The Natural Cure of Consumption, Constipation, Bright's Disease, Neuralgia Part 12

Other appet.i.tes there are which become morbid and too often control the individual, instead of being themselves under entire subjection to him.

The unnatural habits of our civilization have caused the race to depart from the natural instinct of

CONTINENCE

which, to the minds of many, is as essential to the moral and physical health of the race after, as to its "virtue" before, marriage; and which, but for the inflammatory nature of the diet in general use, and the disorders arising therefrom, might easily be practiced by all conscientious and thoughtful people. A radical modification of the prevailing dietetic practices would lessen, immeasurably, the constant warfare between the moral desires and the animal propensities, to which both the married and the single are subjected, and which results in disaster in so many instances. "Marital excesses often produce in the offspring s.e.xual precocity and pa.s.sions which, under the influence of an unwholesome and stimulating dietary, are rendered ungovernable, and entail a vast deal of shame and sorrow throughout the lives of those who are 'more sinned against than sinning.' Verily the sins of the parents shall be visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him and violate His law."[92]

[Footnote 92: Chapter on "Health Hints" in "How To Feed The Baby."]

"Ah! my friends," said the Rev. F. W. Farrar, Canon of Westminster Abbey, "how vast a part of human disease results, not only from the ignorance but also from the folly and sin of man. Typhoid, leprosy, small-pox, and jail-fever are not by any means the only diseases which might be almost, if not quite, eliminated from among us. We talk with deep self-pity of the ravages of gout and cancer and consumption and mental alienation. _Alas!

how many of these might in one or two generations cease to be, if we all lived the wise and temperate and happy lives which Nature meant us to lead!_ And the voice of Nature, rightly interpreted, is ever the voice of G.o.d. Even the simplest of us are superfluous in our demands, and the vast majority of men so live as, more or less, habitually to pamper the appet.i.te by wasteful extravagance and weaken the health by baneful luxuries. By unwholesome narcotics, by burning and adulterated stimulants, by many and highly-seasoned meats, by thus storing the blood with unnatural elements which it can not a.s.similate, they clog and carnalize the aspirations which they should cherish, and feed into uncontrollable force the pa.s.sions which they should control. Hence it is that millions of lives are like sweet bells jangled out of tune; and millions of men in these days, like the Israelites of old, are laid to rest in _Kibroth Hattaavah_--the graves of l.u.s.t!

"And the sad thing is that this heavy punishment ends not with the individual. It is not only that the boy when he has marred his own boyhood, hands on its moral results to the youth; and the youth when he has marred them yet more irretrievably hands them on to the man that he may finish the task of that perdition;--but alas! the man also hands them on to his innocent children, and they are born with bodies tormented with the disproportionate impulses, sickly with the morbid cravings, enfeebled by the increasing degeneracy, tainted by the retributive disease of guilty parents."

We must remember, says Albert Leffingwell, quoting the above in "Laws of Life," that he who speaks thus is no obscure Boanerges, vaguely ranting over abstract sin, but one of the few great preachers in the Church of England, speaking in the most venerable religious edifice in Protestant Christendom.

The most persistent and thorough cramming of our youth with high moral precepts avails but little, after all,--we observe this constantly,--to counteract the fierce impulses of an unbalanced physical state.

Says the Duke of Argyle: "The truth is, that we are born into a system of things in which every act carries with it, by indissoluble ties, a long train of consequences reaching to the most distant future, and which for the whole course of time affect our own condition, the condition of other men, and even the conditions of external nature. And yet we can not see those consequences beyond the shortest way, and very often those which lie nearest are in the highest degree deceptive as an index to ultimate results. Neither pain nor pleasure can be accepted as a guide. With the lower animals, indeed, these, for the most part tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Appet.i.te is all that the creature has, and in the gratification of it the highest law of the animal being is fulfilled. In man, too, appet.i.te has its own indispensable function to discharge. But it is a lower function, and amounts to nothing more than that of furnishing to Reason a few of the primary data on which it has to work--a few, and a few only. Physical pain is indeed one of the threatenings of natural authority; and physical pleasure is one of its rewards. But neither the one nor the other forms more than a mere fraction of that awful and imperial code under which we live. It is the code of an everlasting kingdom, and of a jurisprudence which endures throughout all ages." ... "It is no mere failure to realize aspirations which are vague and imaginary that const.i.tutes this exceptional element (the persistent tendency of his development to take a wrong direction) in the history and in the actual conditions of mankind. That which const.i.tutes the terrible anomaly of his case admits of perfectly clear and specific definition. Man has been and still is a constant prey to appet.i.tes which are morbid--to opinions which are irrational, to imaginings which are horrible, and to practices which are destructive. The prevalence and the power of these in a great variety of forms and of degrees is a fact with which we are familiar--so familiar, indeed, that we fail to be duly impressed with the strangeness and the mystery which really belong to it. All savage races are bowed and bent under the yoke of their own perverted instincts--instincts which generally in their root and origin have an obvious utility, but which in their actual development are the source of miseries without number and without end. Some of the most horrible perversions which are prevalent among savages, (and which to a greater or less degree affect all civilized peoples), have no counterpart among any other created beings, and when judged by the barest standard of utility, place man immeasurably below the level of the beasts. We are accustomed to say of many of the habits of savage life that they are 'brutal.' But this is entirely to misrepresent the place which they really occupy in the system of Nature. None of the brutes have any such perverted dispositions; none of them are ever subject to the destructive operation of such habits as are common among men. And the contrast is all the more remarkable when we consider that the very worst of these habits affect conditions of life which the lower animals share with us, and in which any departure from those natural laws which they universally obey, must necessarily produce, and do actually produce, consequences so destructive as to endanger the very existence of the race. Such are all those conditions of life affecting the relation of the s.e.xes which are common to all creatures, and in which man alone exhibits the widest and most hopeless divergence from the order of Nature."

CHAPTER XIX.

CONCLUSION.

While the more important material agencies and conditions, closely related to the processes of life, are air, food, clothing, etc.; and while the reader's attention has been, throughout, mainly directed to these; it would, from the author's point of view, const.i.tute a serious defect of the work, to omit the special consideration of the moral nature--its mighty influence over the physical state. In no better way can I impress this thought than by quoting the language of that veteran hygienist and reformer, Dr. James C. Jackson:

"But while a human being has a physical organization, and has, therefore, physical laws, he is dual, possessing also a spiritual nature; and to treat him for any disease he may have as though it originated in his body and did not relate itself at all to his soul or spirit, is to treat him, in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, unphilosophically and therefore unscientifically. Our observation and experience go to satisfy us that the majority of sick persons become disturbed and disordered in spirit before they show disorder or derangement of body.

"To ill.u.s.trate: a man never comes to be a dyspeptic until he has a false spiritual conception of the true relations which he should hold to the use of food; he is conceptively sick before he is physically dyspeptic; he turns things right around in his mind; he lives to eat instead of eating to live; he is spiritually depraved before he becomes physically diseased.

Take the methods of life common to our people. It is largely through these that they become sick. They eat badly, drink badly, dress unhealthfully, work without reference to their power to recover from the fatigue which work imposes, do not get sleep enough, are in a fret, or in a worry, or in a strife, or are under strain in their work. They work selfishly or for their own good only, and often as against the good of others; they seek to thrive at others' unthrift; they buy and sell with the view in their minds of living gainfully at others' loss; they have a false conception, a perverse view, of the relationships which they should hold to others, and under this spiritual perversity they put forth their energies. As they are inwardly wrong they become outwardly disordered, and when this disorder develops into actual sickness it has a spiritual or wrong moral basis.

Having violated the higher law of their natures, in selfishness of thought and feeling, they are compelled to take the reflex effects in and upon their bodies. Living without sympathy, they become sympathetically diseased; the sympathetic forces in their nature, lacking proper expression or use, become debilitated and deranged, as shown in the abnormal condition of the sympathetic nervous structure.

"For instance: a man with his liver functionally deranged appears before a physician: The pulse shows the circulation to be disturbed; the excretory system has become largely inactive--the skin, bowels, kidneys, and lungs each working inefficiently or compelled to overdo. The doctor concludes that a good dose of calomel and jalap, which enter into the allopathic practice; or some sitz-baths, skin-rubbing, packs, or injections, which would be the hydropathic practice; or regulation of diet, connected with some mild alterative, which belong to the eclectic practice; or some little pills, which would be the h.o.m.opathic practice, are what the man needs. He is a glutton, or a wine-bibber, or he drinks whiskey, or he lives bodily not only, but morally and spiritually on the line of self-indulgence. He lives as he pleases, and this not merely in his animal life. He lives spiritually as he pleases; his spirit is selfish and lawless. Order and righteousness are not in all his thoughts. His conscience is asleep; his intelligence is not at all on the alert; he has no inspirations, or aspirations; he simply has unhallowed desires, and his life consists largely in efforts to gratify these, and there he is--disturbed, disordered, deranged, diseased, sick.

"When one thus affected comes to us, what do we do with him? We bring him to judgment; we summon him up into the presence of the truth. We say: You are at fault for this sickness of yours; it is not necessary for you to be sick; you may be a healthy person, you should be. You may be free from aches and pains, you ought to be. There is no defectiveness in your organization; it is made to run successfully; that it does not, is your fault, not the fault of your circ.u.mstances. What you need is right perception and a good conscience to back it; a willingness, not only, but a thorough will to do right. In you is ample vital force to set your liver right, make your bowels work, make your skin carry on its insensible perspiration, your blood circulate healthfully, and have everything done according to law. All that is necessary is that you put your spirit, your responsible consciousness on the throne, and make your body its servant.

When you resolve to do this and begin to do it, you will begin to get well. You do not need medicine; you need nothing done for you in order to get well, except to do judiciously, and, in your conditions, discretely, what if you had done all the while would have kept you well.

"The first thing to do is, not to consult doctors: not to hunt for some wonderful curative; but to get right ideas of life, and then begin, though in a feeble manner, to conform yourself to that way spiritually. _Love_ the thing you are going to do; get your whole nature into a glow toward it. If it be to eat simple food, love to do it--not do it wishing you had not to do it. Look at the thing kindly, joyfully, comfortingly. Put away your evil habits, one after another, because they are evil, not simply because they hurt you. Get up a rebellion in your spirit against wrong ways of living. Resolve that you will not live wrongly; characterize that way as it should be characterized, as an improper, unmanly, mean, or unbefitting way for you. Say: I will not smoke; I will not drink; I will not make my body an instrument of gluttony; and so go through your whole round of habits, putting away all those that you can get along without.

Reduce your artificial wants to a minimum. Throw yourself over on the line of order and law, and regularity and propriety. Then you will get well."

APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION.

1 [NOTE ON DEEP BREATHING.]

A GOOD HOBBY.--On pages 84, 111, and 137 I have barely touched upon this subject. I wish now to call attention to it as a matter worthy of greater consideration than might perhaps be gathered from what has been said.

Personally, I begun the practice, when I was about sixteen years old, of taking long, deep breaths occasionally, at odd times during the day, from reading a little slip explaining its usefulness in "strengthening" the lungs, and increasing their capacity. At the age of eighteen, I remember, upon being examined for a life insurance policy, the examining surgeon expressed great surprise at the unusual "swell" or expansion of my chest--about five inches increase when my lungs were fully inflated, over chest-measure when I had forced out as much air as I could conveniently.

Upon explaining, that for a number of years I had made a practice of throwing my shoulders back, taking very deep inspirations slowly, holding my breath a moment, and then as slowly "breathing out"--doing this the first thing every morning on rising, and in a sleeping-room which was never close, again on going out, and occasionally during the day,--the doctor said: "A good plan that accounts for it." In all cases of weak lungs, whether chronic or from "taking cold" (see pp. 40 to 45 for a consideration of the colds delusion), when it is difficult to take a full breath on account of "cramps," catches, or pain in the lungs, this practice will be found of great value, if persisted in. In many instances it seems impossible to take a long breath--is, indeed, impossible; but a little gain may be made every day, by crowding down "one notch," so to say, at each trial. Quite a large percentage of all persons will find on trial that there is more or less of tenderness upon first making the attempt, or at one time or another, whenever there is any degree of irritation of the stomach. The patient, or experimenter, should inspire a little, however little, beyond the point which seems all that he can do, and persist in this treatment every day. There can be no doubt but we have here a most important aid in the treatment of consumption, not only, but of all ill-conditions of the physical man. But the deep, full breathing that comes from having exercised vigorously is best of all (see page 84).

2 [NOTE ON BRIGHT'S DISEASE.]

HOW TO EAT MEAT.--In the chapter on this subject, I have taken the position that Alb.u.minuria results from: (1) excess in diet; (2) the use of foods that can not, or are not properly masticated and insalivated, as mush, or bread wet and washed down with any sort of artificial fluids, gravy-drowned vegetables, etc.; (3) stimulating drinks, as beer, spirits, tea, coffee, etc.; (4) excess of animal food. To this I must add meat eaten in a manner totally different from that in vogue with all carnivorous animals, viz.: hashed, or tender and well chewed, instead of being, as it should be, swallowed in pieces of convenient size--a rational modification in the premises, surely. Dogs, wolves, cats, and the like, are gourmands, to be sure, but this is not the fundamental reason for their manner of gulping their natural food whole. It has been shown by experiments that dogs fed on hashed meat suffer from indigestion, a portion of their food pa.s.sing undigested, while if fed the same quant.i.ty of meat in chunks, no part of it appears in the excreta, but all is perfectly digested.

Grain-eating animals teach us how to eat grain; or at least, how to masticate farinaceous food. We may well learn from the carnivore an a.n.a.logous lesson--not, however, necessarily dispensing with knife and fork, napkin or finger-bowl, nor any other improvement over their primitive fashions!

THE POINT IS THAT FLESH-FOOD,

unlike starchy foods, requires stomach digestion only (as against any change in the mouth), and only when taken in the natural manner, that is, substantially as meat-eating animals take it, is it retained in the stomach for a sufficient length of time to be dissolved by the gastric juice; but much of it pa.s.ses on into the intestine prematurely (explaining, in great measure, the many cases of inflammation of the bowels, as well as the frequent lesser disturbances), and doubtless a considerable proportion is absorbed in a more or less fermented state, adding thereby impure elements to the blood, and predisposing the individual to inflammatory disease. On the contrary, if meat is swallowed in pieces of moderate size, each piece being acted upon at the surface gradually dissolves from the outside, and so is perfectly changed by the gastric juice before leaving the stomach. In personal experiments I find much less inconvenience from eating flesh-food in this manner than results when I treat it as we have always been taught to. It may be well to caution against eating a large portion of meat in this manner at first; it would give the stomach a new experience and likely enough create disturbance. One-half the usual amount, taken naturally, would yield as much nourishment as the full ration, perhaps; at any rate the change should be made gradually (see pp. 50-158, for further consideration of the animal food question). The following from the _Pract.i.tioner_, corresponds (as far as M. Semmola carries the point) with my view of the matter entirely, as regards the nature of the malady. Alb.u.minuria, or excess of alb.u.men (that is, unappropriated alb.u.minoids in the circulation, and which are consequently excretory matters), must necessarily result from any or all of the causes I have named--causes of indigestion. Says the _Pract.i.tioner_:

"At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Medicine, M. Semmola, of Naples ('Progres medical,' June 9, 1883), brought forward a new theory with regard to the causation of Bright's disease. This malady he regards as not essentially renal, but as consisting in a general morbid alteration of nutrition, and observes that alb.u.men in such cases is not pa.s.sed by the urine only, but by all the secretory organs. This alteration [or, rather, I should say, the lack of alteration by digestion] deprives the alb.u.minoid materials of the blood of their power of being a.s.similated, and so causes their excretion by the emunctories. The renal lesions he ascribes to mechanical irritation of the tubules of the kidney by the constant pa.s.sage of alb.u.men through them. Alb.u.minuria is therefore a cause, not a result, of renal disease.[93] M. Simmola founds these views on a series of experiments on animals. He injected into the blood-vessels various substances containing alb.u.men, as white of egg, milk, and blood-serum, with the result of inducing artificial Bright's disease. White of egg was most active in this way."

[Footnote 93: And this only one of the hundred and one instances, in medical practice, of "cart before the horse," which may make the difference of life or death with every patient under treatment!]

3 [NOTE TO PAGE 169.]

WATER AS MEDICINE AND FOOD.--There is no royal road to health once deeply diseased. In certain cases, and for a limited period even in these, hot water is invaluable. But if long continued--used as a constant beverage instead of a temporary expedient to aid in removing the slime and "gurry"

from stomachs deeply coated[94]--the effect will be to keep this organ weak, as a number of Turkish baths every day would enfeeble, in time, the strongest man. One valid objection to tea, chocolate, and coffee is, that they are usually taken hot (see "Coffee, etc.").

[Footnote 94: Such patients require a more or less extended fast. This is always safe, and in desperate cases the only means by which the necessary absorbing and healing process can be a.s.sured (see pp. 62-71-73-169). The stomach of a healthy creature is, when simply rinsed, absolutely clean and free from offensive matters; but the constipated dyspeptic, or the consumptive, and many acutely diseased persons, have stomachs which resemble that of an old, stall-fed ox, which has to be sc.r.a.ped by the hour before the meanest tripe-eater would buy it, or place it upon his table at any price. Yet a great deal of this kind of tripe is eaten by stall-fed people every day. The flesh of healthy cattle finds no place in our markets nor on our tables. Beef creatures are fed for fatness and tenderness, which is disease.]

_Warm_ water is about the most effectual remedy known to me for acute dyspepsia. It should be drunk profusely, even to stomach distension, with finger exploration, if necessary, to produce vomiting; then a few cupfuls to retain, to wash away any residue of undigested food, dilute the blood, etc. But cool, fresh water is the beverage _par excellence_ for all the year round (see pp. 76-90-100).

4 [NOTE ON "NATURAL DIET."]

With regard to the suggestion, on page 211, of using milk to wet farinaceous foods, in place of depending solely upon the natural mouth-juices, I wish to say that it was felt by me, at the time, to be entirely unphysiological, and by no means the best way to manage. I now wish to urge that in so far as any one chooses to test the advantages of this regimen he will not depart from a truly natural way, so far as the natural way is possible; but rather use the whole grain, or the whole meal dry, and take the milk (if indulged in at all) by itself, and fruit likewise--after the grain. Several remarkable cases have occurred since this book was first issued, in which the curative powers of this diet have been displayed in a most marked manner. I take occasion to mention one.

Mrs. L., of Lee, N. H., had been suffering for eight years, during which she had been able to walk but little. She was growing worse, and finally was p.r.o.nounced by her physician incurably diseased with "ovarian tumor."

After six months' use of uncooked food--a breakfast of fruit only, with dinner at night composed of unsifted wheat meal (from one-third to one-half cupful, at first, the amount increased later with increased exercise); dry, followed with a little fruit--she is up and about the house, aiding in the housework, and the past week did the entire family ironing. She has been for eight years a great sufferer, but all her pains have been banished, and her strength and general health are steadily improving under a continuance of the diet as above described, together with light, loose clothing, much fresh air, air-baths, self hand-rubbing, and gradually increasing exercise from very small beginnings.

5 [NOTE TO PAGE 232.]

THE LONG-SOUGHT PRINCIPLE.-It is confessedly a standing disgrace to our profession that, after all the boasted "progress in medicine" during these hundreds of years of research and experimentation, not one great principle has been established by means of which the people can be, even if disposed (and it can hardly be said that they are, generally), guided toward perfect health. It is charged that vegetarianism, even, has failed to speedily make sound, bright-eyed, clear-skinned, healthy and therefore handsome men and women, out of life-long "sinners" against the laws of life; and it must be admitted that not all its promises are verified in practice, although it seldom fails to greatly improve all who adopt the regimen (imperfect as it is--and it is very imperfect) as practiced at the various hygienic Cures at home and abroad. The trouble is that food-reformers have only undertaken to modify, with half-way measures--to change a very bad diet for one far from good, one form of "mush" for another less harmful, but by no means physiological. I would a.s.sert here as the one all-sufficient principle, so far as physical health is concerned, looking to the rearing of children, that if we were to take a thousand new-born infants--good, bad, and indifferent, as to inheritance--and give them pure cow's milk, avoiding the cramming that is universally practiced; say, give them two full meals, or three moderate ones a day (the quant.i.ty altogether gauged by the individual's digestive capacity); and, as they should arrive at suitable age (_i. e._, as teeth began to develop), feed them on strictly natural food--the natural diet--fruits, and grains (in winter, soaked twelve hours in little water[95]), the fruit in large proportion; give them a chance to develop normally, such as other young animals have--_i.e._, give them freedom from holding, tending, baby-carting, and the like, except in the smallest measure; dress them lightly, keep them free from foul air, by sufficient ventilation of all living rooms; give them the utmost freedom of the lawns or the ground--outdoor exercise--give them this sort of treatment, and not five per cent. would die under five years of age, nor, with fair regard for the known laws of life, would many fail to reach old age in health.

The at present supposably-inevitable "diseases of infancy and childhood"

could not exist. The influence of the constant tending and holding to which all infants are subjected is disastrous in a twofold degree: (1) for many months they are prevented from taking much voluntary exercise, and (2) this makes the involuntary cramming relatively more excessive; hence they grow fat and disordered in every way, and predisposed to all manner of sicknesses. Children scarcely ever have occasion to use their teeth.

The food in use requires no chewing. Little demand is made upon the salivary glands (for food is hot, moist, and "goes down itself"); hence these glands, which consequently fail to develop normally, become at some time acutely diseased, or finally almost if not entirely useless. Hollow, sunken cheeks result from this cause. It was never designed to remedy this defect with fat. The parotid glands and the cheek muscles should be developed and maintained by physiological eating. The teeth for want of use fail, as the muscular system declines through indolence. Unnatural food, fast eating, overeating, poor teeth, dentists, "mumps," plethora, and febrile diseases, or chronic dyspepsia, and all manner of ailments--this is the present order of things (see advertis.e.m.e.nt of "How to Feed the Baby").

[Footnote 95: This treatment restores the flinty grain (wheat, rye, barley, maize, sweet corn) to its natural plumpness and masticability.