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
CHAPTER I
TOXEMIA THE EFFICIENT (FIRST) CAUSE
OF ALL DISEASE
AS there can be no disease, not even constipation,
without established Toxemia, it is necessary to explain quite fully what is
meant by Toxemia.When Toxemia is understood, a novice can see the folly of
treating constipation or any other disease as a distinct entity, separate and
apart from the cause of all diseases--Toxemia.
The normal state of the blood contains toxin. Toxin is
in at the christening of the first drop of blood.
From the metabolism taking place at the marriage of the
ovum and sperm, life and death evolve, manifest. They are states that continue
alternating—going hand in hand throughout conception, development,
maturity, decline, and on to the disorganization that ends the individuality
that was born of that first love embrace.
Throughout embryonic and fetal life, life and death
keep up their ceaseless alternating in a state of ideal poise. The nourishment
brought by the mother's circulation--the blood--being thoroughly censored at
the port of entry (placental purification), all toxins being refused, the fetus
is saved from all toxins except those confined to its own metabolism, and as
the food supplied is censored as to purity, quality and quantity, there is no
chance for pathological toxemia evolving.
That a physiological amount of toxin is evolved there
cannot be any doubt, for the ashes left from fetal metabolism empty into the primae
viae (the bowels) and remain there until soon after birth when the bowels
move. That this waste product is inert is obvious, for the child has no disease
in uterine life, excessive food supply and bacilli being turned back at the
port of entry. The guardianship of nature at the portals of life is beautifully
illustrated from conception to birth. When the barriers to disease are not
broken down, health prevails.
At the birth of each new cell the life of the old is
given up, and at its death the cell disintegrates into ashes, and toxin is
formed. The old life builds the new, and the toxin stimulates the new cell,
giving it vigor to meet its requirements.
The toxin formed by the disintegration of the cell is
the ashes of love, out of which life, phoenix-like, rises. Every life is the
child of death. The acorn gives its life, its body, to fertilize the infant
oak. In death, decomposition, toxin and life are evolved and nurtured. Toxin is
an element of the blood, its property is that of stimulation, and, like all
stimulants, when used in excess it depresses and enervates. Toxin becomes
disease-producing only when the quantity contained in the blood becomes
excessive from lack of proper elimination.
If too much fertilizer is furnished plant life, there
will be overgrowth, with arrested germination--sterilization. In animal life an
oversupply of nourishment produces plethory and sterility. The enervation
brought on from overwork renders the body a prey to germs and parasites. Those
who eat beyond digestive power weaken the digestive secretions to such an extent
that germs and the germinal seeds of parasites, which enter the stomach and
bowels with the food, instead of being digested as they are in a normal state,
find a kindly host who allows them to germinate and develop. This is why some
people are infested with parasites and why others are not. When the body's
enzymic protection is below par from general enervation, then the ubiquitous
bacillus mixes up in all the affairs of life and gives plausibility to the idea
that germs cause disease.
Toxin is as necessary to the blood as other elements
when restricted to the proper amount; it is stimulating and health-imparting;
but when the organism is enervated from any cause, toxin elimination is
impeded, favoring the accumulation of a disease-producing amount. An overaccumulation of any stimulant produces
drunkenness, and the consequent enervation. The
excessive accumulation of toxin is what I am pleased to call Toxemia,
which I have found to be the first cause—the efficient cause--the cause
extraordinary--of all diseases.
After reading the above carefully, then read the
following, which is an extract from an article entitled "On the Urgency of
Research on the Great Portal to Disease in the Body," by Prof. A. B. Macallum, McGill University, in
the February 16, 1923, number of Science, official journal of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
It should
be observed that the discoverer of the Toxemic Hypothesis, tiring of the
failures of research and re-research work by medical science, began an original
search and succeeded in finding that "The Portal to Disease in the
Body" is broken down from the
inside -- that the enemy to man's health is autogenerated -- and the portals
are thrown open from within; after which external enemies to man's health gain
entrance and join with the rebels of the blood.
Research is the slogan of the schools; and the prefix
is becoming as monotonous as the (re-) anteceding vaccinate; and
the apology for non-success is on the same order, namely, not enough res.
A little original search with the apron-strings of mother's research and
revaccinate cut would relieve us of frequent requiems, and the painful
necessity of calling on the Lord: Requiescat in pace!
Many are compelled to admit that: "In the presence
of human stupidity even the Gods are helpless;" and surely stupidity is
not confined to the ignorant.
Those who would like to be spared more unnecessary
research should study Toxemia as taught in The Tilden Health School.
In
selecting as the subject of my address on this occasion the urgency of research
in a line along which little progress has been made, I am led to do so by
considerations which I think will appeal to many of my hearers. It is, first of
all, one which is of transcendent importance as an antecedent to any great
advance in scientific medicine in the near future. On looking over the road on
which so much progress has been made in the last forty years, one cannot but be
impressed with the idea that all the old lines of research have been developed
as far as they are capable of yielding results commensurate with the
expenditure of time and energy given to them and that we are now in the stage
of diminishing returns.
The record since 1880 is crowded with
discoveries in scientific medicine which will preserve from oblivion those who
have made them, but unless some new lines of attack on great problems are to be
thrown open the record for the next thirty or forty years will not have to its
credit similar achievements. A recognition that our present methods of research
in scientific medicine are not to give solutions of some of the great problems
in disease which still confront us is already beginning to prevail. The
distinguished clinician, Sir James MacKenzie, who has been during the last
thirty years one of the keenest students, on the scientific side, of clinical
medicine, is so convinced that scientific medicine as now developed is not
going to yield any further conquests of importance that he has been compelled
to seek a new line of research which may give results which will initiate a new
and great advance in medical science.
The new line which he has taken is the study of the beginnings of disease in the individual,
that is, a close and very careful observation of the changes in the normal
condition long before the individual is impelled to consult his physician or is
aware that anything is wrong with him. Sir James hopes that in this way a great
amount of knowledge may be accumulated which will throw a flood of light on the
origin of many of the diseases and thus inaugurate what may be justly called a
great advance in medicine, comparable with any great advance made in the past.
It is hardly possible to doubt that a careful study of
the organs of the body, as they function in the supposedly normal individual,
will, if systematically pursued, ultimately give a lore that will be of
inestimable value in determining a fundamentally rational treatment of disease.
The application of our present clinical methods is
confined almost wholly to the manifestations of disease in its more or less
pronounced stages, and the features of the initial stages attract the
attention of only a very few clinicians.
Here, therefore, is an almost fallow field,
where anyone who enters to work steadily and systematically may reap a worthy
reward for the toil of all his years. This, combined with a closer, a more
thoroughly scrutinizing study of the manifestations of disease in its later
stages of development, would result in a very great addition to our lore of
medicine, and bring us back to the ancient Hippocratic role of closely
observing and recording which, pursued for periods during the last twenty-four
centuries, has made the Art of Medicine of the Western World an ornament of our
civilization.
It is, however, doubtful if there is in our generation
enough of those of the class of which Sir James MacKenzie is representative to
make such an immediate advance in medicine as he believes possible. Progress is
due to the activities of the almost inconceivably few. All the ideas, all the
knowledge which determines our outlook on the physical world and the world of
life of today are based on the results of the discoveries and inventions of
less than one ten-thousandth of one per cent of the population of the Western
World during the last three thousand years. Even in the medical profession it
is the inconceivably few to whom all progress in the past has been due. The
rest have accepted and applied the results of the great discoveries of the few.
Of the 400,000, more or less, who in Europe
and America during the last century and a half have been members of the medical
profession, how many have made, as a result of their researches and
observations, great additions to our knowledge of the causation and treatment
of disease? I would venture to estimate not more than thirty, that is, one out
of every 13,000 in the ranks. These were the pioneers in the regions of the
unknown to whom we owe the great generalizations which constitute the
foundations of what we call medical science. Without their achievements there
would have been no advance in it during the last three centuries, and medicine
would still be but a lore of impossible hypotheses and theories like that which
darkened understanding amongst the physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. There were indeed others who by their observations in their own
limited field of activity added fact upon fact in verification of the great
generalization and who by their support of these made their general acceptance
possible, but they would not have been of service in any other way to medical
science had it not been for the great discoveries of the pioneers.
To extend this science today, to make here and there
great additions to it, pioneers of the same type are still required. Are such
now in training, or beginning their career, or ready to launch some new line of
extension?
Sir James MacKenzie does not apparently think there are
or will be such, for his Newer Medicine is to owe its achievements to
organizations the members of which will devote themselves to the observation
and correlation of the facts which may be gained from a continuous, systematic
study of the very earliest manifestations of alteration of function which mark
the commencement of disease in the supposedly healthy individual. He is
apparently extremely skeptical of the value of the laboratory by itself as a
factor henceforth in the advancement of our knowledge on the treatment of
disease. Research on the laboratory side is carried on by workers who, he
holds, are out of touch with the problems in medicine, and in consequence their
contributions offer little in the way of a solution of these, which must be
undertaken by the physicians themselves who are in immediate contact with the
problems on the purely clinical side.
It must, I think, be admitted by all who are in touch
with the present laboratory methods associated with the diagnosis and treatment
of disease that the effort spent in the development of them by a multitude of
workers in laboratories and the narrow range of the results obtained make it
appear as if the vast majority of investigators concerned believe the great
problems that can be attacked successfully are all solved, and that there
remains only to be developed an ever more and more refined technique, which
will be concerned only with circumscribed problems, such as the hydrogen ion
concentration, basic metabolism, new reactions of the class of Widal, Schick
and Wassermann, more exact methods for the determination of sugar, urea, uric
acid, ammonia and other constituents of and metabolic products in the blood,
and so on. These and like matters of limited interest and range of application
constitute the vast majority of the problems which are now being investigated,
if the contents of the original papers published in the journals devoted to
physiology, biochemistry and pathology give a trustworthy indication of the
character of the research that is being carried on in these sciences today.
Behind all these problems there are at least several
which concern the causation of a considerable number of pathological changes
and alterations in function in the organs of the body. These problems are all
related to the functions of the intestinal mucosa. Such functions are only very
imperfectly known. One involves the absorption of the products of the digestion
of the foodstuffs. In this absorption the mucosa has been, and is still too
often, regarded as if it were only a physical membrane separating the blood
from the intestinal contents, through which the peptones, amino-acids,
glycerine and sugars diffuse to reach the vascular channels. What we have to
set over against this physical concept are a few facts the significance,
however, of which is not clear. Soaps and fats which are colloids enter and go
through the epithelial cells of the mucosa, and a number of proteins, those of
egg yolk particularly, pass unchanged readily into them, but how the former and
the latter are so taken up is still unknown or only dimly comprehended. The
salts of iron and potash can be traced microchemically in their passage through
the epithelium, and the phenomena involved appear at first view to be caused by
the simple forces of diffusion, but on further consideration one must postulate
that other and more important factors are concerned. We know, further, that the
mucosa, especially of the upper half of the small intestine, secretes a number
of ferments, such as erepsin, invertase, maltase, lactase, and the activator of
trypsinogen, enterokinase, and that secretin, the hormone of the pancreas, is a
product of the duodenal mucosa, but, except in the case of secretin, we do not
know definitely what elements of the mucosa form them.
This, in brief, comprehends our knowledge of the
activities of the intestinal mucosa, and yet how exiguous it is in comparison
with what may yet be obtained through careful and well-directed research. The
mucosa is, in its properties and functions, something very much more than a
physical membrane. Because its superficial layer is composed of living cells,
it is not, it cannot be, a passive element, for the cells have, as living units
always have, the capacity to accept or reject whatever constituents of the
chyle there may be, and this capacity is exercised by them through the long
life of the individual. They even maintain themselves against the invasion of
bacteria of the ordinary type.
The intestinal mucosa must then be regarded as the
great portal to disease of the body. This portal may be completely closed, as
it is in the normal healthy condition of the mucosa, or it may be gradually or
suddenly pushed open and disease, chronic or acute, may result. If this portal
could be kept closed always, old age might be indefinitely postponed and bodily
vigor maintained for a much longer period than it is now. There is no reason to
suppose that the heart, the skeletal muscles, the liver, the kidneys, the
nervous system and the endocrinous organs cannot function indefinitely if they
are not subject to toxic action, and in their normal condition they must be
much less subject, through any other portal, to bacterial infections than they
are when their condition is altered by the access of toxic material absorbed
from the intestinal cavity. The complete closure of the great portal
permanently maintained would greatly lessen the incidence of disease and
increase the average length of life."
THE GARDEN OF EDEN LEGEND IN THE LIGHT OF TOXEMIA
It should be remembered that man is normally all the
time toxemic; but up to a certain stage it is normally stimulating; the same is
true of food, pleasure of all kinds, and exercise or work. Of all the fruits in
the garden of life it is man's pleasure to eat, except of the fruit of
knowledge; which means that when man surfeits he has eaten of the fruit of
knowledge, and unless he profits by that knowledge he will surely die. When he
will not be guided by the knowledge of good and evil he is expelled from Eden,
the paradise of health in which he was born, and from that day he will eat his
bread--enjoy his pleasures--in pain. "In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all
the days of thy life."
After toxemia has been increased by overindulged
pleasures to the saturation point, man becomes acquainted with discomfort, and
unless the knowledge of the cause of that discomfort is acted upon, he will pay
for his overindulgence in sickness, pain, and early death. The laws of health
are inexorable; we see people going down and out in the prime of life simply
because no attention is paid to them. The health teaching up to date is largely
a system of camouflaging the ignorant and credulous.
The idea of cure is a
dangerous fallacy, and a world of disease and premature death is what
mankind is paying for it. The legend makers of the Bible offered no hope to
those who ate of the tree of knowledge -- who surfeited to the point of toxemic
saturation; their sentence was death or banishment of all pleasure. But man can
come back if he will develop a permanent self-control and live a life of
moderation.
Toxemia is a worked-out hypothesis based on the
fundamental laws of nature, and it is the only truth concerning the cause and
cure of disease,and certainly offers the only rational method of disease
prevention and is so simple that it can be taught to a child.
The Edenic fatalism was based on no more benightedness
than present-day know-nothingism concerning man's helplessness with regard to
disease, its cause and cure.
A fact not known to medical science, and one giving
irrefutable proof of the truth of the Toxemic Hypothesis, is that few people
could be taken off the street, or out of business or the trades, and put to bed
and on a fast who would not be made very sick within a week, overwhelmed by the
poison of their own elimination. It is this throwing off of toxin after a
prostration from any so-called disease that gave rise to the well-known saying
that all sick people must be worse before they are better, even when under the
most skilful treatment. This is nature's cure, and in pronounced toxemia
nature's cure is certainly heroic.
The distressing
symptoms caused by rapid elimination cause doctors to don the war paint of
their profession and go after the pronounced symptom in a heroic manner. Coughs
are suppressed, pain subdued, fever extinguished, weakness nourished, faintness
stimulated, diarrhea checked, constipation physicked, perspiration dried,
wakefulness lulled and every discomfort palliated.
What really takes place in a good red-hot
battle against disease? Suppression. Nature often finds herself bucked and gagged --
hog-tied to a fare-you-well, with the nervous system paralyzed from pent-up
toxins. The pneumonia patient dies smothered to death by suppressed secretion,
the digestive tract overwhelmed by decomposing food. The physic may irritate so
greatly that a movement may be secured, but certainly any tendency for
elimination is most effectively checked.
Since serum treatment has become the vogue more
patients recover because the treatment is not so belligerent and nature is not
so greatly opposed.
If the people are ever enlightened on the subject, and
come into the truth that few possess a reasonable amount of health, and the
majority are perambulating cesspools, as vulnerable as a powder magazine, they
may decide to make an effort to get well before a collapse comes.
A most excellent knowledge for the people would be to
knowthat when sickness comes the proper treatment is to go to bed, poise mind
and body,and know they are in the hands of the best doctor--nature--and that
they will getwell in the shortest possible time if they do nothing.
All people are toxemic; but all people are not sick who
are toxemic, for there must be sufficient accumulation to overcome resistance.
All people differ in resisting power. Those who possess one hundred per cent
natural power, everything equal, should have twice the resistance of the one
who is born with fifty per cent natural power. If, however, the fifty per cent
man is conservative and strictly controls every nerve leak, it does not require
a Newtonic calculating ability to tell that these men are approaching a single
standard of resistance. If the hundred per cent man is living in a manner to
cause a diminishing return -- that is, if his excesses are reducing his powers
of reconstruction and he is retrograding -- he isusing up more nerve energy
than he is building, and what he has is being taken from him; while the fifty
per cent man is adding to his power according to the law of increase: "To
him who hath shall be given" (Matthew XII, 12); hence they are approaching
a common ground.
The continual (often repeated) influences which use up
nerve energy, are met by a continuous (without pause) renewal of nerve energy,
and this is why man continues to live and have health; but when there are
enough stimulating influences to cause a continuous nerve expenditure, then no
break or pause for rest or recuperation is experienced, and man is then on the
toboggan that I am pleased to name profound enervation, which will
quickly carry him down and out.
The heart illustrates this point well: When the body is
normal and the blood is chemically correct, the heart rests enough between
beats for tissue renewal -- self-reparation; but when enervation checks
elimination and waste products are retained, then there is created a pathologic
toxemia and the heart is overworked; being overstimulated, it fails to renew
itself; this is called functional disease, which in time, if not corrected,
ends in organic disease.
When the body is stimulated continuously -- when
physical and mental stimulation is experienced continuously, instead of continually
– enervation follows. For example, when business or work is accompanied
by worry, and the worry fills the resting spaces, instead of the work being
continual it becomes continuous, because the spaces or recesses for rest are
filled with worry or some other overworked emotion, or physical stimulants such
as tobacco, alcohol, or other stimulants and gluttony, until power to sleep is
lost; then there is no chance for renewal. It is then that continuous
stimulation is experienced and disease follows.
The banker or other business man who works
six hours or more a day may tax his body every minute when not at work by worry
and sensual indulgences, and because of no rest he breaks down in middle life.
It is not to be forgotten that toxin from checked elimination and toxin from
bacterial fermentation in the stomach and bowels during this man's decline
evolve such a state of Toxemia that crises are showing up continually:
headaches, tired feeling of mornings, constipation; occasionally there may be
bilious spells, diarrhea once or twice a year, a taste in mouth of a morning,
coated tongue, dizziness, catarrh, sore throat, closing of nose, tonsilitis,
cough, asthma, rheumatism, lumbago, sweating feet, flagging memory, attacks of
"flu," la grippe, or about
every epidemic, and a gradually growing pessimism showing in irritability,
grouchiness and fault-finding with those about him. His taking off may be by
pneumonia, kidneydisease, paralysis or apoplexy. All these symptoms belong to Toxemia in a
gouty subject weighing from twenty to one hundred pounds too much.
Worry, work, and eating beyond digestive capacity,
followed by fermentation, and the stimulation from the toxin of fermentation,
food and its digestion, amount to continuous stimulation, giving no interval
for rest and recuperation, and as a result bodily functioning is diminished -- secretion
and excretion are diminished – adding toxin to toxin until a disease
producing Toxemia is built; and this is the alpha and omega of all diseases to
which the flesh is said to be heir.
The local irritation to the mucous membranes of the
stomach and bowels by the toxin of decomposition builds catarrhal inflammation.
This is how catarrh of the stomach and bowels is built, and the most pronounced
symptoms are indigestion and constipation, with gas distention and general
discomfort.
The symptom-complex of Toxemia builds a vicious circle,
which reads about as follows: Anything of a physical or mental character that
irritates or overstimulates sooner or later enervates; enervation checks secretion
and excretion; checked secretion impairs all organic functioning. The most
vulnerable organ, the stomach, gives down first; hence food decomposes, toxin
is evolved, the toxin irritates and inflames the mucous membranes, setting up
catarrhal inflammation. Checked elimination adds toxin to the toxin absorbed
from gastro-intestinal fermentation. In this wayToxemia is built. Toxemia is
fed from the toxin absorbed from the fermentation of food in the intestines and
retained excretions. When Toxemia is established, crises (diseases) make their
appearance at any time when Toxemia reaches the saturation point. The
saturation point is a state where resistance loses control, and any influence that
enervates at this point precipitates whatever so-called disease there is an inclination
to take on -- any diathetic tendency. Those so-called diseases that are inherited
or acquired become crises of Toxemia. Toxemia then should obviously be recognized
by anyone as the true disease, and every other disease (so-called) only as a
crisis of Toxemia.
The most common crises are the catarrhal inflammations
of mucous membranes. The stomach is the vulnerable organ of the body; the
reason is that it is the portal or entry of supplies - -of nutriment for the
building and repair of the body. That this organ is abused by being overworked,
all must admit; but if not enervated by the mind (nervous system) it can endure
much abuse in being crowded with food.
The stomach is the barometer (so to speak) of the
nervous system. When the mind is depressed, or if there is an abnormal state of
the emotions, the stomach shows the effect at once in failing to digest well.
Enervation from any cause is quickly noticed by imperfect digestion. In
overwork, worry, fear or anger, inability to digest follows. Babes at the
breast, when disturbed by much fondling, handling, feeding, or subjected to
noise, loud talking, music, and too much bathing, will soon show symptoms of
restlessness and indigestion, which is followed by discomfort and more
restlessness; and these symptoms excite the concern of the mother, who
increases her vigilance, which means more attention, more excitement, and more
enervation for baby and more indigestion. To this growing nerve storm a doctor
is added, and he names the disease;
his diagnosis of course has no relationship to cause and his prescription only
adds to the medley of enervating causes.
The above is a picture of the small beginning of a
symptom-complex that may end in death in infancy or a neurasthenia as a cortex
built around a nucleus of gastro-intestinal catarrh, distinguished by a
touch-me-not stomach and constipated bowels. We will follow infancy, youth,
manhood and age, keeping in mind the principal types, temperaments and
diatheses,which cause variation in symptoms and ultimate endings.
From the catarrh of the stomach the inflammation
extends to the throat, nose, ears, bronchia, lungs; the so-called diseases
resulting are tonsilitis, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, enlarged cervical glands,
otorrhea, pharyngitis, laryngitis, bronchitis, and tuberculosis. The stomach
itself presents inflammation, ulceration, pyloric diseases and cancer.
Extending downward, the catarrh affects the duodenum, ending in ulceration,
pancreatitis, and cancer; from the duodenum the catarrh extends to the
bile-duct, gall bladder and liver, creating gall-stone; along the bowels to the
colon and rectum, causing colitis, typhilitis, appendicitis, proctitis, piles,
ulceration, prolapsus and cancer. Contiguous organs become infected. The
ductless glands become involved. And where drainage of ducts and canals is
imperfect, organs create much local disturbance, from ulceration and septic or
pus infection.
The popular treatment of disease is to treat these
various organs as independent diseases, which is most absurd; as ridiculous as
it would be to treat each separate hair on the head for an eczema of the scalp.
Of course drainage must be established, and, with
proper rest, proper feeding and fasting, nature will do the rest.
Every so-called disease named above has the same
origin, namely, enervation, causing deficient secretion and excretion,
developing Toxemia; then mental and physical overstimulation keeps up
enervation and the Toxemia; then the latter feeds from the blood. Every
so-called disease is a vicious circle.
Constipation is a prominent and quite constant symptom
accompanying all the above-named crises, and, like all of them, will give way
before a treatment that restores nerve energy and overcomes Toxemia -- which
establishes secretion and excretion. Rest, physical, physiological, and mental,
is the most potent of all remedies, for disease rests on enervation.
The time will come when the absurdity of the present
so-called scientific treatment will provoke only a smile, when surprise will permit.
Scientific medicine is so out of keeping with every other department of
learning, and even with its own fundamentals, that the surprise is that
educated men do not question their own sanity.
A glance at the popular manner of treatment of the
above crises should enable any layman to agree with the writer in declaring
that the whole treatment of disease is a farce that should cause a high-school
boy to blush were he guilty of so much unreasoning inanity.
At the beginning of this pathological chain, the babe
needs quiet only. It should be left alone, and fed only as it demands feeding,
and not disturbed except to be kept clean; no handling, no fondling. Children
are not to be handled like dolls or poodle-dogs. They are not for showing and
to be made into a menagerie. Perhaps one mother in a hundred is fit for
motherhood. When we have properly trained mothers, we can suspend with the use
of improperly trained doctors.
When maltreated until catarrh of the stomach and
constipation are built, announced by frequent colds, excess feeding must be
stopped, perfect quiet given and no handling allowed; a fast for a day or two
may be needed, then feed one-fourth the usual amount and increase the food, not
giving the full amount for a week. All symptoms will be gone, even the
constipation, in seven to ten days. Don't overfeed, and don't keep the child
sick by a worrying mother. Properly cared-for children will not have any of the
diseases "peculiar to children." They must not be disturbed and constantly
overfed.
Tonsilitis could have no existence without chronic
irritation of the throat -- chronic hyperemia of the pharyngeal and nasal
mucous membrane – from chronic catarrh of the stomach, kept alive by
sugar, butter, and eating between meals. Butter in excess of systemic needs is
often the cause of stomach derangement. Plain whole-wheat bread, well baked,
with an apple or orange for breakfast, very little butter; bread and salad for
noon, and bread and milk for night. No
food, however,until the throat is well-comfortable and inflammation gone.
Bathing, clean clothes and beds are necessary, as well as a poised mind and
body from education in self-control. Play to the point of frenzy -- great
excitement -- is bad. This treatment will appear lacking in the spectacular and
thrills of modern medical science; but parents who prefer the thrills and
frills and senseless operations, with gradually growing ill health, may pay
their money and take their choice. No case is cured until the habits that build
disease are corrected.
The enlarged tonsils, adenoids, and constipation will
gradually disappear under this treatment and the Toxemia will subside, leaving
the children with normal resistance and full physical and mental efficiency.
Enlarged glands and ear discharges go as they came; they need no surgery.
Removing tonsils, adenoids, and tubercular glands without correcting habits
that build them is stupidity.
This treatment removes the first cause of tuberculosis,
and when the first cause is removed the second is checkmated. Bronchitis and asthma
are no different. Treatment for all so-called diseases is fundamentally the
same.
Keep food out of an ulcerated stomach, keep patient in
bed, and give a lavage night and morning until comfortable.
Pharyngitis, laryngitis, bronchitis and asthma are
different locations of catarrhal inflammation extending from the stomach up
through the esophagus (gullet) to these parts; infectious gas eructated from
the stomach and exhaled from the lungs inflames the mucous membranes of the
throat and air passages, and the topical irritation produced by the gas is
reinforced by the toxin in the blood brought to the mucous membrane by the
capillary circulation. To correct any of these inflammations, the Toxemia must
be overcome.
Disease is man-made, and he should rejoice in being
able to rid himself of it. God did not make it, neither will He cure it. "Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep. Keep my
commandments." It is up to us, not
Him.
Derangements of the stomach are always present and
precede bowel derangements. Catarrh of the stomach is the first crisis of
Toxemia. When the body is enervated from worry or anything that creates emotion
it always affects the stomach and digestion. The stomach is also the first and
last organ of the body to be abused. Food is put into it in season and out of
season, and when its functions are inhibited by an enervated condition of the
body its power to digest is lessened to such an extent that very few are
willing to learn the amount of food they ingest to be within keeping with the
digestive power, hence this is the continual source of indigestion.
When food is not digested properly it
ferments, and from this source toxin is developed, which, being absorbed, adds
to the already toxemic condition of the blood. The continual irritation in the
stomach of fermenting food is a source of irritation to the mucous membrane.
Catarrh is created frequently before a child is a week old, and from a
catarrhal condition of the stomach ulceration frequentlytakes place, and the
end of chronic irritation, ulceration, etc., of the stomach is cancer.
Sometimes it takes forty, fifty, or sixty years of abuse of the stomach to
bring the cancerous ending.
Scientists are busy a great deal of the time in
endeavoring to find the germ that causes cancer. They can continue to look for
it to the end of time, for cancer is not produced by germs any more than
catarrh of the stomach is produced by germs, or, for that matter, any so-called
disease of the entire body.The bacteria are in at every state of fermentation,
but they are there simply because enzymic power is lost, secretions have been
suppressed, and the real cause of the derangement is in operation all the time,
producing general enervation of the bodyand more or less suppression of
digestion.
Catarrh of the stomach creates a great many symptoms:
headache, discomfort in the region of the stomach, gas formation, sometimes a
sick stomach where there will be vomiting and at other times a spitting up of
food; at other times the principal symptom will be a harassing cough. The various
catarrhal states gone over previous to this take their origin in the stomach.
Ordinary discomforts of indigestion can be overcome by a reasonable fast and
washing the stomach daily, and then the feeding should be very light to start
with and increased as the powers to digest increases. Proper
food combinations are very necessary, but the most necessary thing in
taking care of the stomach is to limit the food so as to be within digestive
power. This must necessarily vary a great deal in different cases. Each person
is a law unto himself, and he must learn from discomfort what his limitations
are. If after a meal there is discomfort, the next meal is to be missed, then
when eating is resumed a less amount should be eaten, and in this way the
individual will soon learn his food limitations and if he respects them, he
will evolve into good, first-class health.
Ulceration of the stomach is a state brought on from
months and years of catarrh of the stomach. Continual fermentation with acid
formation irritates the mucous membrane until it eventually ulcerates. Such
cases require a very great deal of patience in bringing them back to the
normal. One of the foolish things of our day is an operation to cut out the
ulcer, turning the patient loose and advising him to eat "good wholesome
food to keep up the strength." That
is exactly what the patient has been doing all his life, and after the
operation he resumes his former life and continues the stomach derangement that
brought on the ulceration in the first place, and in time another portion of
the mucous membrane will give down and ulcerate. Cutting out an ulcer is only
getting rid of an effect, and another similar effect will follow and continue
to follow until the patient is worn out from such folly.
Disease of the pylorus is quite common. Why shouldn't
it be? This excess of acid produced by fermentation passing out of the stomach
through the pylorus continually irritates the lining membrane. The irritation
brings on a thickening and hardening of the tissues. The time comes when the
orifice is so closed from a gradual thickening of the parts that the food will
not pass. Then scientific medicine gets busy and makes a new opening in the
stomach and connects it with the intestine below, and the patient is again
advised to eat "good wholesome foodto keep up his strength." The same life is resumed that brought on the
condition in the first place, and the irritation continues, and the thickened
condition of the pylorus breaks down eventually into a cancerous state that
ends the misery of the patient in a year or two; not one thing being done from
the beginning to the end of the stomach derangement except palliation. Cause is not even recognized – not even suspected.
Such patients should be put to bed, fasted for a sufficient time to bring on comfort
and for the system to eliminate the Toxemia; then when the feeding is begun it
should be of a liquid character and not enough to overpower the digestive functions,
and the stomach should be cleaned out daily with a syphon. These cases can in
the course of reasonable time be brought back to the normal.
The people, however, are
looking for quick cures -- cures that can be
performed without inconveniencing them by allowing them to continue in their old
habits; and the consequences are that no one is ever cured. A few are
palliated for a year or two and sometimes a little longer, but they all come to
an untimely end simply because nothing is being done to remove the cause.
Ulceration of the pylorus sometimes extends to the
duodenum,and even the duodenum develops a cancer because the acid that passed
from the stomach creates a catarrhal inflammation of this organ, and this
catarrhal state will often extend to the pancreas. Where the disease is well
developed in this organ it is very difficult to correct, and sometimes ends
fatally in spite of the best treatment. The catarrhal condition passes from the
duodenum to the gall-duct and gall bladder and the liver. All of these
conditions are to be met in the same way. They do not need a different
treatment, because they all come from one and the same cause, and they are all
amenable to treatment that consists of a sufficient amount of rest of body,
digestion, and mind to allow normality to be re-established.
Colitis is simply an extension of this same catarrhal
inclination, and when it has run on for a sufficient length of time ulceration
will be established. In the meantime
there may be appendicitis, typhilitis, and, farther on in the rectum, proctitis,
which is catarrhal inflammation in the rectum, will be developed, followed by
prolapsus, hemorrhoid ulceration, and cancer, which is the procession of
diseases evolving from this same catarrhal state. None of these diseases
require any special treatment. Patients are to be put to bed, fasted until they
are in fit condition to eat, and then the eating must be limited to be within
their power of digestion.
Removing the appendix does not influence the
colitis that initiated the appendicitis, but in possibly ninety out of every
one hundred cases of so-called appendicitis the appendix is not involved at
all; the derangement is all in the colon, and when the catarrhal inflammation
has gone to such an extent that this organ has lost about all its power to
digest, then any food that reaches this organ will be thrown into a state of
fermentation; gas forms, which distends the colon and produces a very great
deal of suffering. An inflamed stomach or intestine gives out much discomfort when
distended with gas, and this is particularly true of colitis. So much distress comes
from this source that every contiguous organ is blamed for the discomfort, hence
the excuse for the removal of the appendix, the ovaries, removing the entire reproductive
organs, draining the gall bladder, removing the gall bladder, and many other
absolutely unnecessary operations. Nearly every organ in the abdominal cavity, as
well as the pelvic cavity, is credited with the discomforts that are wholly due
to colitis, and still the procession marches on to surgeries for these
senseless and useless operations.
I say
the mutilation continues to such an extent that, if the people could realize
it, the practice might be ended; but there is no danger of it ending, for the majority of people would rather submit to an operation
than to take advice that inhibits their bad habits. They will submit to
any kind of treatment if their habits of life are not interfered with. Hence
the mortality is exceedingly great, because the treatment given only palliates
for a few years, and the patients die from ten to forty years prematurely.
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