Part 18

The child simply was a two-legged hog.

The day’s routine was something as follows: Being accustomed all my life to staying up nights, I rarely fall asleep until daylight, and get the better part of my sleep in the forenoons. At nine a. m., I would hear, “Lily, Lily, come in out of that, or I will spank you.” In a few minutes a repetition would occur, and I would hear Lily being spanked. The child seemed to enjoy the spanking, and it simply wallowed in the dirt. At noon the mother would change the child’s frock, complaining of the many frocks soiled and how dirty she became, stuffed her little belly full of food and put the child on the sofa to sleep, which it would do until about four p. m. The child would then get up, wallow in the dirt, soil another slip, and at night the mother would stuff her again. After supper the mother would undress her, wash her and put her to bed. At about one a. m., we would hear, “Mamma, mamma, dink, mamma.” The mother, who ate as vigorously as the child, slept like a hog and was hard to arouse. So little Lily would call, “Mamma, mamma, dink, mamma,” until the mother awoke and gave her a drink of water; the child would then sleep till morning. The same repetition day in and day out. Lily’s greatest pleasure was rolling on her belly in the dirt.

In about a month the mother took a vacation of two weeks, leaving the child with the family. I immediately asked the lady of the house if she would treat the child my way for a couple of weeks and see what would be the result. She acquiesced. “First of all, place on the child’s plate a reasonable amount of food, about one-quarter of what the mother is in the habit of giving her, and the moment the child’s eyes wander around the table to see something to tempt her appetite, dismiss her.” We began, and that night Lily feebly called for a drink; after that she failed to call, inasmuch as the stomach was not full of undigested food to cause a feverish condition. In five days Lily stopped rolling in the dirt. Instead of dirtying five frocks, she soiled but one, and that not very badly. Instead of sleeping in the afternoon, she was wide-awake; the pig look left her eyes, they became bright; the fulness of her chops began to disappear. Up to this time it had been impossible for her to control her bladder. One spanking settled that. In a week Lily was an entirely different girl, and a very pretty child. At the end of the second week, when the mother returned, her first remark was, “My goodness, how beautiful and nice Lily is looking.” But in two or three days the mother went back to the old regimen—Lily must not be starved, and I suppose by this time she is a big hog.

To look at the mother, the scientists (?) would say it was inherited from her. No; it was her mother’s ways—the environment. The environment given the child by her mother was her inheritance.

Why did Lily wallow in the dirt? Because she had learned that the irritation caused by rubbing her abdomen against some object would relieve the congestion; that the cool earth relieved the feverish congested condition of her abdomen, which came from overloading her stomach.

Lily loved to be spanked. Why? Because the spanking drew the blood from the congested parts and was a relief, and she always felt better after this operation. The same congested condition was the cause of her not being able to control her bladder action. When the congestion was removed, the child could do as others. Therefore, the child being in the condition that she must be in now, it is plain to see she inherited nothing but an environment which was possible in the early stages to correct.

If the child is a degenerate, a criminal, it should not be punished. It is doing only what its environment forced upon it. Many children enjoy being punished. Why? For the same reason that Lily enjoyed it. Many children have no fear of a whipping, simply because the nerve-ends of feeling are so dulled that they fail to receive the effect usually produced. Those children should be sent to a surgeon, who generally can remove the cause. Their food should be changed. I know of a case of a very estimable lady who had two of the handsomest and sweetest little children I had ever seen. She came to me and said, “Mr. Santanelli, I have two beautiful children, but they are the two meanest young ones in the city, they are quarreling with everybody; they are vicious. I have whipped them, I have punished them in every manner, but I cannot cure them. What can I do with them? Can they be cured?”

“Yes, madam; it is very easy. You simply have two little animals. What do you feed them?”

“Oh, in the morning we have a little ham and eggs, bacon or a little steak, at noon a little cold meat of some kind, and at dinner hot meat of some kind.”

“And you wonder that your children are as they are? What can you expect. You are feeding them on flesh. Their bodies are one mass of concentrated energy. Their digestive organs are all worried, irritated and overtaxed; they are in a naturally vicious mood. Take meat from their bill of fare, particularly the pork, and you will find you have no trouble with your children.”

The mother did so, and some three months afterwards wrote to me that the change was marvelous; the children were what she hoped them to be.

Dear reader, were you ever hungry? Do you know what hunger is? As everything is a combination of attributes, what are the attributes of hunger? Hunger, as we know it, is entirely artificial. A child is born and put to the breast, and the “good” mother does her best to force the child to fill itself; in a short time the child learns never to release the breast until its little abdomen is distended, and soon associates the feeling of distention as one of the attributes necessary before the cessation of filling up. As the child progresses, it learns or associates the ideas as to eating at certain hours; being in an uncomfortable (not comfortable now) but an “abnormal” condition, to always eat until its clothes are too tight, until it has a distention about the stomach; when these conditions are present it is not hungry, at all other times it is (?).

If you think a minute, you would conceive that what we call hunger is false—acquired; few of us have ever experienced real hunger. I believe that real hunger is only when the digestive apparatus is forced by the mind to manifest an action with which we are unfamiliar, and even that action, or the necessity of the action is mostly acquired, learned of the different foods, the kinds of foods, the temperature of the food, and builds up an artificial or false memory condition.

Everything man does after birth, other than the replacing of his body, is acquired. Any action connected with the cerebro-spinal system is acquired and responsive to present environment (suggestion). It can be trained in any way, provided we know what environment to place around it.

Theoretically, a healthy man should digest one hundred per cent of all food taken into the stomach, and the quantity of such food should be at most one-tenth of the amount he now consumes. He can be taught to live on anything. His digestive apparatus, if taken in time, can be taught, within a certain limit, to be satisfied and to properly take care of himself by any simple combination.

Speaking of the acquisition of habits, sleep is nearly all false and acquired; aside from the inactivity of the “mind,” sleep is greatly false. A babe falls out of bed, man does not, provided he is sober. Some require a soft bed, some a hard one, some need a high pillow. A monkey must learn to wrap his tail around the branch of a tree, the chicken to hold on to the roost with its feet. How much of man is inherent? I think nothing other than the building of his body.

Some three years ago in Cleveland, Ohio, I placed an advertisement in the morning papers asking for the services of a young lady to travel with me and assist in hypnotizing, receiving some two hundred answers. Knowing well my nerve-ends, and being able to read the physical conditions, thereby the mental conditions, of a woman, by the “reflexes” in her face, I chose one, refusing several whom I had much rather have engaged, but whose faces told me that their troubles were such that, in the ordinary experience of mankind, they had responded to their deplorable suggestions, therefore, were not such as I desired. The face of the young lady whom I engaged plainly indicated her purity, inasmuch as I deduced from it that her purity, physically at least, had to be. I hired this young lady on the condition that the first time I desired her to go on the surgeon’s table for an operation she would do so, telling her her troubles. The girl’s eyes opened in astonishment, and she asked if I could look into people, wondering how it was possible for me to state the condition of her health, as I had, without asking her questions.

Note here, dear reader, that I am different from a doctor. When you go to the doctor, you tell him what is the matter with you, and then he prescribes. It strikes me that a real doctor could tell you what is the matter with you.

Now, my troubles began. The girl’s mother undertook to blackmail me; then the girl’s father; then her brother; and then the newspapers of Cleveland were full of stories about Santanelli hypnotizing and stealing away a young lady. The would-be professional men who were hypnotists (?) had an excellent opportunity of telling the newspaper reporters what they didn’t know about hypnosis, what was possible, and what was not possible; but I, being a good (?) showman, did not object to all this valuable advertising, and found a good many of my friends ready to assure the young lady that it was a terrible thing; that, now she was in my power, there was no telling what I would do with her. For some strange reason, probably because the young lady was possessed of what is usually called “common sense,” failed to accept their advice, and after they had locked her up in the Home of the Good Shepherd and her good minister refused to extend a helping hand, I sent word to her to promise anything demanded, which she did, and was taken “home”; on that night she jumped out of a second-story window and disappeared.

The young lady joined me and soon became an adept as a hypnotist, and to me an exceptionally interesting study. She had graduated from one of the best seminaries in Ohio, was full of alleged learning, and hated above all things “love” poetry and married men (to her women that had more than two children were beasts), in her opinion, the most disgusting thing in the world was kissing, and she failed to understand how people could tolerate pets. If you will note, she objected to, or was positive against, anything that had at the root of it connubial love (sexuality). Ask her why she disliked these things and she could give no comprehensive answer. It was only after six weeks’ study that I discovered the key-note to be a perverted love nature. Now, dear reader, remember a perversion is not always bad, it is other than the accepted “normal.”

In Kentucky, I placed this young lady on the surgeon’s table and she was operated upon, my diagnosis being pronounced perfect by the surgeon, who, when I made it known to him, laughed at me, stating that I was some kind of a fool. After he had made a physical examination, he wondered greatly at my ability to “look into” people, as he called it. The most important trouble was an undeveloped uterus, which was properly curetted. I might note here that the young lady, although not being hypnotized, was, in the first quarter of a minute after the chloroform cup was placed over her face, completely unconscious; that several times during the operation when I remarked to the surgeon who was giving the anesthetic, to “crowd it, and she would do so and so,” the moment that the cup was replaced she immediately responded. At the completion of the operation she was laid on the bed, and I remarked that in one minute she would be herself, and in that time she was. Here is a case of “suggestion,” pure and simple. I had never attempted to hypnotize this young lady, inasmuch as I was ever expecting to again be the object of an attempt at blackmail.

This girl was not anesthetized by the chloroform; the suggestion of the chloroform emphasized by her perfect confidence in me, knowing the result desired and being of an intelligence capable to respond, took on the entire condition at the suggestion of the chloroform.

One hour after the operation my wife told her that, as she was now comfortable, she—my wife—would go down and have supper, and the young lady turned to her, saying, “Mrs. Santanelli, will you kiss me before you go?” My wife dropped the glass that was in her hand and remarked, “Why, you don’t want me to kiss you?” And the young lady said, “Yes.” Later the same night, she turned to my wife and said, “Mrs. Santanelli, do you know, I believe I did not mean all I said when I laughed at you for caring so much for your little dog that died.”

Lady visitors came, and the young lady seemed much hurt if they did not kiss her on departing.

The girl made a quick recovery, traveled with me for several months, during which time her entire nature and disposition changed. Those things that she had so disliked were now reasonably liked. At one time I was a bit frightened, being fearful that perhaps I had stirred up irritations that would result in a much more detrimental manner than had been the ones removed, but I can say that the good expected was accomplished.

The sudden change was brought about through the inflamed and now counter-irritated parts that previously had produced the positive against, and now were forcing thought positive for. If her mental state and its explanation to you is comprehensible, you can readily understand how it is possible for me to state that in many cases of insanity, perversions, et cetera, I can positively name the lesion or cause, and it is always orificial—excepting injury to the brain centers.

Insanity is a physical disease, there are no mental diseases.

So-called mental diseases are the result of a physical disease, and the disease, per se, is not mental. Many of the so-called insane cases of mothers are the result of scars in the cervix. I have had examinations made where surgeon after surgeon had denied the existence of a scar, I still insisting, and in the end found a surgeon capable of discovering that which I persistently maintained; after removal, complete mental recovery has always followed.