Preface
Introduction
Chapter I.-Toxemia, the Efficient (First) Cause of All Disease
Chapter II.-Causes of Constipation
Chapter III.-Treatment
Chapter IV.-Constipation as Found in Various Derangements
Chapter V.-A Few Personalities
Appendix
PREFACE
CONSTIPATION is the commonest disease to which man is heir;
so common that less is known of its causes perhaps than would be if it were a more
rare malady.
Before proceeding with the subject of this book, perhaps
it would be well, inasmuch as it is destined to be read by more people than any other
of my numerous books on health subjects, to define disease and health from my standpoint.
This will give those who know nothing of my ideas a better understanding, and enable
them to read Constipation more intelligently.
In the study of disease it is necessary to have a fixed premise
from which to reason. My system starts with the proposition that health is not an
entity; it is the ideal state of a living body properly cared for from birth to death.
When not properly cared for, the state of health may be good or bad; both extremes
are unfixed and indefinite, made so by man's haphazard style of living, and frequently,
in delicate subjects, as unstable as the weather-cock. We call the good state health--good
health; the bad state, or bad health, we call disease. The student must abandon the
idea, or preconception, that disease is an entity--a -something that is an enemy
of man; or a nemesis that is on his trail, and is destined to overtake him sooner
or later--in fact, at any time. Not so. Health is a state that responds with good
for good treatment of mind and body, or responds with bad for bad treatment of mind
and body. This being true, it behooves man to strive for a knowledge of how to live
for health, and how to avoid a style of living that must bring bad health--disease--and
premature death; and cause, during life, a greatly reduced efficiency, which, of
course, is a handicap that forces a failure when success is almost won--in fact,
within the grasp of a little more well-applied health knowledge. Man is not left
helpless to be buffeted about by his environment; indeed not. Before reason was given
him he was protected by instinct. Since instinct has given place to reason, if man
is abused by his environment, it is because he refuses to use his protector, his
reasoning power, and is allowing himself to be victimized by commercial exploiters.
There are about 400 individual diseases recorded in medical
nomenclature, and because of medical endeavor to maintain distinctive types--to maintain
genera and species--much confusion and unsatisfactory treatment is the result. I
say confusion advisedly, for in a consultation of a half-dozen physicians there may
be, and often are, as many separate and distinct opinions--diagnoses. The result
is that the one seeking advice will get as many diagnoses as the number of physicians
consulted. The reasons for this seeming ignorance on the part of the wise physicians
are many. In the first place, when so-called diseases have been established or recurring
for months or years, more and more of the organism becomes involved; the treatment,
which is largely palliative and changed at every call of the physician and every
change of doctors, may relieve, but never cures; and it must never be forgotten that
in all so-called diseases (slight or severe) there are respites marking the ebb and
flow of toxemia. At every flow toxins are eliminated, and this marks a period of
discomfort; when toxin saturation is relieved, this marks an ebb in elimination when
toxins fall below the saturation point and comfort returns. This ebbing and flowing
on the sea of human life is called health and disease; the flow marks discomfort
(disease), the ebb marks a subsidence, with a return of comfort. Doctors declare
at the ebb that they have cured the disease; as well might boys at the seashore declare
that they have chased the waves back by the rocks they have thrown at them. The truth
is that patients get better and worse at the ebb and flow of toxin elimination in
spite of medical men, and if these priests of medical science know nothing of the
cause of this ebb and flow of toxemia, how are they to control the phenomenon? They
cannot do anything, and at the failure of their endeavors the patient becomes discouraged
and fear adds another complication; the original habits that brought on the disease
in the first place are continued, and so the medley of disease-building runs merrily
on and on until one or more of the vital organs gives down, driven by recurring functional
derangements, until organic change is developed beyond the possibility of a return
to the normal and the patient dies. The prevailing toxemic crises are diagnosed--given
a name. The leading symptoms of common derangements take the name and are recognized
by the profession as the alpha and omega--the beginning and ending--of the disease.
The science of diagnosis consists in discovering pathology, when a novice should
know the genesis of any pathology must go through an embryonic stage--a period of
cultivation, seeding, germination, gestation, and birth. There is a vast unexplored
field preceding the stage of pathology that medical science has left unnoticed, namely,
the cause of pathology. Doctors start with a fully developed symptom--pathology.
For instance, a cold, a "flu," a headache, a cough, a tonsilitis, a pneumonia,
a typhoid fever, is recognized as self-existent; or there may be a vague notion
that a specific germ has in some manner initiated the disease; a treatment is given,
the symptom subsides, and the incident or disease is passed as cured. There may be
many repetitions of a like development covering a period of years, until there suddenly
and unexpect edly develops an ulcer of the stomach or bowels, pyloric obstruction,
stone in the gall bladder, colitis, appendicitis, apoplexy, paralysis, serious ear
trouble, glaucoma, tuberculosis, valvular heart disease, or some other organic derangement
that has required years to develop. This is a brief picture of the medical and surgical
tragedy that is being enacted daily on the world stage--sacrifices to the medical
god--a rotten, effete superstition, bombastically flouted in the face of twentieth-century
intelligence as ultra-modern medical science. And the people fall for it rather
than to sacrifice their sensual excesses which are the ubiquitous germs that Pasteur,
Koch, Metchnikoff, et alii failed to find, and which gave them their daily
discomforts (for they all were semi-invalids for years before they died) and premature
death; and which Rockefeller's ten million foundation will fail to find, notwithstanding
the wise old Croesus has discovered them for himself.
Pure statistics demand a mortuary report in keeping with
this scientific diagnosis. Ulceration of the stomach is the ending of a syndrome
running over years of discomfort, requiring many causes that the diagnosis and mortuary
report throw little light upon. Cirrhosis of the liver indicates nothing of
cause; and cause must be known or treatment will be of no avail. Infantile convulsions
means nothing. A diagnosis of constipation, colitis, locomotor ataxia, arteriosclerosis,
apoplexy means nothing, for they are pronounced symptoms--culminating climaxes of
symptoms--complexes--originating back in the heyday of life when appetite, passion
and emotions run riot. These hey-day peccadillos did not presage the end, nor do
the mortuary reports determine or throw light on the beginning--the hey-day excesses.
Constipation is not a disease; it is a symptom that is found
in all (so-called) diseases; it is never found alone and is never found without enervation
to the extent of checking secretions and excretions. To say all that is to be said
on the correction of constipation, the whole subject of nomenclature would have to
be gone over. To treat constipation per se would be to ignore cause; it would
be similar to treating pain, fever, cough, hook-worm or corns without giving any
thought to cause.
The correct way to treat constipation is to correct all errors
of life, physical and mental; to bring the organism back to the normal, which means
restoring nerve energy which would establish normal secretions and excretions; in
other words, overcome the toxemic state. Forget constipation and do what is necessary
to establish normal habits of life. Those who use stimulants, overeat, eat imprudently,
neglect exercise, bathing and care of the skin, who overwork the emotions and are
unpoised in mind and body, indulge in venery and cultivate a lustful mind, need not
hope to be cured of constipation or any other so-called disease until the habits
of mind and body that brought on these conditions are corrected.
In this day and age man must fight against allowing himself
to be drawn into the whirlpool of conventionality and commercialism. Its influence
is insidious and grows its psychology unawares. Before the most intelligent are conscious
of personal danger, they have grown a psychology that holds them victims of convention
and expediency. They are victims of convention's lies, and are compelled to acquiesce
and say the only thing to do is the expedient thing to do, even if it be giving up
to surgical vandalism or standing for the infecting of the blood with an abominable
fetich. When completely victimized by convention, they do no thinking, and it is
then easy for them to believe the most absurd delusions regarding disease, its cause,
its immunization and its cure. The medical convention of today is very arbitrary.
Indeed, if it grows any worse it will require a revolution to crush its imperialism.
Apropos of the foregoing I suggest the following axiom to
be memorized, namely: The sense perception for truth is forfeited by unquestioned
loyalty to authority and conventional psychology. Disobedience is sometimes the greatest
loyalty to truth.
At the proper place the cause of toxemia and the influence
of bacteria in health and disease will be explained; and in defense of my teaching,
as against the prevailing or popular theories, I will say, as a matter of fact, toxemia
properly applied makes good under the most severe tests, namely, in eradicating all
diseases, even syphilis, without drugs; a claim that elicits bitter denial, if given
any notice at all, by the ultra-scientific.
After practicing haphazard medicine and conventional surgery
for twenty-five years, and toxemia for twenty-five years, I unhesitatingly affirm
that there is no excuse for drugs; and perhaps ten per cent of the surgery practiced
in time of peace is legitimate. In war, where the injured are taken care of wholesale
and without all the conveniences, anesthetics and opiates should be used in moderation,
but never to the extent of educating the boys into "drug fiends." There
can be but one reason given for this universal bowing down to prevailing medical
fallacy, and that I have given above.
Before branding the writer a fanatic or an egomaniac, refer
to history, and there it will be found on all great and important questions the majorities
are usually wrong. Remember at one time everybody except one man believed the world
flat.
When a voice is raised against convention, and its fallacies
are pointed out, the natural thing for convention to do is to ignore it, but if the
voice is sufficiently loud to be heard it may be branded the voice of a fanatic,
a fool or a knave; but if it is the voice of truth and if persistent, it will be
heard.
In apology for any apparent lack of completeness, I will
say that what I know and what I write are in a state of evolution, and the beliefs
I have recorded in this and other books are the best that I know up to date, but
I shall not promise to be consistent and never change; indeed, the most vital information
contained in this offering is not five years old, yet it annuls some beliefs that
have been advocated for years before.
It has required years to evolve toxemia, and it requires
years more to prove all things according to the toxemic hypothesis, but that it is
as broad as science and philosophy there is no question nor doubt that can be substantiated.
The majority of physicians are agreed that germs cause disease,
but the time will come when all must agree that germs are one of many factors. Many
who read my writings get the idea that I do not believe in germs; this, too, in spite
of my constant protestation that toxemia, the toxins of which are partly, but secondarily,
derived from the toxin of bacteria, is the cause of all diseases. Of course I believe
in germs. I believe in yeast, but yeast is not the cause of bread, but is one factor
in good bread-making. I believe in enzymes, but enzyme is not the cause of tissue-building.
I believe in the germ that is the nucleus of being. I believe in the germinal nucleus
as an individualizing factor, but impotent without auxiliary aid. Germs must have
environing factors and physical auxiliaries to a successful generation of specificity.
The warmth imparted by the hen or the incubator is an important
and indispensable adjunct, not even factor, in causing the egg elements to metamorphose
into a being. Twenty-one consecutive days of warmth are necessary to cause the egg
to hatch; twenty are not enough. In the germination of disease enervation, inhibited
elimination and secretion, germs, time, temperature, and moisture are necessary factors,
but no one is suff icient as a disease-builder. Germs per se are impotent
ever to be anything but an auxiliary cause.
In ridding the Panama Canal district of malarial germs, quinine,
a supposed specific, was impotent. The extermination was not accomplished by a germicide
nor an anti-microbe, but by modifying the moisture which changed the climate. The
two factors, heat and moisture, were changed by drainage--and the malarial germ was
placed hors de combat. The same experience anticipated the Panama Canal phenomenon
in many sections of the middle states and other malarial countries. Drainage of land
is death to malaria as well as to the mosquito.
Stress is laid on the alleged fact that man can not develop
yellow fever unless bitten by a mosquito that has feasted on a yellow fever patient;
but we are not told how the first patient became infected.
I insist that toxemia is a fundamental necessity for the
developing of disease, and certainly we can have no germ toxin without bacterial
fermentation, and no bacterial fermentation without an over supply of food and bacteria.
When the bowels are empty, as in the hibernating animal, there are no bacteria. On
the other hand, we have no digestion without enzymic fermentation, and no enzymic
fermentation without enzymes and food. When the stomach and bowels are empty, as
in the fasting or hibernating animal, there are no enzymes secreted.
The bacteria do not inf ect the empty stomach and bowels;
neither do the enzymes digest the empty stomach and bowels.
Why should I declare that germs cause disease by toxin infection,
when the real fault is a deficiency of enzymes, or, as is most common, there is a
normal amount of digestive ferments, but the food consumption is far beyond their
digestive power? This being true, why shall I not say that toxemia is caused by a
deficiency of enzymic ferments, or from overeating? For when the eating is within
enzymic control there can be no bacterial fermentation. Enzymic efficiency always
means bacterial control. When man's eating activities are well within his nutritive
efficiency, the bacteria that are ever present are well subordinated; when germs
become the "master of the show" it is when enervation is so pronounced
that metabolism is no longer equal to the system's requirements in repair and waste;
then it is that bacterial toxin finds an ally in retained excretions.
GO TO NEXT CHAPTER