Part 14

The only way to give leverage to the pad is to tighten up the belt and the leg-straps. The tighter they are, the farther they pull the pad away from the rupture opening. The leg-straps pull the pad down on the pelvic bone, where its pressure squeezes the life-giving spermatic cord.

Whenever the wearer coughs, sneezes or is under strain, the bowels leave their natural position, working out and in through the rupture opening (due to flexibility and stretching of straps), and the bowels when out are repeatedly pressed between the pelvic bone and the pad.

The Cruel Spring Truss

It is impossible to keep the spring truss in position. Due to the force of the springs around the waist, the pads dig against the pelvic bone with terrible pressure, sapping the vitality. The previous chapter shows how most ruptures grow constantly worse when trusses like these are worn.

Dotted lines in lower illustration show Spring Truss coiled up before applied. Try to hold springs apart as when on the body as shown for half a minute. Then you will know what criminal pressure the spring truss gives.

+Law Should Stop the Sale of Drug Store Trusses+

We believe the day will soon come when laws will be passed forbidding any one either to fit or sell trusses without a legal license.

Just as physicians, surgeons and dentists must all have licenses. So must oculists and opticians, in most states. Also druggists, before they can fill prescriptions.

And, unless a man has made a specialized study of rupture-- unless he has a thorough knowledge of it-- he should no more be allowed to sell or fit trusses than a schoolboy should be allowed to practice medicine.

Ruptured people seriously risk their health when they trust their cases to any one who hasn't made a thorough, specialized study of rupture. That is almost as dangerous as having a prescription filled by an inexperienced clerk, instead of by a registered pharmacist. For a wrong truss can cause immense harm.

When the time comes when trusses can be sold only under license, we'll see most of the self-styled "Hernia Specialists" driven out of business.

We'll also see an end to the selling of "stock" trusses by general Mail-Order houses where an order for a truss is handled in exactly the same way-- and often by the same man-- as an order for groceries or hardware.

And, when that time comes, mighty few drug-stores will be able to sell trusses.

Let us show why.

Take the following as an example:

A man might think he had only a bad cold.

And might go to a drug-store.

Now, a druggist doesn't pretend to know disease-- he simply knows drugs.

So about all the druggist could do would be to hand out some patent medicine-- some cure-all.

But if the man went out to a good physician--

The physician might find, after asking a few questions and thus making a diagnosis, that the patient had La Grippe, or Pneumonia, or Pleurisy (instead of merely a cold, as the patient thought).

The physician would find out what the patient needed, then write a specific prescription-- and seldom the same prescription for any two patients. For the requirements would always differ.

Or a man might have poor eyesight.

He might go to an optician.

Now, an optician doesn't know much about eyes-- he has made a special study of lenses-- he merely fits glasses-- just as a druggist merely fills prescriptions-- neither pretends to diagnose or prescribe.

And an optician is just as likely as not to fit a near-sighted man with far-sighted glasses.

But if the man with poor eyesight goes to an oculist--

The oculist finds out what the trouble is-- and what kind of glasses are needed-- then prescribes that kind of glasses.