We do not need to be self-analytical, critical of all our feelings and
states, for we need only know what makes us less than 100 per cent
efficient, and knowing this to do the things necessary to correct it,
with the utmost confidence and wholly without fear.
Once this thing is changed there is a striking alteration in one's whole
viewpoint, for the mind is freed from the continual depression of this
accumulating waste, and there is perfect poise and equanimity where
before there was the opposite. There will be geniality where before
there was grouchiness; there will be energy where before there was
languor, happiness in place of depression, cheer instead of gloom.
What a wonderful world this would be if no one had the blues! And why should any one ever have the blues?
Every case of the blues is merely an accumulation of the acid
end-products of digestion and metabolism, just as every disease is, for
all are from the same cause.
With the cause controllable because understood then why should one have the blues, fatigue, disease, old age, death?
The late Senator Ben Tillman, of South Carolina, was once known as
"Pitchfork Tillman," because of his irascible temper and his willing'
ness to fight at the drop of the hat.
He had high blood pressure, what he called "Congressman's disease."
Whether or not he knew of this, he at least did not know that he would
suddenly drop on the steps of the Capitol building with apoplexy when
but sixty-three years of age.
He was picked up for dead, but it was soon discovered that he had suffered a very serious stroke of apoplexy.
He was kept for a time at his quarters in Washington, then sent South to die at his home.
But dying was not on his program at that time, and with his head
recovered he looked himself over, and found one side of his body
completely paralyzed, not one finger could he twiggle, nor one toe.
Believing what the doctors had told him, that there was nothing known to
medical science that could help him, he started in to study his own
condition, sent for literature on foods and exercise, and began regular
systematic exercise of the one side that he could use, at the same time
so modifying his diet as to allow the body to unload the excess formerly
stored there and to end its future manufacture.
Soon motion slowly returned to the paralyzed side, and this too was put
to work, and after a few years Senator Tillman was returned to the
United States Senate in better health than he had known for many years.
His first official act was to secure the privilege of the floor and to
apologize with tears streaming down his face for all his former acts of
violent temper.
His explanation was that he had long been a sick man and did not know
it, suffering from "Congressman's disease," and warned his fellow
senators that many of them were headed in the same direction from the
same causes, which he blamed on the universal custom of banqueting.
It was not the hard work, the intense application of mind during heated
debates, that were to him the motivating causes that led to his ruin,
but the banqueting, and he was from this final appearance in the Senate
till his death, at nearly seventy years, known as the health mentor of
the Senate.
Had he known when first irritable, tired, or confused just what, this
meant, he could have avoided all that followed, for undoubtedly he was a
sick man for years and did not know it, just as he said, and so are
many others who do not know it.
The world demands of us efficiency with a smile, and when we cannot give
this we are at a disadvantage with those who can deliver it.
Who cares for our aches and pains, our discouragements, our causes of depression and blues?
Our friends will soon tire of hearing of these things, for most of them
have similar troubles and find it difficult to get a sympathetic
hearing.
May something speed the time when sickness will be considered a personal
disgrace, when each will know why he is not well and be under suspicion
of laziness or inertia if he allows himself to get into such a state,
or if in it to stay there long enough to feel that he has a just
complaint against the great dispenser of things for being short changed
in the distribution of gifts.
It is magnificent to be able to restore the dangerously ill to health,
and such is real service, but it is much better, in a much broader way,
to influence thousands that are not now sick to take stock of themselves
and correct the little beginnings so that sickness will never occur,
and this is just as possible as the other, and more easily so.
The proof that this does work is that chronic organic disease does get
well even after having been passed up by every specialist in the
country.
Many hundreds of such cases have passed through the writer's hands, many
thousands through the hands of others using similar methods of
treatment, cases that had already developed serious organic disease, but
who were willing to make permanently those changes in their way of
living that were necessary to stop forever the formation and
accumulation in the body of this acid waste, who recovered a high degree
of health and maintained it at this high level for years.
Many of these report that they are enjoying life as never before, are
actually enjoying the pleasures of the table as keenly as when a child,
so these people are not giving up any vital pleasure in life by
conforming to a non-acid-forming habit of living; rather they have
broadened their opportunities for enjoyment and accomplishment and
service, all of which go to make of life a greater success than before.
Now if a non-acid-forming habit of eating will restore the seriously ill
to health, will it not more surely prevent the advent of disease?
It is not a great tax on credulity to arrive at such a conclusion.
The whole plan is on a par with the bank account, for it is easier to
conserve this by careful management than to recoup it after it has been
depleted.
When we write checks against an account that is not active enough, that
is not replenished frequently or sufficiently, we soon run into the red,
and the bank notifies us that our account is over' drawn, and we have
to get busy and make good our shortage or lose our credit, a fearful
thing.
If we see to it that the amounts withdrawn are daily made good then we
know that we are in balance, and have nothing to fear for our credit.
The body is continually throwing off chemicals in the form of waste
matter, many of these such as have to be used in considerable quantities
in the body to complete the chemical changes that go on in preparing
waste for exit from the body, and if these losses are not daily made
good we run short of some of the most vital chemicals of which we stand
in daily need.
We cannot get something out of nothing, neither can we get lime or other
of the essential body chemicals out of foods from which they have been
refined or cooked away, so we must be sure that our losses are made good
in kind by using those foods that we know represent these very things
continually.
When we eat white breads or white flour preparations we are woefully
deceiving ourselves, for these things do not contain the most vital of
the chemical salts we require.
Nature placed them there for our use in the whole grain, but man has
refined them away under the impression that he can improve on Nature, or
to make them more beautiful or more easily baked or more easily handled
or stored, or even digested.
When man starts in to improve on Nature he is following a wrong track,
and especially when he seeks to improve on the natural foods, for these
contain just the things that Nature designed for her children, and no
art can improve on them.
So if we would avoid or prevent disease, we should make sure first of
all that what we select as food is really such, not a manufactured
taste, beautified, refined, or changed in any way from its original
state--vital foods, those still containing the life implanted there by
Nature, or Nature's God.
These are safe, and nothing else is, even though we may acquire a
tolerance for other foods that are deficient and for a long time seem to
do well on them.
You will note that little is said about other devitalising habits, but
there is no doubt that the causes of enervation, or decline in vitality,
are many things, such as habits that rob us of sleep or rest, tobacco,
whiskey, drugs, sexual abuses.
These things are all wasteful of vitality, and no one who can think
would for a moment seek to lessen their importance as causes of physical
decline, but as compared with the usual, the well-nigh universal,
mistakes of the table, all these other causes combined must take an
inferior place, and the more especially so as when one is correctly
nourished there is a tendency to normality in all other respects, and
habits are seldom formed in other harmful things.
A man normally fed from childhood is nearly protected against excesses,
for the normal body needs no stimulation or no sedation, so does not
crave these things.
The normal body is very much alive in every particular, so is not in the
market for the cheap pleasures that thrill without satisfying.
To live without the sense of fatigue in a constant state of
rehabilitation is to live without fear. Stop for a moment to consider
what this would mean in the lives of every one!
A world without fear would be a Heaven, and it has been truly said that all there really is to fear in this world is fear.
Fear paralyses everything, stops digestion, assimilation, excretion, so
that through fear we are poisoned daily with our own body wastes.
Dr. W. B. Cannon, of Harvard, while detailing his experiments on the
motility of digestion through his then almost new x-ray studies before a
meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, at which the writer was
present, told of the studies on the motility of the cat's intestine, and
how as they were watching the rhythmic movements of the peristaltic
waves of the small intestine a dog in the next room suddenly barked, and
the cat went into a state of fear.
At once all peristaltic movements stopped entirely, the intestine lying
absolutely without apparent motion, and it was two hours after before
the movements resumed with anything like the rhythm or depth shown
before the fear arrested them.
If this is true of the cat, it is no doubt just as true of the human
digestive motility, and where the fear is not excessive it is possible
that these movements are not wholly arrested, but that they are in some
degree interfered with by fears of lesser degree, or by depressing
thoughts, there is little doubt.
As one of the necessary prerequisites to comfortable and normal
digestion, then, an equable frame of mind is not the least in
importance, and can be cultivated by any one, if the health is so good
as to remove from the body this innate fear of disease, and all other
sorts of fears, for after all, fears are inborn.
In an old hotel in Pennsylvania is an inscription burned into the face
of the old walnut mantel: "I have been young and now am old and have
seen much trouble, most of which never happened."
It is a fact that most of what we fear never happens, and our carefully
groomed fears went as lost effort, and with them went some of our
vitality.
Worry is but a phase of fear, and worry is the middle name of a host of good and otherwise very sensible people.
Worry interferes with every function of the body, and interference is in
direct ratio to the size and depth and height of the worry, and worry
never yet accomplished anything.
Worry, as all fear, is the most insane waste of precious vitality that
could be imagined, for it is wholly bad and without giving to the system
anything at all to compensate even in small degree for what it takes
out of the body.
It is a luxury to some, but withal the most expensive of all luxuries, the most destructive, the least constructive.
So why worry, when worry will never improve conditions in the slightest
degree, and will, if indulged, ruin the finest body and mind in the
universe?
Worry, like all fears, has a physical background, even as has insanity,
and while we may not be able to control fully the mind, we can at least
control the physical background.
Instead of telling people to stop worrying, we will do them more good if
we try to find out what they are eating, and how they eat these things,
and by correcting their evident mistakes we can so regenerate the
physical body that worry is no longer in evidence.
Several years ago a young man of property came to the writer reporting
that he had not slept a single wink in an entire week, and he looked it.
His face was purple, his brain in a whirl, he was erratic in speech,
taciturn, unresponsive to simple questions, in fact, in the early stages
of dementia.
He said he had invested heavily in real estate just before the war, and
now the factories had nearly all shut down, the young men had either
gone to war or were working in munition factories at higher wages,
leaving his town almost without man power sufficient for the ordinary
work, and the factories were unable to secure help from outside, for
other towns were in similar plight.
His family was communicated with and furnished the information that with
a little careful handling he could husband his property till after the
war, when real estate would again begin to come to its value and he
could dispose of some to let him out of his difficulties.
The banks had never pressed him for his liabilities nor were they apt to
do so, but his plight had so gotten on his nerves that he imagined that
every bank was about to foreclose on him.
Examination showed him to be very toxic, and he admitted being a rather
heavy eater of much concentrated food with very imperfect bowel action.
No effort was made to convince him that his financial condition was
other than what he feared, but he was cleaned out and sleep forced for
three nights, after which the blood left his head and his face turned a
normal color; he said nothing more about worries, stayed two weeks, ate
only alkalin foods, reduced his toxic state, and returned to his
business apparently without the least fear.
After two weeks he asked what he had been worrying about, and said that
he did not see why he worried, that the bankers all knew him and would
carry him along any decent length of time, and he was pulled to know why
he had ever thought otherwise. No change had occurred in his financial
state, and it was not till after the war that he finally emerged without
loss, but he never worried again.
The cause of his worries was physical, in himself, due to the fact that
he carried a toxic load that changed the complexion of the entire world
for him.
His would have been another case of dementia from business difficulties,
but, like Senator Tillman, the cause was never in overwork or the state
of the real estate market, but in his table habits alone.
To prevent disease is to cease the daily cause of disease, and the cause
of disease, as before remarked, is in the gradually increasing amounts
of acid end-products of digestion and metabolism, a controllable
condition.
So again let us inquire, if seated disease will recover by a reversal of
the wrong feeding habits, why will not these same habits prevent
disease in the first place?
Prevention costs nothing, but it does save a lot, and if one is of sound
mind it must seem that the only sane thing to do is to avoid habitually
the well outlined causes of disease, without waiting for its
development.
What Can We Do To Cure Disease?
From the time when man first began to be sick he has no doubt been looking for some one to help him to get well again.
Cures, sanatoria, hospitals, baths, clinics, climate, solaria,
doctors, nurses, medicines, serums, electricity, massage, spinal
adjustments, anything, everything to assist him to get over his own
little self-created afflictions.
All this with a sort of hazy idea that physical salvation, like spiritual salvation, can be secured vicariously.
But it is not so, and in the very nature of things it never can be
so, for our bodies are the result of just how we, individual we, live
from day to day, and no one can assume these results but us, and they
can be obviated in no way except by a personal house-cleaning and such
modification of our way of living as will end forever the causes that
have culminated in our present physical state, no matter what this may
be.
It is laughable to see the gullibility of man, the invalid, when he
listens to fairy tales of cure, through the drinking of certain waters,
the taking of certain drug mixtures, the transplantation of the sex
glands of a monkey, to remake him vicariously and give him all the
enjoyments of youth.
This last operation is not widely blazoned by the poor victim, so its
devotees are not available for clinical data later, but every such case
that has come under the notice of the writer was not one particle
improved even after the usual year that you are told you must wait for
results.
A year is a good idea, for one forgets after a year just how badly he
has been bunked, and his disappointment is not so keen when he realizes
that he is no better as would be the case were he permitted to look for
immediate results.
If we could by transplanting organs from animals recover our own lost or depleted functions,
it would be very nice, if one does not mind making himself part monkey,
to secure this result, but it is simply ridiculous to think of such a
thing.
The monkey glands will give up their hormones, stimulating him in
just so far as his own glands are deficient but no further, and also
stimulating him just long enough to permit of his writing a very
cheerful check, but as soon as the contained hormones are used up there
will be nothing more to expect, for the gland does not continue to
function in its uncongenial surroundings, and any improvement that is
apparent is simply imagination, pure and simple.
If one has paid fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars for such
operation it will have deeply impressed him with its importance and its
potentiality for good, of course. One is reminded of the lady who was
bound to have an abdominal section and could not seem happy without
this, as all her friends had enjoyed this expensive sport except
herself.
No one could find anything for which to operate till she finally
found a surgeon who put business before pleasure in all his work, and
who agreed to operate on her for a thousand dollars. He did so, making a
simple incision in the skin at the proper site, which was carefully
dressed and attended till it healed beautifully, leaving a very neat
scar.
He collected his fee, she received what she wanted, and both were
happy, no doubt, and she pestered the other surgeons afterward by
telling them that now that she had found a good surgeon she was at last
all right.
She had found a surgeon who knew what the trouble was and corrected
it with a harmless operation; the husband was in on the plan, paid the
bill, and there was really no deceit except insofar as it was necessary
to deceive this foolish woman in order to please her.
The growth principle never ceases to function in the body, the
tendency being to repair all defenses as these require repair, so the
tendency in all acute troubles is for complete recovery, and no matter
what means have been used these will be given full credit for the
recovery, so the means become famous on this account, and no . matter
what they may be they will forthwith be set down as a cure for this
state.
The writer is reminded of one case of Bright's disease
that had come back from the south with grave apprehension on the part
of friends and physicians as to his ability to make the journey alive.
When he arrived at his home he was taken in charge by his old physician
who administered the remedies on which he had learned to depend: the
usual digitalis, strychnia, morphine, diuretics for the failing kidneys,
stimulants for the burdened heart, food of all kinds high in fuel value
to sustain the failing strength, but after the two weeks had passed
that were predicted as the outside limit of life he still continued in
about the same condition.
A next door neighbor, a patient
of the writer, prevailed on this case to call in this experiment, and
he consented after making sure that he would not have any freak
treatment.
Arrived at his home it was then discovered that he was under the care
of another physician, and he was informed that it would be necessary to
have this physician present for consultation, but the patient said this
would be bootless as the physician would not consider counsel, saying
he knew all about the case.
No one knows all about any case, except God, and He is not always
available as consultant, if one happens to be out of touch with the
throne for some time, and learning the name of the physician the writer
said he would go ahead with diet, but on condition that the doctor was
not to be told that there was any one else sticking his finger in this
particular pie.
He had previously met this same physician in consultation and
realised that his education was finished when he was graduated forty
years previously, so knew a consultation would be worse than useless.
Now here was the condition: a physician who would not consider the
discontinuance of drugging, especially the digitalis, because it had
become to him the customary treatment and he connected dropsy and
digitalis in thought always.
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Blueberries
Pictures
Vaccinium spp.
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