountered to be ignored. I do not expect that these views, so radically opposed to the ordinary method of treatment by medication, now generally advocated for the cure of epilepsy and other functional nervous dis- eases, will be accepted at once, even if correctly demonstrated. But no great advance in science has ever been made until time has cooled down prejudices and modified the prevailing tendency of thought. A boy eleven years old, a very healthy appearing lad, would have epileptic seizures at very irregular times, three or four times a week or several times a day. He would especially have an attack when sitting in the sun or in a strong light. Examination showed a marked degree of hypermetropia and insufficiency of the external recti mus- cles. Tenotomy was performed and afterwards glasses were fitted, to correct the refractive error, and for two years he has been relieved of his terrible malady without any other treatment. He had pre- viously used the bromides for several years, without any apparent benefit. Mrs. M., twenty years of age, for eight years had severe head- aches. At these times she was very nervous and irritable, sometimes accompanied by twitching and jerking of the muscles, which grad- ually terminated in epileptic seizures. This had continued about three years, when she came to me for treatment. I put her on nerve tonics for several months and corrected the two and one-fourth dioptrics of hypermetropia by glasses. She has since gained over fifty pounds in weight and is entirely relieved of her former trouble. A boy eight years old, of a nervous and very energetic disposi- tion, could not attend school more than three or four weeks at a time without becoming weak and losing flesh, also becoming very irritable, with loss of appetite and severe headaches, so that during the fall and winter he was entirely kept from school. After three months he began going to school again, but in two or three weeks he began the old complaints, at the same time complaining of his eyes, that he could not see anything. When in. school one or two hours everything blurred before him and he could not tell one letter from another. I examined his eyes and found only one dioptric of the left and one and a half dioptric of hypermetropia of the right eye. From the very 612 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE moment that the proper glasses were applied he has felt as good as any boy and his former complaints have ceased. In 1887 an interesting case, due to other reflex cause, cams under my care. Mrs. S., thirty-nine years of age, married, of strong physi- cal build, who never had any children, had violent attacks of epilepsy for four years. She had sometimes as many as two a day, sometimes four or five a week. Examination showed no ocular defect and other- wise apparent good health. On questioning her she claimed the attacks came on more frequently before her menstrual period, and I concluded that the cause must be some uterine trouble. I found the womb larger than normal, as if in the third month of pregnancy, with the organ otherwise in good condition. I gave treat- ment to last a week, without a return of her complaint, and continued it for four weeks more, with the same result, at which time I was called in a hurry and found her flooding profusely. I gave her some medicine to check the hemorrhage and told her to keep in a recumbent position, that all would be right in time. Three days afterwards the husband came to my office bringing something in a glass that had been expelled from the uterus. It was about four inches long, taper- ing to a point resembling a top. The outer coat was hard and appeared like a wrinkled piece of leather and about as tough. Its inner coat was lined with fibrous layers, with a mass like a blood clot in the center. She made a good recovery. The womb con- tracted down to its normal size. She became pregnant the following year and I delivered her of a healthy boy, her first child, she then being forty-one years of age. She has had no return of epilepsy from the time of taking the first dose of medicine up to the present time, is in good health, and appears about ten years younger than when she first called at my office. Mrs. C. M. called at my office, complaining of severe headaches, neuralgia and indigestion. She said she had tried many doctors and many kinds of medicine for six years, without obtaining any relief. It was hard to persuade her to believe that such troubles could be produced from eye strain, which was due to farsightedness and mus- cular trouble of the eyes. Two weeks after beginning to wear her EYE DEFECT AND OTHER DISTURBANCES 613 glasses she returned and said her symptoms had left like magic; that leaving her glasses off for a few hours, which she did on purpose to see if it was really the glasses that were benefiting her, found her head would begin to ache, but that it would disappear as soon as the glasses were put on again. INGROWING TOE NAILS. Those who are suffering- from this annoyance and very painful malady, ingrowing toe nails, and also those who are unwittingly carry- ing out what they deem cleanliness and good hygiene, are laying the very foundation that ultimately produces this disease. Nature here, as in all other things, has done her part well; it is only when man interferes with her laws and principles, either by care- lessness, or as is usually the case, from want of knowledge of her demands, that sickness and suffering come upon the earth. So it is with ingrowing toe nails; they are rarely found among people who do not meddle with their toes, hence do not meddle with nature's natural preventive for this complaint. The main cause of this affliction is due to not knowing how to clean and cut the toe nails properly; sometimes it occurs from compres- sion produced from pressure of the shoe, the soft portion being forced up against the margin of the nail, thereby causing inflammation, and sometimes even causing ulceration,- forming elevated red granules which give this excessive pain when pressing against the nail, but the condition thus described would more properly be called up-growing pulp. The real turning and growing in of the nail is produced by cut- ting or picking out a little bony-like wedge that lies directly beneath each corner of the nail; it is this hard substance that nature intended to prevent the nail from turning down into the flesh. With this natural protector left in place as nature intended it. the intense suffer- ing from ingrowing toe nails can be entirely avoided. Another im- portant point is to never cut the nails off round, always straight; when cut round the shoe presses the soft parts up over the rounded nail causing pain and inflammation. These simple rules will always be effective. 614 SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY? This question, should consumptives marry, has by many authors been discussed pro and con, some thinking that such individuals should be allowed to marry, but their arguments being based mainly from its spiritual standpoint that it was better to be born consumptive than never to be born at all; that in the spiritual world the consumptives could en- joy as well as others; that dying young and living forever was better than to have never existed. To the writer it appears that it would make some difference in the temperature of the climate in the other world. From the standpoint of improving the physical body, for giving strength to a nation, for the promotion of health, for the prevention of all the various constitutional diseases, such as consumption, etc., it would not be advisable for consumptives to marry, because their chil- dren would be more easily inclined to be affected by their general sur- roundings in which they live and more readily take disease. But there are circumstances under which a consumptive may marry, if the appli- cation of nature's law is judiciously applied. For instance, a man con- stitutionally disposed to consumption should marry a woman with ex- tra good lungs and otherwise strong and healthy and plump in build, and descended from a long-lived family. In such a case this mother would supply a fairly good physical body and also transmit good lungs to their children, while on the other hand, these same children would inherit that mental activity which is usually accompanied with those consumptive tendencies, added to the abundant vitality of the mother, and thereby escaping all consumptive tendencies and often actually im- proving these children by endowing them with the masculinity of their mother and the bright and active mentality of the father. By the ob- serving, instead of abusing, the natural laws of their own constitution, would make good citizens both mentally, morally and physically, as well as adding the pleasure of living a long life. Then if the children 615 616 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE of these parents should equally as well follow this natural law in se- lecting their partner in marriage as their consumptive father did, they could still improve the next generation from ten to twenty-five per cent through their own, and in this way the consumptive tendency of the grandfather would be nearly or entirely lost. Of course to carry out nature's request and to eradicate consump- tion by intermarriage must be done by educating the young man and young woman to know that the only key for the production of children with good constitutions and able to live in the ordinary conditions of the natural world lies entirely in the carrying out of the natural mar- riage laws, for no human law can interdict without injury to the race or nation what the Creator in his natural laws both licenses and en- joys. Another feature in the application of this law is that hereditary ailments of most any kind can be avoided and even replaced with ex- cellent characteristics. All that is required is that when anyone has a weakly or unsound organ or trait in any particular respect, the part- ner in marriage should be sound and vigorous in those same organs or trait in which the other is weak. By carefully obeying this law, one parent may be predisposed to one disease and the other to another, yet their children would escape both, provided the predisposition in each is offset by opposite physical qualities in the other. Otherwise they are in great danger of inheriting the weaknesses of both. Just as where both have weak lungs, the children are sure to have weaker ones than their parents, and at the least provocation break down, when con- sumption exists. The man by nature inclined to consumption is usually spare, slim, thin-faced, sharp-featured, and often very tall. Such a one should marry a person entirely opposite to his disposition; she should be rather short, chubby in build, broad shouldered and broad hipped, strong, and have large lungs. Her mentality can be strong, but she should not be one of the quick and impulsive kind; with such a union the children would be all right. We know of a number of such families whose children are strong and endowed with more endurance than many whose parents are strong and healthy, while not a very common occurrence, especially in this country. We know of cases where strong and healthy parents married, SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 617 but were mismated for the producing of healthy offspring; the children in a number of cases that came under my observation numbered from four to eight in a family, and in every instance all died of consumption before they reached the age of thirty years, where if these same fathers and mothers had married a partner more opposite, the children could have been even better in constitution than their parents were them- selves. We cannot recommend the marriage of consumptive women with much expectation of having children who would be safe to not inherit the weaknesses of the mother, unless the rules laid down on prevention of consumption were thoroughly followed, on the principle of a natural law which is universal in the animal and vegetable king- dom, that even poor or weak seed planted in good soil will usually raise a good crop, while good seed planted in poor soil will bring forth poor crops. This law in the animal kingdom means poor or weakly off- spring. TEMPERAMENTS THAT SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT MARRY Very few people have what can be termed well balanced heads or bodies, and as already stated, this would require the most of us to marry our opposites in one respect or another. Some have too much brain for their bodies or too much body for their brain, perhaps it would not be too much to say that at least one-quarter of our population are deficient in their breathing and lung power, breathing being to the body, to give it motion and power, what steam or electricity is to the engine. If this element that gives life and motion to the body through the lungs is deficient, all other functions, such as digestion, circulation of the blood and muscular force, must suffer in proportion; therefore a weak- lunged individual should never marry anyone unless they have very large lung and muscular capacity. The color of the eye should also be a very strong consideration. Gray eyes should marry most any other color but gray, and the same can be said of the other colors, blue, dark, hazel, etc. Bright red hair should marry jet black, and jet black a bright red or auburn. Red bearded men should marry brunettes and not blondes. Beards as a rule are more determinate of the temperament than the hair. Those who are very fleshy should not marry those who are equally so, 618 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE but should marry a person rather spare and slim. A spare man is much better adapted to a fleshy woman than to one who is round and plump. Two people should never unite in marriage that are both short, thick-set and stocky, but should choose those differently constituted, but on no account one having their own strong characteristics. The more red- faced or bearded or impulsive a man, the more dark, calm and cool should his wife be, and vice versa. Those having an abundance of hair may marry those who by nature have had but little hair. In this, as in all other cases, all depends upon what one is by nature. A person of bony and muscular make-up, with prominent features and only medium fleshy, should not marry those with a body and temperament similarly formed, but should rather marry those of a nervous or sanguine tem- perament, or a mixture of both; in other words, those who are cool should marry those who are inclined to be susceptible and impulsive. Two very beautiful persons should not marry, nor should tw'o extra homely ones. It is very uncommon to see a very handsome woman, who could generally have her pick among men, marry one who is good looking, but she generally gives the preference to strength, coarse fea- tures and strong character. "Beauty always loves to repose on the arm of strength." No beautiful woman ever loved or married a handsome man if she could find any other. Nervous and small men should not marry small women or sanguine women; if so it would be almost cer- tain that their children like themselves would be too hot-headed and impulsive and most always die suddenly. Those who are rapid in their motions, rapid speakers and jolly good fellows, should marry those who are calm and deliberate. Those who are impulsive are more adapted to the stoic, while those who are medium may marry those who are medium. As a rule those who have noses specially marked should marry those having opposite characteristics of the nose. Roman noses are adapted to those that slightly turn up, while straight noses can marry either. Those who have narrow and pinched nostrils are adapted to those with broad nostrils. This is an- other way of stating what already has been stated, that a person with small or weak lungs should marry those with large lungs. The nostrils are usually a sure indication of the lung capacity, just as a long winded horse is usually selected by the size of his nostrils. The same rule that SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 619 holds good in noses applies equally to the lower jaw. The large square lower jaw, indicating animal strength, is adapted to those with small jaws; otherwise the nature of the offspring would be too animal. It should be equally understood that these rules apply only to unequally balanced bodies and heads. Those equally balanced may marry those equally balanced. The intermarrying of so many different species of mankind, com- bined with the continual change in their surrounding conditions, is largely due to the existing weaknesses of our nation. For instance, a tribe of Indians, negroes or savages that live close to nature and con- tinually intermarry with their own kind, we find a continuous evenness and balance in their physical characteristics, admitting at the same time that intermarriage with other nationalities, properly selected, mental or physical improvements can be made. But so little attention is paid to practical conduct in this subject of marriage in accordance with the laws of nature that our injury and suffering has far exceeded the oc- casional benefit. It may seem at first glance to the reader that these laws have nothing in common to pertain to this dreadful disease consumption, but by a little reflection it can plainly be seen that it not only has much to do to eradicate the tendency of consumption from the human race, but it is the absolute plank and foundation upon which absolutely every stem springs forth which will assist to eradicate weaknesses of the body which by our ordinary surroundings are unavoidable, but will give the exciting cause to produce glandular obstruction, which must ultimately develop in the breaking down of the lung tissue. We must counterbalance the existing physical weaknesses of mankind by intermarrying to strong opposite traits. This counterbalancing law also controls and governs the intellectual faculties, in fact all functions of the brain. Supposing a man or woman marry a partner that like themselves have small hope and a brooding and melancholy disposition; the one would only be a stimulant to make the other more despondent and is almost sure to develop some form of organic disease, while their children would be so much more inclined to this despondency that even suicide may be the result, where if a partner had been selected with a strong and hopeful disposition, it would have been a strong stimulant to a less 620 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE hopeful and brooding partner, besides their children would probably be well balanced and of a quiet and hopeful disposition. This law holds good in all the various traits and faculties of the brain, such as memory and judgment, of language and sense, of philosophy and poetry, so that these offsettings can be made to improve all marriages as well as all children, and thus acquiring the triple pleasure of a happy marriage, healthy and well-balanced children, and thirdly, the most important to health, improvement to the constitution of their offspring, and thus preventing any easy tendency to develop consumption or any other of the constitutional diseases. Thus the obeying of these laws is the only means by which it can be decided whether our children and future gen- erations shall have constitutions to make men of steel, oak, hickory or pine, or shall they be weeds that grow up just long enough to develop seed for more weeds, until one-half of our deaths or more will be due to consumption and the other to constitutional diseases, besides being very susceptible to the epidemic forms of disease. There is nothing that deteriorates the nation more than unfavorable combinations in marriage, and nothing will improve the constitution of man more than a favorable union. Very little attention has ever been paid to this vastly important subject, although several writers have de- voted their lives to it, but their works seem to mostly lie dormant on the shelves of the publisher; while on the other hand, no subject should be more discussed, more fully understood by parents and school teach- ers, so that each in their proper manner may impress upon all children its necessity and importance to themselves and future generations; im- proving the race by combining the best in constitution and intellect. The combining of various talents and physical excellencies, com- bined with the principle already explained in another part, in improving the organs and faculties of the body by exercise and culture, an almost unlimited improvement can be derived by individuals and the very race itself. We combine speed, draught and constitution in horses by parental combinations; improve horned cattle by combining two superior breeds in their cross descendants. Why not apply the law to human improve- ments ? It would surprise the most sanguine-in fact, no one has the least idea of the extent to which this law can be applied in improving the SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 621 constitution as well as the mental qualities of all humanity. Further, unless attention, as well as application, is paid by our educators and parents to this God-given law, it is as certain as that the sun shines that another century will find the death rate from consumption and other constitutional diseases double their present rate, and all the phy- sicians of the whole world cannot stop or check its progress by chasing microbes, for nature demands obedience to her laws, and she demands settlements for every violation. In the following, taken from "Hereditary Descent," published in "Creative Science" by O. S. Fowler (which, by the way, is the best book ever written on this subject), this subject is presented most ad- mirably : "The confluence of this principle of illimitable improvement with this law of the re-increase of organs by cultivation constitutes Nature's top stone of human hope and divine wisdom and goodness. None of her provisions are more promotive of human happiness than either sep- arately. Then how infinitely more are both in conjunction! Their united action embodies her great deliverance of our race from its pres- ent low estate and grand instrumentality of placing it on its exalted principle of prospective perfection and happiness." A few samples: "Longevity is both transmitted and capable of being re-increased by a rigid observance of the natural laws. If two marry, each of whose ancestors reaches a hundred years, an age often attained, they can both attain a like age, and as their ancestors lived this long in spite of nu- merous and aggravated violations of the health laws, their descendants, by obeying these laws, can live to be a hundred and twenty as easily as their ancestors a hundred, besides imparting to their offspring sufficient constitution to capacitate them also to live to reach a hundred and twenty, because of the confluence of two long lived parental conditions. If then, these children still further improve their original life power and also marry companions equally long lived, they can live to be a hundred and thirty as easily as their parents a hundred and twenty or their grandparents a hundred; and parent children capable of reaching a hundred and forty, because the parental union of those long lived con- ditions renders their children still longer lived. As, if children of the 622 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE rich should intermarry only with the wealthy and then augment their patrimony by judicious efforts, the riches of their descendants could be re-increased by every succeeding generation, as in the Rothschilds; so the marriage of the long lived with the long lived will increase and re- increase the ages of their succeeding generation, while a rigid observ- ance of the health laws superadded will redouble this tenacity of life more and more every succeeding generation, till the oldest now would be young compared with those who might be made to inhabit our earth in future ages. Are we on doubtful ground ? Does not the union of two long lived parents produce offspring still longer lived ? And cannot this longevity be still re-increased by obeying the physical laws ? Then what hinders mankind from redoubling his longevity ? 'What man has been, man can be.' 'As the days of a tree shall be the days of my peo- ple.' Who has set bounds to the improvement of man? Then why is not human longevity equally illimitable ? Since the child shall die a hundred years old, pray how old must their aged men and women be ? The seeds of all this, of even greater things than these, are planted in the primitive constitution of humanity and will yet bring forth wonderfully to the glory of God and the infinite improvement and hap- piness of his children. "These principles apply equally to strengthen the muscles, stomach, heart, lungs, and every other physical organ and function. All phys- ical excellencies can be both retained and re-combined and transmitted with others and our race perfected physically as long as it continues, until the human physiology shall have become almost infinitely perfect throughout. If a splendid looking man physically should marry an exquisitely beautiful woman, their children, still more beautiful, can, by marrying other types of beauty, endow their descendants again with both a higher order and new combinations of beautiful elements to be re-augmented generation after generation till those most beautiful now will be homely in comparison and human vision regaled with almost angelic loveliness! And thus of all other physical qualities. "Intellectual and moral improvement is governed by this law, for each and all the mental faculties and characteristics can be equally im- proved inimitably by applying this combined law, already shown to produce great men by combining physical stamina with intellectual SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 623 strength. Thus Patrick Henry's oratorical genius was produced by the confluence of three ancestral rivers of lingual and oratorical superi- ority. Now, suppose he had married a daughter of Jonathan Edwards, endowed with the transcendent metaphysical and moral capacities of both lines of her illustrious parentage, the union of such gigantic pow- ers of intellect with such exalted moral sentiments, conjoined with the eloquence of Henry must, in accordance with this hereditary law, have produced an issue endowed with far greater and more diversified intel- lectual, moral and elocutionary gifts than any yet manifested by mortal man. Yet even this would be only intellectual and moral mediocrity in comparison with what the right and long continued application of this law is capable of producing. "Franklin inherited his strong common sense and excellent physical stamina from his father, along with superb mechanical and mathemat- ical genius from his mother. Suppose, now, he had married one of these descendants of Henry and Edward, would not their issue have retained and re-increased all the gifts of all their ancestors and produced speci- mens of humanity more illustrious than mortals have ever yet beheld ? Franklin's transcendent genius was clogged by his inability to speak and Henry's by his inability to write; but as children inherit the strong- est functions of both their parents, these descendants of all these illus- trious lines would have clothed richer thoughts and philosophies than Franklin's with eloquence more transcendent than Henry's, and all sanctified by the proportionally high order of the intellectual acumen and moral excellence of Edwards. How would such exalted beings in- struct by their surpassing wisdom, charm by their glowing eloquence and almost transform by their moral appeals I "A long series of well assorted intermarriages with others equally gifted in other directions could be made to add one physical gift to an- other and all these to one intellectual capacity and moral excellence after another, each generation re-improving them all by self-cultiva- tion, and all observing that paramount law of well-balanced proportion, remembering always this law of balance, for no form is physically stronger than his weaknesses; behold, I heavens! and be astonished, O earth! In view of the almost angelic gifts and virtues of these veritable sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty! Behold our earth again 624 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE the garden of Eden, and man almost a race of angels! Yet even all this would be only the merest beginning of those endowments of which hu- manity is capable and which man will yet attain! God did not create the race for naught. Physical contrivances thus wonderful and mental gifts thus God like will not always remain in their present low estate, nor be marred by these moral deformities. God mercifully created man in His own image and likeness and will not suffer this masterwork of His hands to remain forever trodden into the present slough of depravi- ties. He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Thank God, this mighty hereditary fulcrum and self-cultivating level will raise it up out of the mire of corruption and bear it aloft far above what eye hath yet seen or ear heard or it hath entered into the heart of man to conceive. "These principles are not fables. Are not all well demonstrated laws of nature? Has a single point been left doubtful? Then is not this perfecting result the legitimate and necessary product of these hereditary laws ? They are sure, even without this their special intel- lectual application to keep on improving the race. Having spontane- ously produced Bacons, Franklins, Websters and a host of stars in the firmament of humanity, will they stop here? Even left to themselves they will, in the vast future of the race, exceed our sanguine prognosti- cations. "They will not be thus left. They are too apparent to lie unnoticed and too momentously important to be neglected. Our utilitarian age will not suffer such rich mines of human happiness to remain long un- worked. If this generation does not apply these laws, the next will. In the next decade, if not in this, matrimonial candidates will not thus blindly leap in the dark, but will scrutinize well the parental and matri- monial excellencies and defects of every proposed companion. The traits of prospective children, whether they will be naturally healthy or sickly, handsome or homely, talented or stupid, virtuous or vicious, can be predicted with absolute certainty by like parental conditions, which can be fully seen at a glance and measured with tangibility and cer- tainty. Knowledge thus infinitely valuable will not long thus remain hidden under the bushel of neglect. Shall principles already applied thus successfully to the improvement of stock long remain unapplied to SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 625 that of man ? Will he long be content to improve children only by edu- cation, when a tithe of the same effort employed in their hereditary en- dowment will yield intellectual and moral harvests so infinitely greater ? Parents dearly love their offspring and intensely desire their improve- ment, and this ruling passion will soon compel them to learn and apply these laws of hereditary descent to the production of as perfect speci- mens of humanity as possible in order to their perfection by educa- tion. The study of these hereditary laws is yet to become the great study and their application the great labor of man. This day star of human promise is just rising above the mountains. These momentous truths are just beginning, like distant thunder, to break upon the human ear. Their voice will wax louder and louder till it arouses and electri- fies the race, for its interests are paramount. Then will a new order of beings people our earth! a race enfeebled by no defects, crippled by no diseases and corrupted by no vices; but instead, endowed with all that is noble, great and good in man and virtuous, lovely and perfect in woman. Then, but not till then, will the sun of millennium glory rise and shine on humanity in all his morning beauty and noonday splen- dor." Creative science in those natural laws which govern nature's repro- ductive department; natural laws govern all things and through them attain all ends, including the creation of all life; through the per- fectness of all these laws its results are guaranteed equally perfect, and its exalted mission is to enable each and all to treat themselves to de- sired things and pleasures by employing those means which cause them; these inimitable laws are the handwriting of God upon all His works, which all are solemnly bound to learn and obey. By the institution of this natural law, or cause and effect arrange- ment, enables all to bring any desired result by employing their specific means. Can anything be more useful and beneficial ? Its sole aim is to establish the greatest amount and the highest possible order of life. Science has done much for man, as in chemistry, geology-in fact, in all the various branches of the arts and sciences. People are trying to become proficient in them, but this creative science is almost totally neglected and still more totally abused, but its right use would far sur- pass all others combined, as much so as the life it originates surpasses inorganic matter. 626 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE As the farmer produces better crops and finer stock in proportion as he understands and applies nature's conditions and laws of growth, so equally by having and applying this knowledge in the production of offspring will they be superior. Then perfect children should be the most glorious product on the earth, and it can only be attained by apply- ing these identical creative laws to humanity. See the amount of time and money that is spent in the application of these creative laws for producing fine horses, while the same principle in the creation of chil- dren is almost, if not entirely, ignored; yet its utility even surpasses that of all other sciences as much as a superior human being exceeds fine animals or fine fruits; in other words, any comparison fails to de- scribe its greatness and benefits to mankind. Then is it not cruel to ignore or even interdict its study ? A perfect article is always more valuable than an imperfect one. A child with one weak point is only proportionally as strong as its weak point. Sup- posing a child has all the human excellencies but one; it may be health or sense or conscience; or it steals, lies or is lazy, cowardly or heartless. Let any parent say how much less this child is worth with this one fault, and how much more the child would be worth without it; how much less still is this child worth if both sickly and vicious, simple and thiev- ish ; in other words, how much does every excellency added to and one fault taken away increase his social and commercial value to himself and others ? It would be folly to try and compute the difference in the value of perfect children over imperfect. Let every father and mother try to foot up the profits and losses by this measuring principle. A good child is more valuable in proportion than a poor one, as it gives more pleasure and comfort, and a bad one is as much worse than none, as it causes more pain than pleasure. Let all the actual and pos- sible enjoyments experienced by the superb child in this world or the next, measure its real value to itself; let all the exquisite pleasures taken in a splendid boy, bounding in and out, ruddy, merry, overflowing with joy and sunshine wherever he goes, and compare this child with a poor sickly miserable imp, mad half the time and sniveling the rest, keeping his parents in perpetual fear that any atmospheric change might endan- ger his life, or that his rage and depravity might do irreparable mis- chief. Does not this show the infinite value of perfect over faulty chil- SHOULD CONSUMPTIVES MARRY 627 dren, not that poor ones are not worth having (as a musty loaf of bread is better than none), but at the same time all should do their best to pro- vide themselves with the best family of children possible. Then knowledge and education relative to these creative laws is of more value than all other knowledge combined. It demonstrates that God lets parents foreordain the qualities and value of their future little ones. God might have assumed their entire formation to Himself, but instead, He has guaranteed their general qualities to His hereditary laws; He mercifully allows us to say each for himself as to what shall be the make-up or fashioning of our own young. Is not this production an infinitely beneficial one? allowing us to enjoy as we have planned and built, just as we would have selected, planted and trimmed a tree or a fruit, or as we have reared a horse with fine qualities by the under- standing and then arranging his hereditary qualities, the results of which are far better than they would have been if we had not under- stood their creative laws? Then how much more lovely and precious our children will be rendered to us by having increased their virtues and lessened their tendency to faults by fashioning them by the influences from us by the proper application of these hereditary or creative laws. THE CURE OF NERVOUSNESS. Ascertaining its causes is the first and most important step. Noth- ing light or trivial or temporary could effect results so painful and serious. Look all around and see what fundamental life law you have long been violating. This disease may be sympathetic, since the nervous system ramifies throughout all the organs their ailments, of course, similarly affect it. Dyspepsia always favors it; it may be overwork; stop worrying; every bad feeling makes you and them the worse, yet does no good. Make the best of what is; it may be a married disappointment, or that death which struck to your very heart, or that terrible fright you once had, or some business disaster. A merchant, who had always made it a special point of honor to meet every engagement promptly, on going perfectly well to his business in the morning found some of his notes protested; having done his best, and his deficit only trifling, he relied on the leniency of his bank, in which he had always had large reserves, to help him through, but it refused him one dollar. A note he had indorsed for another man was protested and his name published in the evening paper in the bankrupt list. He went home stupefied by the day's excitement, was struck dumb, became insane, lingered and died. How many die suddenly in consequence of the death of some one dearly beloved? I remember a friend whose wife was taken sick and died. He said he did not want to live without her, and died in a few days from his grief. A lady died instantly because her lap dog fell from her carriage and was run over. Analogous cases occur per- petually, all teaching this great practical truth, that all painful mental action disorders the nerves. Remember that much of your trouble, if not wholly imaginary, is at least magnified many fold by your own morbid feelings; that you are troubled chiefly because you think you are; that if you thought 628 THE CURE OF NERVOUSNESS 629 the reverse it would be the reverse; that the least said the sooner mended; that evil is to him who evil thinks; that crying over spilled milk makes you spill more, but never gathers up that already spilled; that your grief over a thing hurts your selfhood a hundredfold more than the thing itself is worth; that it may be bad enough, but bad feelings make it ten times worse, yet does nothing whatever toward obviating it; that if you can obviate the evil you should, but if you can not, self-interest demands that you patiently endure what you cannot cure and make the best of what is; but never on any account hurt yourself by grief. At least you must not expect to recover while this cause remains, any more than a sore will heal while it has proud flesh. Yet your suffering thus proves that you are curable and that nature will actually cure you if you remove the cause. Having thus ascertained and removed the cause of this nervous- ness, your cure consists, not in opiates nor morphine, nervines or patent medicine, nor any of all those nostrums usually administered, for if they give relief by paralyzing the nervous system, they only do it damage, but by stimulating it they injure it, because the very trouble is this very stimulation. It needs no tonic, for it is already toned up to a diseased pitch. Morphine, etc., stupefy, palsy and benumb them for the time being, only to make them more excitable ever afterward. If they have strength enough to react, they are still more irritable the next day, but if they have not they may become permanently para- lyzed. If you can get no sleep without them, sleep produced by them does you no good, for it is stupor, not sleep; they kill time and your constitution together. Away with them all; do not tamper with your precious nervous system, but bear present pain rather than inflict future injury. Avoid study and worry, and make the best of every- thing. Do let your overworked brain rest until it recuperates. And remember that drawing on your already overdrawn nervous account discounts future action at a fearful rate, perhaps physical bankruptcy and death; stop studying, thinking and worrying. Sleep, sleep, all you can, day and night. To this end dismiss cares and troubles and quiet down. Let the world jog on and let things take their course, while you stop and take a rest. No cure for nervousness at all equals that of sleep, yet to obtain it is often 630 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE difficult; though perpetually worn out for want of rest you can com- pose yourself to sleep only with difficulty, sleep lightly, restless, dis- turbed by dreams, easily awakened, and find great difficulty in again getting to sleep. Nine to ten hours per day are none too much, for you sleep slowly when asleep, yet exhaust yourself rapidly while awake, and hence should devote the more time to this all-important life func- tion. Seek amusements. Enjoy whatever you can enjoy-operas, con- certs, visits, riding, gardening, flowers, traveling, anything that is pleasurable, for pleasure is medicinal and produces sleep. Make fun of your business for the present. Your skin, not your stomach, furnishes your readiest mode of reaching and relieving your nerves; keep the skin active by rubbing and take as much exercise as you can bear. The will and water are some of your chief remedies, but be especially careful not to overdo. Nervousness renders you loath to begin, but when begun you are extremely liable to overdo. Not to do too much absolutely but to do too fast so as to cause trembling. Exercising moderately will enable you to exercise much more without overdoing. Remember your nervousness throws you into a hurried, flurried, worrying, rush- ing mood, so that you are apt to exercise too violently at first. Culti- vate deliberation in exercise, in eating, in everything; avoid anything that disagrees with you. Following these simple directions will in time (for all nervous troubles recuperate slowly) restore the most aggravating cases of this disease and make new men and women of many now miserable thousands. EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS IN MAN AND ANIMALS. After the mind has suffered from an acute paroxysm of grief and the cause still continues, we fall into a state of low spirits, or we may be utterly cast down and dejected. Prolonged bodily pain, if not amounting to agony, generally leads to the same state of mind. If we expect to suffer we are anxious; if we have no hope of relief we despair. Persons suffering from excessive grief often seek relief by violent and almost frantic movements, as described in a former chapter; but when their suffering is somewhat mitigated', yet prolonged, they no longer wish for action, but remain motionless and passive, or may occasionally rock themselves to and fro. The circulation becomes languid, the face pale, the muscles flaccid, the eyelids droop, the head hangs on the contracted chest, the lips, cheeks and lower jaw sink downwards from their own weight; hence all the features are length- ened, and the face of a person who hears bad news is said to fall. A party of natives in Terra del Fuego endeavored to explain to us that their friend, the captain of a sealing vessel, was out of spirits by pull- ing down their cheeks with both hands, so as to make their faces as long as possible. Mr. Bunnet informs me that the Australian abo- rigines, when out of spirits, have a chopfallen appearance. After prolonged suffering the eyes become dull and lack expression and are often slightly suffused with tears. The eyebrows not rarely are rendered oblique, which is due to their inner ends being raised. This produces peculiarly formed wrinkles on the forehead, which are very different from those of a simple frown, though in some cases a frown alone may be present. The corners of the mouth are drawn down- ward, which is so universally recognized as a sign of being out of spirits that it is almost proverbial. The breathing becomes slow and feeble and is often interrupted 631 632 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE by deep sighs. As Gratiolet remarks, wherever our attention is long concentrated on any subject we forget to breathe, and then relieve ourselves by a deep inspiration; but the sighs of a sorrowful person, owing to his slow respiration and languid circulation are eminently characteristic. As the grief of a person in this state occasionally re- curs and increases into a paroxysm, spasms affect the respiratory mus- cles and he feels as if something, the so-called globus hysterious, was rising in his throat. These spasmodic movements are clearly allied to the sobbing of children and are remnants of those severer spasms which occur when a person is said to choke from excessive grief.- Darwin. SHORT NOTES. The following pages are made up largely of quotations from other writers. The original notes are signed with the initial of the author. They contain many suggestive thoughts which should prove helpful to careful readers and thinkers. We are in the beginning of the irresistible conflict between those who can and do think and those who cannot, and who oppose all who dare reason and act. R. This book nails its flag to the mast; it may be killed, but it won't surrender. R. Ignorance is a poor pedestal to set virtue upon, and mock modesty should not have the right to prevent people from knowing themselves. Every child has a right to be well born, and ignorance has no right to people the world with scrofula and consumption. When we come to the conclusion that God is not taking care of us and that we have to take care of ourselves, then we'll begin to have something in the world worth living for. The profoundest question to be solved is the prevention, not the cure, of disease, and no other subject to which the intellect of man can be applied is of such paramount importance to himself and to all humanity. R. "All knowledge, it may be safely said, must be ultimately founded upon experience. The mind never creates entirely new knowledge in- dependent of experience and all that the reasoning powers can do is to arrive at the full meaning of the facts which are in our possession." 633 634 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE We see that the first essential in the inductive method is a knowl- edge of facts. This is obtained in two ways-(i) by Observation; (2) Experi- ment. "The greatest enemy to health of men is women; the worst enemy to the health of women is man." "The stomach daily produces nine pounds of gastric juice for di- gestion of food; its capacity is about five pints." "The weight of the heart is from eight to twelve ounces. It beats one hundred thousand times in twenty-four hours." "Worrying will wear the richest life to shreds." "If you would keep your rosy complexion wear thick-soled shoes." "If you would have good health, go out in the sunshine. Sickness is worse than freckles." Remember that the abuse of the sexual and marriage laws and our false social training are the cause of nearly all our constitutional weak- nesses, hence the cause of our constitutional diseases. R. The chemical elements being recognized as the simplest forms of matter, it might be supposed that each element would be unchange- able in its nature. That a compound should admit of a change is, of course, a thing to be expected. If we decompose water, for instance, into its compound elements-oxygen and hydrogen-we may look on these gases as exhibiting to us water in another form. And a hundred instances of the sort might be advanced by which, either by separating the elements of a compound or by re-arranging them, we obtain new forms of matter without any real change of substance; but with an ele- ment, the case, one would suppose, should be different. However, the physician must take facts as he finds them; and among the most thor- SHORT NOTES 635 oughly recognized chemical facts we have this one-that elementary substances may assume different forms. "The average man takes five and one-half pounds of food and drink each day, which amounts to one ton of solid and liquid nourishment annually." "Each perspiratory duct is one-fourth of an inch in length, which will make the aggregate length of the whole about nine miles." "Allowing the 'blues' to master you is a sure way of cutting your life short." Logic treats of the relations of the different propositions and the influences which can be drawn from them. Let me tell you, my dear reader, receive no other doctrines or teachings than those which rest upon nature's laws. Nature's laws are the Creator's laws, therefore always reliable, never changing; no man nor set of men have power to prescribe new doctrines. If you are bound to carry out your false notions and beliefs, it is your chattel to pay the consequences and all we can say is that you are welcome to all the bitter juice you can squeeze out of that rotten orange. R. If a man had formed the habit of drinking alcoholic drinks, due to his surroundings, associations, etc., and this habit gradually increases so as to do injury to his social and political ambitions, we say he has violated an existing social law, and must suffer the consequences of this violation. If by this excessive habit he has injured his health and shortened his life ten, twenty or thirty years, we say he has violated a law of nature; and for this violation he has suffered the penalty, viz.: a short life. Suppose your minister would have you, every man and woman in 636 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE his church, stand up, take off the clothes you have not paid for, just walking out with the things on your back you have paid for-what a pretty looking lot of scarecrows you'd be. R. Look at our men and women of today and at our forefathers and mothers; why are our men bent and decrepit-our women pale and cadaverous looking? The rule is weakness, while strength is the ex- ception, and men and women of ordinary intelligence should be ashamed to acknowledge that he or she is a victim of dyspepsia, because it is an avoidable disease. All people should husband their mental and physical resources by a proper regard for the laws of health. It has been said that there is a time for all things; this time for sleeping, eat- ing, resting and exercise; give due consideration to your own health so that you may the better minister to others. "Truth is no respecter of persons." Laugh away at anything, everything, every nothing, and you will live the longer and be the happier and better for every giggle. The time has come when it is proper and right that all young peo- ple should have a correct knowledge of sexual matters. It is too sound a subject, has a too sacred and important bearing upon the high- est life and the best health to be longer slighted, but the old fogy gran- nies in sensual breeches, with hands up, eyes bulging, mouths stretched, yelling-"O, don't-for decency's sake-for God's sake, don't, don't, O, don't, say one word about these things-lest you shock public mod- esty-lest folks learn something. We'll kill you if you don't hush up." Truth lies hidden in broad channels. The true field of investiga- tion is our own field. We should be restricted by no creed or theory. R. Remember the tendency to take a certain disease only means that that particular organ or part is weaker, either in quality or in its size, as compared with the rest of the body, all other things being equal. SHORT NOTES 637 The excessive use or abuse of a strong organ or part would have a similar tendency; hence the same cause producing so many different conditions called disease. R. If you are very tired but must perform a few more hours of hard work, lie down, close your eyes and breathe deeply and a little faster than normal for half an hour, and see how refreshed and clear your brain will be and how refreshed the body feels and how easily you can finish your work. R. If you want to bring a weak organ or part up to the standard of the rest of the body you must, by exercise and culture, use the weak organ or part and let the other parts of the body rest to this propor- tion. R. "Renewal of destroyed skin is very successfully accomplished by covering the part with strips or shreds of skin from other parts of the body or from the body of another person. Such grafts are generally complete in twenty-four hours. Even the skin of a guinea pig has been successfully grafted on a man. The epidermis in these graftings must be accomplished with the sub-layer called the malpighian or color layer of the skin, as in the epidermis alone the cells are too ripe. These facts prove that the essence of vitality does not depend on an invisible spirit animating the body (mens agitat molem), but on an activity distrib- uted among the minute particles that make it up, consubstantial with these particles and as variable in its characteristics as they themselves are in their structure (papillon). In other words, "the total life of the individual is but the sum, the resultant of the lives peculiar to each anatomical element, the harmonious union of the simultaneous working of myriads of monads-the monads of Leibnitz gifted with life in different degrees from the bony cell almost inert and mineral, to the nerve cell in which a strong and fine fire burns unceasingly." Every one of the living corpuscles is a complete entity in itself-a sim- ple animal reproducing fission. The fundamental character, the mark of life, is nutrition and reproduction of cells." Alexander. The above would demonstrate what has often been stated, that the 638 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE elements of nature, by their inherent power, have the power, under proper conditions, to make things make themselves, whether they are living or dead things. R. Remember continual change and activity is the order of nature and anything that interferes with this activity means injury in proportion to the degree of stagnation. R. Remember that anything that mixes with and dilutes air will de- stroy its force or electrical power, and hence, when so diluted have a tendency to produce disease. R. I will let you choose any side of a question in medicine and I will prove by medical authorities that you are right and turn right around and by other medical authorities prove that you are wrong. They are hard to catch, for they have been in the same business for centuries. R. Remember that each person has his own limited capacity of creat- ing energy, and you must keep within the limits of this capacity of forming energy or else suffer. R. Remember that you can get several prizes of one thousand dollars each, together with ten dollars a day for the time it takes you to pro- duce the evidence that will prove that a certain man, who, Topsy like, "growed up" in the woods of Wisconsin, does not know anything. R. When the doctor is ready to name the disease you have, it is when nature has begun to cure herself. Like the Dutchman's wit, the doc- tor is always a little behind time. R. If your children have a tendency to consumption, give them a life in the country, gradually increase the size and strength of their lungs by exercise and culture, and have them do very little mental work. R. Is it not strong evidence that a man is crazy, when he says that the SHORT NOTES 639 existing practices regarding vaccination, quarantine, and contagion are wrong, injurious, murderous, and unscientific, especially when he says that germs do not cause disease? R. Remember that breathing impure or stagnant air and eating good food, besides taking good care of yourself will likely produce disease; poor food and good air is not nearly so dangerous. R. Remember that life, health, disease, death and all that exist, is formed and evolved by the organization and reorganization of the ele- ments of nature. R. Remember that consumption of the lungs cannot be cured, hence your only safeguard is to prevent it, which can be done by studying and applying the laws of your being so that you may live in harmony with nature. R. Remember diarrhoea and dysentery are caused more from the want of oxygen in the blood than from any other cause. It is the quantity and not the quality of food you eat in warm weather that is important. In hot weather eat and exercise but little. R. Remember that breathing pure air means force to the circulation of the blood, which gives force to the whole body and then provides resistance to prevent outside influences interfering with or disturbing the functions of the body. R. Germs are splendid, when fried in horse juice, for people who have no teeth. Doctors should try it first and report through their bureau of statistics. R. In "A Journalist's Note-Book" Frank T. Moore tells an amusing and significant story of the influence of imagination upon health. A young civil servant in India, feeling fagged from the excessive heat and from long hours of work, consulted the best doctor within reach. The doctor looked him over, sounded his heart and lungs, and then said gravely: "I will write you tomorrow." 640 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN- THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE The next day the young man received a letter telling him that his left lung was gone and his heart seriously affected, and advising him to lose no time in adjusting his business affairs. "Of course, you may live for weeks," the letter said, "but you had best not leave important matters undecided." Naturally the young official was dismayed by so dark a prognosis -nothing less than a death warrant. Within twenty-four hours he was having difficulty with his respiration and was seized with an acute pain in the region of the heart. He took to his bed with the feeling that he would never arise from it. During the night he became so much worse that his servant sent for the doctor. "What on earth have you been doing to yourself?" demanded the doctor. "There were no indications of this sort when I saw you yes- terday." "It is my heart, I suppose," weakly answered the patient. "Your heart," repeated the doctor. "Your heart was all right yes- terday." "My lungs, then." "What is the matter with you, man? You don't seem to have been drinking." "Your letter!" gasped the patient. "You said I had only a few weeks to live." "Are you crazy?" said the doctor. "I wrote you to take a few weeks' vacation in the hills and you would be all right." For reply the patient drew the letter from under the bedclothes and gave it to the doctor. "Heavens!" cried that gentleman, as he glanced at it. "This was meant for another man! My assistant misplaced the letters." The young man at once sat up in bed and made a rapid recovery. And what of the patient for whom the direful prognosis was in- tended? Delighted with the report that a sojourn in the hills would set him right, he started at once, and five years later he was alive and in fair health.-Exchange. It may be interesting to those who believe in the use of antitoxin as a cure for diphtheria to know that Charles Floyd McClure, of Mil- SHORT NOTES 641 waukee, was taken sick with the disease on Tuesday evening and died the next day (Wednesday), after an injection of serum, in convul- sions. Yes, brethren, there are some things we do not understand in this world, and this serum business is one of them.-Medical Visitor, June, 1900. It is not at all safe, under existing conditions, to allow the appe- tite to be our guide in the choice of food. Had nature been consulted from the beginning, natural appetites would have been the rule rather than the exception; but the habit of absorbing food that is neither healthful nor nutritious has become so fixed that only sustained effort can successfully overcome the evil. People have often said to me, "Doctor, don't you think you strike a little too hard occasionally? Wouldn't it be better to go a little slower and not speak so plainly?" We don't want to insult anyone; unless the naked truth will insult. The manifestations of nature are always truthful, and if you only understand how you need make no mistakes; you can always be healthy. We try not to be impetuous. We cannot always be calm and quiet because we are so deeply in earnest. We believe that every reader of this book will see through and behind our utterances an honesty of purpose and a desire to give information for humanity's sake. R. Under ordinary circumstances it is better and safer to have an oper- ation performed at home. All that is necessary is plenty of fresh air and a clean room. The red tape that physicians make you believe is needed is simply to pull the wool over your eyes. This taking from one to two weeks to prepare a patient for an operation, in order to kill all the microbes and make you think it is wonderful, is all nonsense; use a little good common sense, and you will see the unreasonableness of such a cause of treatment. R. There are one hundred twenty-two thousand one hundred and sixty physicians in the United States. This is one physician to every six hundred and twenty-two inhabitants. Just think for a minute 642 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE what this means; one doctor to about every one hundred and twenty- five families. This does not include osteopathists, Christian scientists, faith healers, patent medicine men and "what not" healers. Health, life and liberty are about the most that a living being can expect in this world. The animals and savages enjoy these, if left alone by the civil- ized man, without physicians. What do you think of civilization and education from this standpoint ? Is it not about time to wake up to this fact? One doctor to every ten thousand people ought to be enough, if people were rightly taught Nature's laws and would apply them to health, and then this one doctor to every ten thousand population would get a slim living at that. Health lies in the mean and not in the extreme. It is strange that we should have for so many centuries been so near the truth as to what is the cause of disease and yet missed it. R. A doctor without a conscience is the worst of men, and the woods are full of them. Apply all that you learn, and learn that you may apply. Let the value of the evidence adduced be estimated by the rules of logic and in the light of reason. To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. The knowl- edge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. The religion that makes people pay their debts; the religion that keeps people from speaking evil of their neighbors; the religion that makes no distinction between wealth and poverty; the religion that makes people honest and upright; the religion that makes men manly and women womanly; the religion that is a part of people's everyday life exemplified by kind deeds, loving acts and cheering words, is the religion that is needed in the world today. Ingersoll. SHORT NOTES 643 In all history intellectual predominance has brought about the greatest results. Ideals have ruled nations and animated men. People are ever ready to lick the hand that smites them. A practical lesson to be learned is the importance of keeping the mind in that calm and happy frame which promotes glandular secre- tion and thereby promotes health. R. The very instant that you take any drug that is not a nourishment to the body, you have proved God as a failure in just that much. R. Our professional fathers purged and puked to free the stomach and bowels for the purpose of eliminating an entity. R. In the days of your ignorance you hoped to shorten the course of measles, scarlet fever, smallpox and typhoid fever, and you did shorten them-by the death of the patient. A Mother. One of the main purposes in this world should be to educate our- selves in matters of health. R. The noblest men and women never feel that they are old enough to be disobedient to their parents. When we cut out the confessedly incurable and the self-limited complaints we have not much left to work on. Force is the essence of matter. About fifty men thought and said the best things of which the world knows. The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness, who in view of danger forgets life and who remembers an old debt, however far back it extends-such a man may be reckoned a complete man. 644 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE "Actions speak louder than words." To write thoughts one must have them. Can those who have none pen elevated sentiments ? How can one produce what is not in him? We can give only what we have. As men do so they are. The cunning works of the fox come from a cunning author. All works of all beings accord with the character of their producer. This law is both necessary and universal. The laugh cure is almost as efficient as sunshine; amusements should be esteemed more than they are; men should have a hundred times more fun than now. The people who have done their best to choke back this sentiment should lead off in its promotion, and furnish innocent and refined amusements which would soon supplant coarse ones. All should accustom themselves to look at subjects with a quizzi- cal eye, ready to extract fun from it, but banish long, moody faces. Gay parties and gatherings are most beneficial to mind and body and for promoting health in general, and should be sought and not sup- pressed. Our world is one great of beneficent provision for human virtues and happiness, but this punishing the infractions of natural law is the Alpha and Omega of them all, the great teacher and moralizer of the race in each of its members, as well as the master contrivance of the Almighty. Both scarlet fever and diphtheria are produced from the same causes; self-poisoning through defective secretion and elimination is at the beginning. Bacteria take no part in the production of pus. They are the re- sult and not the cause of the condition. Suppuration of a wound does not originate from the introduction of germs or adult bacilli into the wound, but is the sequence of ne- crosed tissue in the wound. So immeasurably important is this whole subject-the prevention SHORT NOTES 645 and cause of disease-that the author has consecrated this whole vol- ume, in which this subject is discussed from a purely practical stand- point, upon the principle of an absolute law-hence an absolute cer- tainty, now, in the future, and for all time to come, therefore, it will be handed down from generation to generation. R. "Conundrum that was offered by a minstrel show, and as the ans- wer agrees with my opinion, I remembered it: "Which travels the faster, heat or cold?" The answer was heat; "because any fool can catch cold." Generally the activity of a part causes an extra flow of nourish- ment to a part. If this activity is abnormal so as to cause continual dila- tion of the small blood vessels combined with similar nerve action, abnormal growths are liable to be the result, such as cancer, fibrinous tumors, etc. Is not this simple to remember, and does it not easily suggest how to prevent these growths ? When the superabundance of nourishment is general it produces fat. R. Morbid growths are thought, by Carpenter and others, to be due to morbid constituents in the blood, which automatically form them- selves into new tissue (presumably governed by the peculiarity of the crystallization and polarity of their elementary or physiological units). He agrees with Mr. Simon in designating several of the forms of can- cer as a manifestation of the existence in the blood of a peculiar matter appropriate for the construction of such an organic structure." Germs, horse juice, microbe killers, vaccine poisons, flies, mos- quitoes, fleas are the wonderful and scientific causes, cures and pre- ventives of disease, by as wonderful a profession in the closing year of the nineteenth century. What will those think of these lines who will read them in a hundred years from now ? Oh, Lord! R. Remember if any one in your family should come down with small- pox, scarlet fever or measles that the eruption in the body is only na- ture's grand effort to cure itself. To accomplish this assist the body 646 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE by keeping the skin continually moist; the body will rid herself of this accumulation of poison or kill you in the attempt, if not it will leave some sequel, such as running ears, sore eyes, boils, dropsy, kidney trouble, etc. R. Remember that being so goodie, goodie to your children is their physical ruination. R. Remember that your food and work, mentally and physically, com- bined should not exceed the proportion of air, or rather oxygen, your blood is capable of taking up in your particular surroundings. This is the principle and foundation of retaining good health. R. Things are so arranged in the original planning of the world that certain effects follow certain causes, and certain causes must be abol- ished before certain effects can be removed. R. Nothing that happens in this world happens by chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles and never at random. The world is governed by law, and even character and happiness are also governed by law. R. "Rain and snow drop from the air, but not without a long previous history. They are the mature effects of former causes; just so are epi- demics the result of a long previous history. They are the mature ef- fects of former causes. You must thoroughly realize this; it is a me- thodical and not an accidental condition. There is one kind of cause for every particular effect and no other, and if one particular effect is desired the corresponding cause must be set in motion. It is no use proposing finely devised schemes and calling them scientific when they are not in harmony with these laws of cause and effect. It comes not by an act but by a process; a soil has to be prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one climate and not in another." "The influence of damp weather upon the sensitive man is remark- able. If there is a.sore spot anywhere it hurts worse. Latent weak- SHORT NOTES 647 ness of any of the organs is brought out by congestion and irregularity of function. Suppressed coughs start into activity. Neuralgic nerves speak out. Old chronic rheumatism renews its life, and corns are aggravated." When any one physician or a body of physicians attempt to uphold any notion against one of the profession regarding his professional work, he or they should be guided by facts, particularly when the health and lives of the community are involved. R. It seems a rude as well as an unkind thing to suppose that Doctor So-and-So, whose demeanor is so modest and simple, whose sentiments are apparently, at least, so elevated, whose whole personality seems calculated to inspire confidence, is really an outrageous deceiver. R. Just think of the average doctor posing as a public pedagogue to teach people how to prevent getting sick! We might just as well ex- pect to find the devil rebuking sin. "The pulse is slow, the heart weak, the blood vessels lack tone, the muscles are flabby. The venous and lymphatic systems become en- gorged. The mind is languid and cloudy. There is a general depres- sion of vitality." The foregoing is only what many of the intelligent laymen have observed, but why this is so and how these symptoms are produced is what the public wants to know, in order to cheat the graveyard out of its victim and the doctor out of his fee. It is simply this, that the oxygen in the air is the steam or life-giving power of the whole body, without an exception whatever. To prevent disease easily and under nearly all circumstances is to harmonize your being with this power as you find it in your natural surroundings, and regulating your food and labor in proportion to this force or oxygen that your own system is capable of receiving from the air under the best possible conditions that nature presents to you. Many of the germ or bacteria kind thrive on matter that is in a 648 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE decomposing or disorganizing state, while all such matter is injurious to the human being and will produce what we call disease as soon as its proportions reach to that extent that it will interfere with the healthy or normal functions of the body. To bear in mind this one sentence and to understand the different ways these injurious effects are formed or produced within the body is to understand how to prevent disease. During my first year of practice I occupied the office of one of the college professors. Once upon entering the office the professor gravely remarked, "Doctor, learn to trust nature. Absolutely trust her." This remark was prompted by the following incident: He had been attending the child of a prominent citizen. When the end seemed near he told the family that the child would die, and further visits from him would be useless. In a few days, I not having been ap- prised of the child's expected death, the doctor requested me to call upon the family and report. Of course I confirmed the professor's opinion that the child would die. About a month later the doctor hailed the child's father to find out when his child had died. "Died," said the gentleman in amazement, "why the child is not only alive, but perfectly well." The doctor then asked what physician he had em- ployed in his stead. "No one," said the man, "for we had such un- bounded confidence in your judgment that the child would die that we left it alone and it got well." In addition to his previous advice "to trust to nature," the profes- sor now added: "Doctor, never give a patient up-until you hear the death rattle in the throat." I believe I have heeded that injunction ever since.-Dr. George R. Patton, Lake City, Mich. "Indeed it is surprising how few persons ever give any thought whatever to the .question of what the character of their offspring will be. Persons whose health or other characteristics render it almost cer- tain that their offspring will have a painful and hopeless existence sel- dom hesitate to marry, if it seems likely that marriage will conduce to their comfort or pleasure. Still less is any thought given to the prob- lem of determining the character of posterity by judicious combina- tions of characteristics. SHORT NOTES 649 The writer remembers but a single case coming under his observa- tion in which any thought was given to such matters. Perhaps as long as we know so little as we do at present about these matters, it is just as well to follow a blind instinct as it is to follow a most fallible reason. But it can hardly be doubtful that with the increase of intelligence our choices can be so modified in such cases as to prevent a vast amount of human suffering. No other single source promises so much when once we know enough to use the opportunity thus open to us." R. The practice of medicine in a nutshell: First-What is the condition of the patient before me? Second-What would I accomplish? Third-What will accomplish this the most easily and quickly and without danger to the patient ? Fourth-When will the medical profession accept and follow such a simple and sure method? Answer-When the people are sufficiently educated in matters pertaining to health and disease that they will know when a physician is doing the right thing and insist upon his doing it. R. For years I have opposed and publicly denounced the murderous and injurious methods in the practice of medicine. At the present time many of its practices are so foul and reeking with rottenness that it smells to heaven. Will you assist in breaking up this monstrous and murderous humbug ? R. Tobacco smoke will make one dizzy, sick and even unconscious, without inhaling or swallowing the smoke. How is it done? Does it not show the influence of gases upon the nerves? Then why cannot the air have a strong influence upon the nerves, especially as it acts upon a hundred fold more surface? R. Quinine, while it is still prescribed by the routine practitioner in typhoid fever, is getting to be discarded by the most thoughtful men in the profession; given day after day to reduce a temperature which comes back day after day, and only weakening the patient, is a very 650 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE silly practice, to say nothing of its injurious effects on the nervous sys- tem, it often being the cause of death, which of course would be laid to providence or the fever. "Beware of the man whose eyes are fixed on the past, and who searches for wisdom among the catacombs. True wisdom studies the past for its rocks and shoals, but not for the open sea which stretches away to the pole of truth. The truth lies around us, and beyond us. Truth is the East in which the sun is rising and not the West beneath whose horizon the glorious orb of light has descended. Study the past for its mistakes and not for its ideals."-The New Time. The well-being and normal performance of function of the body is dependent upon the well-being and adjustment to environment of each of the component cells. The doctors use no means to give a wide acquaintance with nature and her laws, except by pretense, therefore are at best only theorizing on some portion or part of nature and by this hemming and speculat- ing from a theory form conclusions which are usually false and useless when practically applied, but would be quickly doomed to death if the public would only not accept the nonsense as science. R. There is much truth in the old saying that "there is nothing new under the sun." The difference in the subjects of thought is usually not so much greater in one mind than in another, in the great bulk of its contents; it is simply that the margin is greater, that's all. I may know just as much as you do about the general details of the subject, but you can go just a little farther than I can, and so you have just that much greater margin than I. You may speak to me about some single thought or subject with which I am conversant, but you can go just a little farther than I can; then your margin is just that much greater and I must succumb to your superiority. It is just this mar- gin, that other writers have previously touched upon, in which we claim to lead further and it is this margin that brings us almost to SHORT NOTES 651 the end of the road and clears up what has been a mystery for centuries in matters relating to the cause and prevention of disease. R. Since I demonstrated, two years ago, that the main power that circulates the blood was due to the presence of the oxygen in the blood taken from the air through the lungs, the medical profession has been determined not to recognize its truthfulness, and a few of them have widened their former margin, but will not admit the whole principle; if they did the public could so easily grasp the truth, but that it is which the doctors would like to keep clothed in mystery. R. Remember we do not take any poisons of any kind into the system through the lungs. By breathing impure air, or air that will not give up its oxygen into the blood, only prevents the poisons within the blood from passing out through the lungs, thus retaining it in the blood; and secondly, the blood does not become charged with this life giving principle or element (oxygen). Don't lose sight of this fact. All diseases that are produced from any form of poisons are produced by the retention of your own poisons formed within the system, or poisons taken into the system through the stomach. Is not this easy to remember? How to prevent any one or both of these two conditions from taking place is to know how to prevent disease. One of the main causes, and we might say the only cause, that produces an epidemic of disease is the action, or rather, the effect of the different states and conditions of the air upon the nervous system by its action upon the nerves of the skin. Secondly, its effects upon the blood by not changing and purifying the blood through the lungs by breathing pure air. Thirdly, these same diseases can be produced by the retention or overproduction of these poisons within the system. This is caused by overwork, overeating, or fretting and worrying, and under this state or condition of the system a slight change of the air, or taking what is commonly called a slight cold, will have the same effect, producing some form of the blood diseases. Again we repeat, that the surest preventive of disease (accidents excluded) is to live and act so as to get up well every morning. R. 652 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE Nine years after Priestly had discovered oxygen, Von Marum, the electrician, noticed that, when electric sparks were passed through that gas, a peculiar odor was evolved. Most people know this odor, since it is always to be recognized in the neighborhood of an electrical ma- chine in action and after a heavy thunderstorm. In reality it indi- cates the presence of ozone in the air; but for more than half a century after Von Marum had noticed it it was supposed to be the "smell" of electricity. The organism is a system of forces; experience is a system of feel- ings. Only as each mental impression derived from without is taken up, assimilated, and finds its place in this system, does it become an element of experience, but once fixed there, it produces a condition which determines the assimilation of others. R. Many writers regard the whole of the ingoing nerves as a sort of keyboard or sensitive surface, the strings of which terminate in the cerebral convolutions, or sensorial surface, where they form a kind of tesselated mosaic of tones (sentient impressions), each nerve or each fibre having its particular note. In another part of the convolution there is an analogous keyboard, the strings of which terminate in the muscles, which thus represent the motor side of sentient phenomena. Ideas are verbal symbols. The power such ideas have over feelings and actions is incalculable. Think, for example, of the influence of the idea of death, yet no animal can form such a conception. He sees his companions and offspring become motionless and rot. But he has no means whereby he could generalize these experiences and imagine himself liable to a similar fate, for he has no means of identifying his organism with that of others; no means of connecting remote causes; no means of conceiving a future. It is language which records and generalizes experience, and opens a vista of experiences about to be; and it is this power which makes man the only melancholy animal and the only moral animal. The idea of death overshadows but it also en- nobles life. It underlies all our planning, connects our actions with SHORT NOTES 653 the lives of those who are to succeed us, and moulds our conception of the world and our relations to the great powers which rule it. "The skin contains more than two million openings, which are the outlets of an equal number of sweat glands." The human skeleton consists of more than two hundred distinct bones. An amount of blood equal to the whole quantity in the body passes through the heart twice every minute. "There are more than five hundred separate muscles in the body, with an equal number of nerves and blood vessels." A system is a segregation of materials and forces, and its structure and actions are not the same as those of any external body. The ma- terials are recombined; the forms are recombined, and follow an order of their own. If the combined actions of the steam engine are unlike the actions of any external forces, differently combined, still more so are the combined actions of the vital mechanism. The living organism is built up of materials drawn from without, its forces are all primarily set going by external forces. "We do not know what goes on in bodies when impressed and re- acting." Very true; and therefore we should be very cautious and not rush into suppositions which are at variance with all we do know; not suppose that what is feeling in us is feeling in them, merely because in both there is a molecular change. "The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance." "Playing such tricks with language, and confounding the concep- tion of life with the conception of existence, we may ask, why should 654 THE MURDEROUS FADS IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE not a lamp post feel and think since it lives and is subject to molecular changes consequent on impressions ? Why should not a crystal calcu- late? Does not oxygen yearn for hydrogen? Has not hydrogen the property of humidity ? These questions seem absurd, yet they are only naked presentations of what some philosophers have clothed in techni- cal terms, and which their readers have accepted in confidence." "As our appetites have become vitiated and depraved in regard to our bodily food; so we Qften find ourselves demanding and absorbing mental pabulum that is not only innutritions, but positively poisonous. This is altogether wrong. We cannot afford to waste time in the perusal of books which do not aid us in self-development. Life is too short to be frittered away in such useless, objectless employment. We must build up the mind with the purest mental food, just as we invigor- ate the body with a diet which possesses the properties necessary to the building up and replenishing of the tissues, bone and blood."