The Royal Road to Health

PART V.. Practical Hygiene.

PRACTICAL HYGIENE.

Longevity man’s natural heritage. The care of the body--absolute cleanliness rare. The function of water in the human organism. Hot water the natural scavenger. The bath. Description of the skin, and its function. Hints on bathing. The wet sheet pack. Importance of fresh air. Interchange of gases in the lungs. Ventilation. Prof. Willard Parker on impure air. The function of the heart. The therapeutic value of sunlight.....86

PART VI.. Exercise.

EXERCISE.

Motion is life. Effect of exercise on the fluids of the body. How the tissues are nourished. Exercise for invalids. Complete system of breathing exercises for developing the lungs. Improved system of physical exercises, calling into play every muscle of the body--ensuring harmonious development. Special nerve exercise. How to stand and how to walk. All the above exercises plainly illustrated.....108

PART VII.. The Diet Question.

THE DIET QUESTION.

The replacement of waste. Appetite and hunger. The evils of gluttony. Vegetarianism versus flesh eating. Diet, a question of latitude. The cause of old age. Cretinism. Danger of earthy matters in food substances. Fruits are ideal foods. The true value of bread. Classification of the ingredients of food substances. Table of proportions. Table of digestive values. Vegetarianism discussed. A mixed diet the most reasonable. How to eat. Liquids at meals. When to eat. The no-breakfast plan. The effects of alcohol, tea and coffee. Improper habits of eating. The influence of mind upon digestion. The advantages of regularity. Nature’s bookkeeping.....124

PART VIII.. Treatment of Disease.

TREATMENT OF DISEASE.

Complete formulas of treatment (with dietary rules) for over fifty different diseases, including Consumption, Appendicitis, Locomotor Ataxia, Paralysis, Dyspepsia, Pneumonia, Diabetes Mellitus, Uterine troubles, etc. Also all the principal ailments of children.....158

PART IX.. Some Helpful Suggestions.

SOME HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS.

Disease is the result of the operation of natural law--don’t dread it. Don’t treat symptoms; treat the fundamental cause. Pain is Nature’s danger signal. Prevention is better than cure. The elements of prevention. Importance of a knowledge of physiology. The body, the vehicle of expression for the mind. The strenuous life. Tear worse than wear. The importance of reserve energy. The effect of the mind on the body. The human body as a bank. The importance of a daily balance. Cultivate cheerfulness. The habit of happiness. The folly of squandering health. Medicine and surgery compared. What children should be taught. The final word.....214

MASSAGE, SHEET-PACKS, ETC.

Instructions for massage. How to use the stomach bath by three different methods. How to improvise the Turkish Bath in your own home, without apparatus. How to use the wet-sheet pack. How to care for the “Cascade”.....209

THE ROYAL ROAD TO HEALTH.

PART I.. Drugging Proved Unscientific.

DRUGGING PROVED UNSCIENTIFIC.

It is one of the most profound mysteries of our civilization, and has been one of the most perplexing and discouraging phenomena of human existence, that, while the world at large has maintained an ever increasing “medical profession,” whose members are popularly supposed to be competent to deal with all the ills that flesh is heir to; still there has always been a long list of what are termed “incurable diseases.” But the immense strides made, in recent years, in every branch of modern science, has led the thinking public to consider such a condition of things as an outrageous libel on the God of Nature, and to question whether there can be such a thing as an incurable disease.

Health is such an inestimable blessing, that the individual who shall devise means to preserve it, or to restore it, when lost, is deserving of all the thanks and honors that a grateful community can bestow. Unfortunately, there are very few who estimate life at its true value, until they are confronted with the grim destroyer, Death. No one can fully appreciate the priceless blessings of health, until they feel that it has slipped from their grasp. The oft quoted phrase, “Health is Wealth,” is truly a concrete expression of wisdom, for without the former, the latter is well nigh an impossibility. But its interference with the activities of life is one of the least evils of sickness, for perfect health is the very salt and spice of life; without it, existence is “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”

But let none despair, for it is my purpose to show how those who enjoy the blessing of robust health may preserve it indefinitely, and how those who have lost it may regain it--with access of vigor, and once more feel that life is indeed worth living. In presenting a new system of medication, it is necessary to attack the existing systems, and hence, I am placed in a delicate position, for of all the problems ever presented for the ingenuity of man to solve, undoubtedly the most difficult is, how to present new facts so as not to offend old errors; for individuals are very prone to regard arguments levelled against their opinions as direct attacks upon their personality; and not a few of them mistake their own deeply-rooted prejudices for established certainties.

I shall endeavor to show that the practice of administering drugs to cure disease is a fallacy, and in so doing, I am bound to incur the condemnation of my brother practitioners, who prescribe drugs, and the druggists who vend them.

It may safely be asserted that the drug system of treating disease would be destroyed if it were to be critically examined; in fact, to defend it is provocative of unmistakable damage to it. If it is once subjected to the analysis of calm reason its defects become palpable to the meanest understanding.

There are three principal schools of medicine, each with a distinctive title, but they are all one in essential principles. They may differ in unimportant details, but in the main premises they are a unit. They all believe in the principle of “curing one disease by producing another.” In other words, their practice is, to induce a drug disease to cure a primary one, for this is exactly what is done when drugs are administered, in pathological conditions as we shall prove later on by testimony from authorities on medical practice.

The materia medica of the schools, to-day, includes upwards of two thousand substances--the number increasing daily--and when viewed dispassionately it presents what? A list of drugs, chemicals, dye-stuffs, all subversive of organic structures. They are all antagonistic to living matter: all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living domain--as a matter of fact, all are poisons. Now, what logical standing can a system have, that employs, as remedies for diseases, those things that produce disease in healthy persons? No advocate of the drug system has ever advanced a reason that would bear one moment’s scientific examination, why poisonous substances should be administered to the sick, and no one will ever be able to give a satisfactory explanation of the theory that underlies the practice, for none exists. When once the public fully grasps the true import of this glaring anomaly, the days of the drug system will be numbered.

Physicians of ability and long experience, who have devoted their lives to the relief of suffering humanity, both in this and other countries, have declared after close observation, that they were fully and thoroughly convinced that medicines do not cure patients, that they do not assist Nature’s process of cure, so much as they retard it, and, that they are more hurtful than remedial in all diseases. A still larger number have reached the same conclusion with regard to certain complaints, such as scarlet fever, croup, pneumonia, cholera, rheumatism, diphtheria, measles, small-pox, dysentery, and typhoid-fever, and that in every case where they have abandoned all medicine, abjured all drugs and potions, their success has been marvellously increased.

Professor B. F. Parker, of the New York Medical College, once said to a medical class: “I have recently given no medicine in the treatment of measles and scarlet fever, and I have had excellent success.”

Dr. Snow, Health Officer of Providence, R. I., reported for the information of his professional brethren, through the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal that he had treated all the cases of small-pox, which had prevailed endemically in that city, without a particle of medicine, and that all of the cases--some of which were very grave ones--recovered.

Dr. John Bell, Professor of Materia Medica in one of the Philadelphia Colleges, and also in the Medical College of Baltimore, testified in a work which he published (“Bell on Baths”), that he and others had treated many cases of scarlet fever with bathing, and without medicines of any kind, and without losing a patient.

Dr. Ames, of Montgomery, Alabama, some years since published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, his experience and observation in the treatment of pneumonia. He had been led to notice for many years, that patients who were treated with the ordinary remedies--bleeding, mercury, and antimony--presented certain complications which always aggravated the malady, and rendered the convalescence more lingering and recovery less complete. Such patients were always liable to collapses and re-lapses; to “run into typhoid”; to sink suddenly, and die very unexpectedly.

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