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THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
THE NEW GOSPEL OF HEALTH.
PRACTICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL.
STORY OP AN EVOLUTION OP NATURAL LAW IN THE CURE OF DISEASE,
FOR PHYSICIANS AND LAYMEN.
HOW THE SICK GET WELL ; HOW THE WELL GET SICK. ALCOHOLICS FRESHLY CONSIDERED.
"Health is the First Wealth." — Emerson.
" The physician who wants to know man, must look upon him as a w/w/e, and not as a piece of patched up work. If he finds a part of the human body diseased, he must look for the caiese which produced the disease, and not merely the external effects." — Paracelsus.
BY
EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M. D.
INTRODUCTION BY
REV. GEORGE F. PENTECOST, D.D.
Norwich, Conn. THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
J. & J. BUMPUS, LIMITED, NO. 35O OXFORD ST., LONDON, ENGLAND.
1895.
UBRARY
COPYRIGHT 1S94
BY
THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY
registered at stationers' hall, London, England.
All Rights Reserved.
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INTEODUCTION.
The beloved apostle,wiiting to his weil-beloved Gains (3 John ii.), whom he loves in the truth, greets him thus :
^^ Beloved, I tvish above all things that thou may- est 'pros])er and he in health, even as thy said pros- perethy
Spiritual prosperity and health, which John takes for granted in his salutation to his beloved Gains, is certainly the highest blessing attainable in this earth ; but John prays that this great blessing may be matched by another, namely, the prosperity and health o£ the body. It is with the sincerest desire that the readers of this book may improve their health and in- crease their prosperity in body, soul, and spirit that I have most willingly set my hand to write a brief intro- duction to the pages of Dr. Dewey's book.
Bodily health is certainly desired by all men and women, especially by those who have suffered from any loss of health or impairment of physical strength. For the most part bodily health is desired as a principal fac- tor in our earthly enjoyment, and for the sake of earthly gain and prosperity. But the Christian ought to de- sire health of body for the higher reason that so he can serve God the more efficiently. The body is the Lord's as well as the soul and spirit. " He is the
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INTRODUCTION.
Saviour of the body also." "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" To defile the body with sin, or to voluntarily neglect the body in anywise as to cause it to suffer in health or strength, is an offence asfainst our salvation and the honor of God. To deliberately undermine the health and strength of the body by persisting in an injurious, be- cause false, way of living, is a sin of great enormity. Drunkenness or gluttony are offences against both body and soul Avhicli no self-respecting person, not to say Christian, ought for a moment to allow. Never- theless, there are no doubt hundreds and thousands of good men and women who are guilty of both excess and bad methods in their eatino; and drinkinof that border upon these two disgusting and harmful sins.
The object of this book, as I understand it, is to put before the reader a " better way of living" than that which characterizes the great majority of people. It relates to the habit of eating and di inking, and sets forth from the point of view of sound physiology the relation of food to the human system, and so to dis- ease and health.
If the author of this book is right in his premise and conclusion, he has set before the world a theory of living which ought to, and I believe will, revolution- ize the habits of a multitude of right-thinking men and women. If he is right in supposing the coursing through our veins of pure, rich blood goes not only to preserve the health of the body and prolong life, but also that it makes for righteousness, both in clearing the mind and purifying the body of those humors which make fuel for unholy desires and unrighteous
INTRODUCTION.
dispositions, then we must give attention to what he says. "Pure and rich blood (the life is in the blood) contributes to the moral, intellectual, and spiritual growth as well as to the bodily health." This propo- sition is almost self-evident and needs no aro^ument. We should hail, then, with gladness, any discovery that will enable us to purify and enrich our blood.
Of the two principal matters recommended as the practical outcome of the theory of health developed in this book, the first is that fasting, or the abstinence from food until natural hunger calls for it, is the best way to bring about recovery from disease. Take away food from a sick man's stomach and you have begun, not to starve the sick man, but the disease. We have all of us heard that fevers are more difficult to subdue in large and full-habited people than in the " lean kind." I have often had my physician tell me that if ever typhoid or pneumonia got hold of me it would "go hard Avith me," for the reason that there was so much material for the disease to feed upon. A con- flagration is great or small in proportion to the quan- tity of easily-inflammable fuel the fire has to feed upon.
The second is that digestion is best promoted and food so assimilated as to afford the largest amount of nourishment and the greatest quantity of rich blood, by giving the stomach a long rest from all work dur- ing each twenty-four hours. That is to say that we shall all be the better by giving the stomach rest from the evening till the noon of the next day. In other words. Dr. Dewey recommends that we should give up our breakfasts, and by so doing we are certain to improve our health if we are well ; prevent the incoming of
INTEODUCTIOX.
disease ; assist nature to recover from any unavoidable attack of sickness; strengthen the whole body, and thus build up the soul and the spirit which are so in- timately connected wuth the body.
The only right I have to commend the book is the right which one man lias who has tried the "better way of living " and has found that " it w^orks well."
I am not personally acquainted with Dr. Dewey, the author of this book, but I have had the pleasure of some correspondence with him, and have experienced the benefit of greatly improved health by following out the simple rule of " right living " which he lays down in his pages. I am therefore quite ready to put my hand to an unconventional introduction, if by so do- ing I shall be enabled to induce any one to read these pages carefully, and, so far forth as the things therein contained applies to him, to follow the advice given faithfully.
When the blind man was asked by the Pharisees how Jesus opened his eyes, he related the fact of the process by which the miracle was wrought without attempting to explain the mystery of power under- lying it. He answered and said, that " A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash ; and I went and washed, and I received sight."
And ao'ain when the Pharisees cross-examined him he repeated his simple testimony,
" He put clay upon mine eyes and I washed and I do see."
I am but a layman in the medical science and so do not pretend to discuss the subject professionally, but,
INTRODUCTION.
as " a grateful patient," I am desirous of testifying to the benefits I have received from following Dr. Dewey's method of " right living."
This I know, that for forty years I have been a miserable victim of sick headache, induced by " a kind of indigestion," by "a torpid liver," by this and that, as I have been told by many physicians. I have tried every remedy and expedient that has in turn been recommended to me by physicians and friends. In many of them I have found temporary relief ; but the cause of the trouble has ever remained, and the bilious sick headache, with its excruciating pain, would return and a total collapse of my power to work would supervene for from one to three or four days. I have tried dieting, that is not eating so heartily, not eating certain kinds of foods, not drinking coffee, etc. I have tried exercise of various kinds. I have tried preventive remedies, in the form of sodas of various kinds, antipyrins, antifebrins, blue pills, bromides of various kinds, etc. I have tried Turkish baths, and massage. All these things have given me more or less temporary relief, but I have always known that it was but temporary ; that the real trouble was un- touched. In addition to this bilious habit with its dread accompaniment of headaches, I have been steadily gaining in weight for twenty years past, until I had reached the great weight, for a man of my height (5 feet, 9 inches) of two hundred and fifty pounds. This has of course inconvenienced me, and brought on a certain shortness of breath upon the most moderate exertion either in walkino; or runnino- especially in running and going upstairs. I would
INTRODUCTION.
disease ; assist nature to recover from any unavoidable attack of sickness; strengthen the whole body, and thus build up the soul and the spirit which are so in- timately connected with the body.
The only right I have to commend the book is the right which one man l^as who has tried the "better way of living " and has found that "it works well."
I am not personally acquainted with Dr. Dewey, the author of this book, but I have had the pleasure of some correspondence with him, and have experienced the benefit of greatly improved health l)y following out the simple rule of " right living " Avhich he lays down in his pages. I am therefore quite ready to put my hand to an unconventional introduction, if by so do- ing I shall be enabled to induce any one to read these pages carefully, and, so far forth as the things therein contained applies to him, to follow the advice given faithfully.
When the blind man was asked by the Pharisees how Jesus opened his eyes, he related the fact of the process by which the miracle was wrought without attempting to explain the mystery of power under- lying it. He answered and said, that " A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto me. Go to the pool of Siloam and wash ; and I went and washed, and I received sight."
And again when the Pharisees cross-examined him he repeated his simple testimony,
" He put clay upon mine eyes and I washed and I do see."
I am but a layman in the medical science and so do not pretend to discuss the subject professionally, but,
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INTRODUCTION.
as " a grateful patient," I am desirous of testifying to the benefits I have received from foUowino- Dr.
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Dewey's method of " right living."
This I know, that for forty years I have been a miserable victim of sick headache, induced by " a kind of indigestion," by "a torpid liver," by this and that, as I have been told by many physicians. I have tried every remedy and expedient that has in turn been recommended to me by physicians and friends. In many of them I have found temporary relief ; but the cause of the trouble has ever remained, and the bilious sick headache, with its excruciating pain, would return and a total collapse of my power to work would supervene for from one to three or four days. I have tried dieting, that is not eating so heartily, not eating certain kinds of foods, not drinking coffee, etc. I have tried exercise of various kinds. I have tried preventive remedies, in the form of sodas of various kinds, antipyrins, antifebrins, blue pills, bromides of various kinds, etc. I have tried Turkish baths, and massasre. All these thinofs have sfiven me more or less temporary relief, but I have always known that it was but temporary ; that the real trouble was un- touched. In addition to this bilious habit with its dread accompaniment of headaches, I have been steadily gaining in weight for twenty years past, until I had reached the great weight, for a man of my height (5 feet, 9 inches) of two hundred and fifty pounds. This has of course inconvenienced me, and brought on a certain shortness of breath upon the most moderate exertion either in walking or running, especially in running and going upstairs. I would
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INTRODUCTION.
not like to give the idea to any reader that I have been in any wise a sick man, for I have never, Avith the exception of the times when for a day or two I have been laid aside with sick headaches, been in bed a week in my life of fifty years, with any kind of sickness or disease according to the ordinary accepta- tion of these words. Indeed I have been all my life a man of extraordinary health and strength, doing tremendous work in the line of my calling, preaching daily for months or years together to great crowds of jjeople in every part of the world. At the same time I have always been conscious of the fact that there was serious trouble behind this great store of health and strength, and especially has the steady accumulation of fat in my system been a source of anxiety as well as discomfort to me. The tendency to vertigo and a flushed face, and at times great lassi- tude which I could only overcome by great effort of will, has also caused me anxiety. I have been warned more than once by my doctors that I ought to be very careful not to make any great or violent exertion, as I was liable to suffer at any time from suffusion of blood upon the brain.
Well, some months ago, I chanced through a friend, whom I had known to be an invalid for years, and whom I then saw in seeming perfect health, to hear of Dr. Dewey and his method of " right living." I found that not only my friend, but every member of his family, including an invalid wife, a delicate daughter, two splendid young collegians, and a young boy of twelve had all given up eating their break- fasts ; and that they were all greatly improved in
INTRODUCTION.
health and strengthened mentally as well as physi- cally. I was introduced by my friends to several other persons in his city who had adopted the " right- living " method, and with one accord they all testified to the same great benefits experienced. I called on one or two business-men of my acquaintance who had adopted this method of living, and being men of my own type, they testified that they had, one and all, lost their tormenting sick headaches, lost a great deal of superficial fat and tissue, and were in every way greatly improved in health, in spirits, and in their capacity for work. I called ujjon an eminent physi- cian whom I had known and who had on one or two occasions prescribed for me. I asked him if he knew of Dr. Dewey's method of treatment and living. He said he did, and strongly recommended me to a adopt the anti-breakfast regime and confessed, siih rosa, that he himself had adopted it, and was greatly the better for it. I learned of friends in my own calling who had suffered for years on Monday with fearful headaches as a result of physical and nervous exhaustion incident on their Sunday's work, who, having given up their breakfasts, had recovered en- tirely from the dreadful Monday prostrations and were enabled to do more and better work than ever before both in their studies and in their jndpits.
Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into account (and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable), and the testimony which I personally received from both men and women, deli- cate and biliously strong, working-men, merchants, doctors and preachers, delicate ladies for years in-
1 0 /iV TR OB U CTION.
valided and in a state of collapse, and some who had never been ill, but who were "an hundred per cent, better " for living without breakfast, / 7'esolved to give iq) my hi^eaJifast. I pleaded at first that it might be my lunch instead, for I have all my life enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no ! it was the breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade farewell to the breakfast- room. For a day or two I suffered slight headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food ; but I soon found that they were just the dying ^;ouis of a had hah it. After a week had passed I never thought of wanting breakfast ; and though I was often present in the breakfast-rooms of friends with whom I was visiting, and every tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few months the thouo'ht of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my lunch (or breakfast if you please) at one o'clock, but am never hungry before that hour.
As for the results of this method of livino- I can only relate them as I have personally experienced them.
1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered with them oftentimes, more or less every day for a month or six weeks at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without
INTBOBUCTION. H
an acute attack that has sent me to bed or at least left me to drag* through the day with intense bodily suffer- in 2' and mental discourao*ement.
2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my sur- plus fat, my weight having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent ; and I am still losing weight and decreasing in size. The process of reduction is very gradual, but still is maintained from week to week.
3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, be- coming softer, finer and more closely knit than hereto- fore. My complexion and eyes have cleared, and all fullness of the face and the tendency to flushness in the head has disapjieared.
4. I experience no fullness and unpleasantness after eating as I so often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I eat anything my ap- petite and taste call for) as never before, eating with zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do ; but I am conscious of better digestion ; my food does not lie so long in my stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the gas-producing busi- ness.
5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more elas- tic spring in all my limbs. I can walk with quickness and for lono^er distances without consciousness of "that tired feeling " I used to experience. Indeed a brisk walk now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify, wliere- as before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was a horrible bore to me.
6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an empty
12 INTRODUCTION.
stomach without any sense of loss of strength mentally or physically, — on the other hand with freshness and vigor Avhich is delightful. In this respect I am quite sure that I am in every way advantaged.
I may add, that, after seeing the manifest improve- ment that had taken place in my whole physical con- dition, my eldest daughter determined to follow in my footsteps, and she even went so far as to suggest to her little son (seven years old), that he also give up his breakfast. At first the wee chap said he wanted his breakfast and had a cry at the thought of being deprived of one of his natural and habitual rights. But his mother explained to him that she thought it would be a benefit to his health, and gave him a few simple reasons for the advice she had given him, and the little fellow pleasantly gave in to his mother. Nothing will induce him to eat his breakfast now till one o'clock, and both he and his mother are much better in health than before. When I returned to En^-land some months ago from America, my son, a lad of twenty, asked me why I did not eat my breakfast and I ex- plained to him as best I could the theory of the " better- living" system, beginning with the proposition that " restful sleep is not a hunger-causing process," and expounded also the advantage of a long rest for the stomach. I also pointed out to him that it is not the quantity of food which one eats that produces blood (good blood) and strength but the amount of nourish- ment which we get out of the food. After an hour's talk over the matter, without any recommendation or even suggestion on my part, and much less without thought that he would adopt this better method of
IN TROD UCTION. 13
living (for he was a great devotee to his breakfast) he said of his own accord:
" Father, that seems a most sensible theory of living. I shall give up my breakfast at once."
Since then he has eaten no breakfasts, and testifies to the fact that he feels a good fifty per cent, better all the day through, and does his (ofP.ce) work much easier and with a clearer head than before. He now playfully speaks of breakfast to his friends as "that vulgar habit."
One by one, of their own record, every member of my family have given up their breakfast, and I think I can safely say that all are the better for it, though with one or two of them the sacrifice of the breakfast- god has been of so recent a date that I can only say they are the better on the principle of inductive philosophy.
My friends have, almost without an exception, noted and remarked upon the great improvement in my general health and appearance ; and almost invariably said something like this :
" How well you are looking." " Your holiday has done you a world of good." " Why, what have you been doing with yourself this summer? You are looking better than I ever saw you." ''You must have been visiting the fountain of youth this summer. Tell me where it is and I will make a pilgrimage ! "
To these and similar remarks I have simply replied : "Oh, I have discovered the 'better way o" living' and been following it; and to that alone I attribute my general improvement in health and appearance."
"What is it? Do tell me, for really I am so dull
14 INTRODUCTION.
and tired that life is sometimes a burden to me." (This remark is literally quoted.)
" Well, it is very simple. Just give up eating your breakfast."
" What, give up my breakfast ! " " Why ! I would rather give up any other meal in the day." " Besides I could never do my work without my breakfast." " I should faint before ten o'clock." " It is quite true that I eat very little breakfast, but I am sure I could never get through the morning without it." " Oh, that may do very well for a great healthy man like you, but I could never manage it."
These are specimen answers, quoted literally ; to which I have replied invariably by a brief statement of the anti-breakfast theory and then expounded ; begin- ing with "Restful sleep is not a hunger-causing process," and going on to suggest that the breakfast they eat cannot furnish streniith for them to do their mornino; work upon, as in no case does food give strength until it is converted into blood. That we all do our work to-day largely if not entirely on the blood extracted from the food of yesterday. Then I have questioned them as to their habits and state of health, and in nine cases out of ten I have found that these friends of mine, the more healthy ones as well as the delicate ones, all sufPer in some degree from some one of the many forms of indigestion. Headaches, palpitation, fullness of habit, neuralgia, accumulation of gas in the stomach, pimples on the face, or some other form of eczema arising from and due to poor blood. These conversations have always awakened interest, and even the most skeptical have again returned to the discussion
IN TR OB UCTION. \ 5
of the matter, as though the very mention of the matter had produced conviction.
In at least a score of cases my friends have adopted the "right-living" method, and all testify to their g'reat delight in it. In one or two cases where dyspepsia has been a veritable fiend, and health and strength almost gone, with depression of mind and even decay of will, the improvement has been most marked, and these friends are on the high-road to health again. I could fill pages of interesting details coming under my own observation and resulting from the adoption of the rule, on the strength of my simple expositions, which would be surprising.
I am often asked if it is possible that I preach on Sundays, that is in the morning, without any food, as though that were a feat almost incredible. To which I am able not only to say, " Yes, of course," but more than that, "I go to my pulpit fresher in body and mind, and come out of it fresher after the sermon, than I ever did in the old breakfast-eating days."
I have come to the conclusion that the blood cannot take care of the brain and the stomach at the same time, and if a man has a breakfast to dio'est and a sermon to preach during the same period of time, either the breakfast or the sermon will have to sufiPer, and most likely both of them do. So convinced am I of this fact that I am almost prepared to believe that preachers would do better work and be stronger in body if, as a rule, tJiey took no food at all on Sundays^ but only drank what they cared for of water. A twenty-four hours' fast from all food once a week would not only do no harm, but would give the
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INTRODUCTION.
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and tired that life is sometimes a burden to me." (This remark is hterally quoted.)
" Well, it is very simple. Just give up eating your breakfast."
"What, give up my breakfast! " "Why! I would rather give up any other meal in the day." "Besides I could never do my work without my breakfast." " I should faint before ten o'clock." " It is quite true that I eat very little breakfast, but I am sure I could never get through the morning without it." " Oh, that may do very well for a great healthy man like you, but I could never manage it."
These are specimen answers, quoted literally ; to which I have replied invariably by a brief statement of the anti-breakfast theory and then expounded ; begin- ing with "Restful sleep is not a hunger-causing process," and going on to suggest that the breakfast they eat cannot furnish strenoth for them to do their morninsr work upon, as in no case does food give strength until it is converted into blood. That we all do our work to-day largely if not entirely on the blood extracted from the food of yesterday. Then I have questioned them as to their habits and state of health, and in nine cases out of ten I have found that these friends of mine, the more healthy ones as well as the delicate ones, all sufPer in some degree from some one of the many forms of indigestion. Headaches, paljjitation, fullness of habit, neuralgia, accumulation of gas in the stomach, pimples on the face, or some other form of eczema arising from and due to poor blood. These conversations have always awakened interest, and even the most skeptical have again returned to the discussion
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INTBODUCTION.
15
of the matter, as though the very mention of the matter had produced conviction.
In at least a score of eases my friends have adopted the " riglit-living " method, and all testify to their great delight in it. In one or two cases where dyspepsia has been a veritable fiend, and health and strength almost gone, with depression of mind and even decay of will, the improvement has been most marked, and these friends are on the high-road to health again. I could fill pages of interesting details coming under my own observation and resulting from the adoption of the rule, on the strength of my simj)le expositions, which would be surprising.
I am often asked if it is possible that I preach on Sundays, that is in the morning, without any food, as though that were a feat almost incredible. To which I am able not only to say, " Yes, of course," but more than that, "I go to my pulpit fresher in body and mind, and come out of it fresher after the sermon, than I ever did in the old breakfast-eating days."
I have come to the conclusion that the blood cannot take care of the brain and the stomach at the same time, and if a man has a breakfast to digest and a sermon to preach during the same period of time, either the breakfast or the sermon will have to suffer, and most likely both of them do. So convinced am I of this fact that I am almost prepared to believe that preachers would do better work and be stronger in body if, as a rule, they took no food at all on SundaySy but only drank what they cared for of water. A twenty-four hours' fast from all food once a week would not only do no harm, but would give the
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IG iNrnoDUCTiox.
stomach such a rest as woukl enable all the other bodily functions to clear the body of unhealthy remainders. God has ordained a seventh-day fast from exhausting and secular labor. Of old He ordained a fast once in seven years for the land that it migiit recover and recoup itself from too constant labor of production. We know that all ship-owners and other users of machinery require their engines and boilers to have an occasional rest. Two pairs of boots will wear longer, if the use of them is alternated, than three pairs worn steadily, one pair after the other till each is worn out. Why then is it unreasonable to suppose that it is a good thing to give the stomach, that most delicate and important of all our organs, as long a rest each day as possible, and occasionally a much longer rest I
Some of my friends have charged me with having fallen into the hands of a " quack," and have thrown this at me :
"If this anti-breakfast theory for people who are not invalids, and the * starvation theory ' for sick people were true, do you suppose that it would have been left for an obscure country doctor in America to have dis- covered it? Have any of the great medical authorities, such as Sir A. B. and C. D. and Q. X., reccmmended it ? " In a word, " Have any of the rulers believed on him?" I do not pretend to argue the matter techni- cally as I am not a technically-educated physician. Therefore my testimony is that of a layman. As such I give it for what it is worth. I cannot help, however, thinkinsT asfain of the case of the blind man who was questioned by the Pharisees. They had a theory that
IXTRODUCTIOX. 17
Jesus must be a bad man and a sinner because He healed on the Sabbath day. which to them was the most sacred thing thev possessed, more sacred than God Himself. The man that was born bUnd and yet was restored to sight replied very wisely, as a layman :
" Whether He be a sinner or no I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was bHnd, now I see.
It is even so in such a case as this. Here is a man with a theory for ''better living," which he is prepared to defend on scientific principles, and to demonstrate by actual experimental evidence. Here is a theory of " better hving " which I and scores of others have tried, so simple, so full of common sense, and withal one which we have demonstrated by a simple experi- mental test. The theory may not be indorsed by the medical profession, nor widely acted upon by practi- tioners, but since "it works well" with all sorts and conditions of patients, we are bound to say again with the blind man, modifying his words a little, '* Why, here is a marvelous thing, that ye know not whence this 'better wav of livino^' " comes from, vet it oiveth better health and enables nature to cure innumerable diseases that have in other patients proved fatal, simply by letting her take her own course and not worrying her bv over-feedino; a diseased stomach and lashino- it as a cabby does his tu-ed and jaded horse.
For the benefit of my fellow-ministers, into whose hands this book I hope will fall, I pass Dr. Dewey's prescription to me, on to them.
" Always go into your study, your pulpit, and your bed with an empty stomach. Follow this rule as
18 INTRODUCTION.
nearly as you can, and I Avill guarantee the largest measure of health and strength that is 2)ossible in your ease."
In any case I most seriously and heartily recom- mend that one and all of the readers of this book give up eating breakfast, and they will know in them- selves in less than two months whether the doctrine be based on sound principles or whether it be the vagary of a quack. " The proof of the pudding is in the eating." It certainly Avill do no one any harm to leave off the breakfast for three months and it is equally almost certain that before that time has elapsed any one so doing will need no further argu- ment.
George F. PentecosTc
London, England,
November 9, 1894.
CONTENTS.
PART I.— NATURE IN DISEASE.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY. „^^„
PAGE.
Army Life — Eleven Tears of Practice, involving a Slow Approach to Nature in Disease — Doubts as to the Effleieucy of Remedies Generally Used, with resulting Abridgment of the Author's Materia Medica, . . 23
LECTURE II. IxTEODCCTOBY ( Continued), 35
LECTURE in. Nature Kevealed in a New Light by a Case of Fever — Digestion in Health and Disease Compared — An Illustration by the Case of President Gar- field, 47
LECTURE IV. Illustrative Cases — La Grippe — Fever, 63
LECTURE V. Fourth Parallel Considered — Illustrative Cases, 75
LECTURE VI.
Hereditv Considered — ililk Considered as Food for the Sick — Sir William Eoberts Quoted, 89
LECTURE VII. Unknown Factors in Disease, 100
LECTURE VIII.
Alcoholics Considered— Prof. N. S. Davis Quoted — Author's Views as to their Effects in Disease and in Shock — Story Continued with Illustra- tive Case, 112
LECTURE IX. Special Cases of Fever Considered — Diphtheria — A Case in the Author's Family, 124
LECTURE X. Closing Lecture on Nutrition in Disease — General Summary, . . . 135
PART II.— EVOLUTION OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE,
LECTURE XI. " Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth ! " — Origin of the Evolu- tion of the Breakfast Table, 143
LECTURE XII.
An Evolution of the Breakfast Table (rw/i<t>i«e(Z), 153
19
CONTENTS.
LECTURE XIII. PAGE
Evolution of the Breakfast Table (Continued) — How to Get an Appetite — When, What, and How to Eat, duly Considered, 163
LECTURE XIV.
Evolution of the Breakfast Table ( Gontinued) — Ability to Labor during a Forenoon without a Breakfast Demonstrated by Cases, , . .175
LECTURE XV.
EVOLUTION OF DISEASE.
Superfluous Flesh — Apoplexy and Softening of the Brain Considered, . 187
LECTURE XVI.
EVOLUTION OF DISEASE. Apoplexy— Its Origin and Development— Ski n Diseases— The Tobacco Habit, 199
LECTURE XVII.
Apoplexy further Considered in Connection with the Question of Reliev- ing Excess of Weight — Illustrations, 213
LECTURE XVIII.
EVOLUTION IN CURE. Headaches and Asthma Considered, 223
LECTURE XIX. Chronic AlcohoUsm, 231:
LECTURE XX. Chronic Alcoholism {Continued), 246
LECTURE XXI.
SEVERAL QUESTIONS CONSIDERED. Contagion — Quantity of Food Daily — The Bath-tub — Reduction of Weight, 261
LECTURE XXII. An Address to Railroad Men, 271
LECTURE XXIII. To School Directors, 281
LECTURE XXIV.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS CONSIDERED.
Insanity — The Germ Theory of Disease — Brain Workers — So-called Medi- cinal Waters — Fruit — Bill of Fare for the Hungry — Morbid Hunger, . 294
LECTURE XXV. Special Needs of Pastors, 305
LECTURE XXVI.
Insomnia — Bedtime Hunger. Shall the aged adopt this method ? . . 311
LECTURE XXVII. To Physicians 320
PART I.
NATURE IN DISEASE.
NATURE'S BILL OF FARE FOR THE SICK.
Fat 91 per cent.
Muscle 30 per cent.
Liver 56 per cent.
Spleen 63 per cent.
Blood 17 per cent.
J^erve Centers 0 ! ! ! ! !
LECTURE I.
INTR OB UCTOR Y.
Army Life. Eleven Years of Practice, involving a Slow Ap- proach TO Nature in Disease. Doubts as to the Effici- ency of Remedies as Generally Used, with resulting Abridgment of the Author's Materia Medica.
My Friends the Readers : —
I have invited a few of you into my little private lecture-room where I can talk to you at short range, and where for the purpose of intellectual association you are to become my listeners. I have invited you in particular because you have receptive and therefore responsive minds, ^ou are good listeners, and good listeners you know are always at the intellectual level with the speaker whether his plane be high or low, whether he talks sense or nonsense.
To talk to you as I could wish to impress you, as I wish to impress you, I must get very near you, so near that whenever a live thought is so received as to become instantly vitalized, I can see the glow of your countenances, the sparkle of your eyes, that I may realize a reflex stirring up of my own mental and moral powers, and I want to be so near you that you can see the strong conviction behind the strong expression.
I choose the morning as the best time for meeting
you, because the play of the mental faculties is easier
23
24 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
and stronger every way both for me to give out and for you to receive after the night of physical, restful regeneration.
I am going to tell you hotu to feed the sick, even the very severely sick, and even with intense aversion to food, so as to reach the highest possible condition of support to vital power. I am going to tell you how this is done without ever a mistake as to the kind, the quality, or the amount of food to be assimilated. I am going to tell you how this food is made avail- able so that it is drawn upon to support vital power in exact proportion to the need, without the slightest taxing of digestive power.
And in connection with this method of feeding the sick, I shall discuss the use of stimulants as remedies. I shall present to you who are crusaders against alcoholics two new arguments against their use. I shall try to make you who are not crusaders, believe that from the time that Noah planted the vineyard, drank wine and was drunken, down to the present, every dose of an alcoholic that ever went into a human stomach has had its degree of debilitating effect upon vital poiver, a7id by so much has become a hindrance, and not a support in time of disease. I shall try to make you believe that every dose of an alcoholic that ever went into a human stomach has had its degree of local irritant effect that has proportionately lowered its functional power.
If you admit that alcoholics are bad for the well, be- cause of their effects on the brain and stomach, and worse for the sick, because of a decline in defensive power against tliese effects, then I shall try to make you believe for the same reasons that their use is pos- itively dangerous in all cases of shock from injury, and in every crisis of disease.
INTRODUCTORY. 25
I am going to tell you of a remedy to create hunger, a genuine appetizer, that is not to be found in any materia medica, that rarely if ever appears in written prescriptions, and never in conspicuous type in author- ized works on the practice of medicine, though its name is known to all peoples. It is a remedy or a means that you will habitually make use of when you become aware of its natural power and effectiveness, because it is available to all, absolutely safe in its operation, and never fails to cause the keenest hunger where death is not inevitable. And by its habitual use eat- ing becomes elevated to a luxury of life, and not only enables you to habitually eat more food on the average than before, but it has the supreme merit of permitting Nature to make the bill of fare.
Although the remed}^ is known to you all, the pre- cise way that I make use of it very nearly amounts to an original discovery. In its general application it involves a physiological plan of living by which your health habits will become automatic, a plan that avoids the necessity of worrying thought as to what you must or must not do for the sake of health, what you must or must not eat in order to have your bodies duly nourished — a plan that will relieve in the highest de- gree perplexing anxiety about the health, depressing apprehension as to the possibility or the jDrobability of disease — in short, I shall try to make you see that your ordinary ways of living are suicidal to a degree that you are not in the least aware of.
My course of morning lectures will consist, essenti- ally, of a story of an evolution in medicine that began with me, even before I ever saw a medical text-book. Hence what I am to tell you is not what I have found out by delving through medical books in a search for borrowed facts and conceptions to be re-dressed and pre-
26 THE TR UE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
sented as " my own. I am to tell you what I have learned through original investigation, not from books but from Nature herself, while sitting at her very feet. For science advances only through original in- vestigation.
I begin my story with a slight thread of Autobio- graphy. I am a son of New England from many gen- erations, but was born in the country among the hills of Western Pennsylvania where the freshest air is always available. I grew up in intimate acquaint- ance with all kinds of manual labor, and was an ardent lover of Nature as revealed in rocks, hills, woods, storms, growing crops and in the many-hued, varied forms of the floral world. Mentally, the loftiest cheer was the habitual need of my life, and a need so press- ing that a sick-room was one of the last places I could be induced to enter, and conversation about the sick I always instinctively avoided.
My working tastes strongly inclined me to mechanics, hence, that kind of farm work that involved the best application of mechanical force was my preference. The carpenter's shop was the delight of my boyhood and youth, and no boy's eyes were ever more apprecia- tive of the finest exhibition of the miracles wrought with edged tools. I was the only boy in my entire vicin- ity who was able to make his own carts and wagons. My preference in all kinds of labor was strongly for those where there was the best adaptation of the means to the end, and where the thing to be done was worth all the brain and mechanical force expended. Science means exact adaptation of means to ends.
Before I began the study of medicine I had become aware of the fact that the majority of persons attacked by acute disease recovered, no matter how treated or by whom. In those earlier times the law permitted any one
INTR OD UCTOR Y. 27
to practice the dispensation of drugs, roots and herbs without requiring him to know anything about their medical properties, or of the diseases for which he pre- scribed ; yet the most ignorant of remedy vendors often had success in treating them. It was often within the range of my knowledge that poor families living at a distance from physicians treated their sick and at times their severely sick with only "home remedies " ; and I wondered over the mystery of means, over the mystery of cure.
Now you are all ready to ask, how with such me- chanical tastes and such instinctive aversions it was possible for me to make the practice of medicine my life-work. " There is a destiny that shapes our ends." It came about in this way. My father had no extra farms to put his several sons upon, and I was of too slight build to be a success at heavy manual labor. There was a doctor of wise mien and stately form, who was in want of a medical student, and he knew of a drug-store in want of a young man to learn the busi- ness, and a knowledge of the drug business would be an excellent preparatory acquisition to the medical depcartment of general practice. Hence, I could read medical books under his tuition, and become a doctor almost without being aware of it. An extravagant statement of the incomes of doctors, that in his lan- guage were princely compared with those of laborers and mechanics, settled the question of what was to be my business during life. Through the opened door I walked, never to go out again.
But there was another force behind all that seemed so untoward. There was a longing, and a strong ambition for a more conspicuous life than could be realized on a farm or in a workshop ; and who more generally con- spicuous, more honored, more revered than the trusted
28 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
family physician ? Does he not walk the ways of the sick-room "every inch a king," with his subjects ready to render abject obedience to his imperial nod, whether they be presidents, emperors and kings ; or whether they be the lowliest plebeians ?
I spent two years behind the drug-counter, during which I came in contact with all kinds of physicians and all kinds of "isms" in medical practice. The prescription case is a wonderful revelator of the literary and scientific attainments of the medical profession, but it fails to account for the relative degree of success among physicians in a business sense. It did not account for the fact that very often men who were without the shade of scientific conception of the action of a remedy, or of the indication of its need as revealed by symptoms, yet were capable of getting a large business and holding it, and seemingly with the aver- age success of their more learned brethren.
My life in the drug-store did not lessen the mystery of the power of dosage, in the cure of disease, nor hinder a slowly developing conviction that, as an adaptation of means to ends, the administration of drugs to the cure of disease to a very great degree is one of the most unscientific of all human avocations. But I was not hindered thereby from going on with my studies.
On leaving the prescription case I entered the office of one of the most learned of the city physicians, to be further guided in the mysterious ways of medicine. In due course of time I received my medical degree from the College of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Michigan. I began my professional career on a bright May morning in 1864, by assuming charge of a ward in the Field Hospital at Chattanooga, Tenn., as an Acting Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., with
INTBOBUCTORT. 29
its eighty cots, filled with sick and wounded, most of them fresh arrivals from the Battle of Resaca, Ga., that had just been fought, and many of them severely sick and severely wounded.
My previous clinical experience had been very slight. I had never cared for a severely sick person or for a severe wound, yet there were eighty patients thrust upon my inexperienced hands, to encounter possible danger little less than that they had met on the field of battle. They were as helpless in my hands for weal or woe as if I were the only surgeon in the universe, for only ignorance or flagrant violation of duty on my part could release them from my grasp. There were more than a thousand patients in the hospital under the care of a number of ward surgeons, with a surgeon in charge over all ; his duties being executive he knew only in a general way what was going on in the several wards. You may well wonder at the exigencies of the government when a charge so grave could be placed in hands apparently so inadequate ; and also at my temerity in accepting the charge, with such an ex- ceedingly confused state of mind over the question of dosage in the cure of disease. All this seems more im- pressive to you as you recall the commotion caused by even one severe wound or case of sickness in a quiet com- munity, and you feel a trembling sense of sympathy for both the surgeon and his possible victims. I will as- sure you that those patients were as safe, even on the first day of my care, from any careless or dangerous dosing, as were the patients of the most experienced surgeon in the hospital. My bump of caution had a facility always of developing according to the need ,- and thougli» no young man ever felt a keener and more painful sense of self-insufficiency on beginning his professional career than did I on that morning when I began the most trying and taxing day's task
30 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
in all of my human history, the sheet-anchor that held me to my work, was the one fact that most of my sick would get well anyway, and the wounded would need but little of drugs.
There was one form of treatment always needed, always available, that I could bestow with the ease and effectiveness of an expert even on the first day of my service. I could give kindly and attentive care alike to all as the need was found, and always in full measure.
Here I will point out some of the striking profes- sional advantages of such a service.
1. There were no friends at hand with very natural but very harassing anxieties to be regarded, which in civil practice are often more exhaustive to the vital powers of the physician than the care of the patient.
2. There could be no harassing apprehension as to a discharge from the service in case its success failed to meet the conception of the patient or of the friends, as in civil practice. There was no question of reputa- tion involved as to success or failure, for the service was secure and the remuneration fixed and certain ; hence the surgeon could walk his ward with the easiest possible play of his mental faculties.
3. To the respect naturally incited by professional attainments and to service conscientiously performed, was added that due to superior rank that military life calls out. This also would have its effect on the play of the mental faculties.
4. Postmortems were the rule in this hospital, and as they were more or less numerous every one of the hundred days of smoke and flame of Sherman's advance on Atlanta, the opportunity of finding out how little we knew of the variety, and extent, of diseased struct- ures in our patients while alive, was most extensive. When we had a case of pneumonia, of pleurisy, or of
INTRODUCTORY. 31
typhoid fever die on our hands, it was very generally found that it had been involved with diseased con- ditions, that had given no hint of their existence during life, and had without much doubt rendered death inevi- table from the beginning. But there was one fact re- vealed in every postmortem of tremendous significance that failed to make any impression on my mind other than to remember it. The fact that no matter how emaciated the body, even if the skeleton condition had been reached, the brain, the heart, the lungs, except themselves diseased, never revealed miy loss. You will keep this fact in mind, as it will be duly con- sidered in another lecture.
5. A striking advantage to the patient as well as to the surgeon was the possibility of the most skilful use of the surgeon's knife with corresponding results. Among the ward surgeons were several operators of great skill and large experience, and, as all the sur- geons were expected to be present when severe opera- tions were to be performed, and as no operation would be performed without a general concurrence of opinion, the patient was always likely to have the wise thing done for him.
And another and very striking advantage was the high character of the social relations existing among the medical officers, and there being no cause for profes- sional jealousies, none existed; hence we could ask advice and consult with a degree of freedom not always safe in civil practice.
"A question, doctor. During the war there was an opinion rather general among the people, that you surgeons often cut off hands, arms, feet and limbs very recklessly that might have been saved ; this does not seem to have been the case in your hospital, but what have you to say as to the impression i "
32 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
I am very glad to answer this question. There can be no doubt that occasionally there was reason for such an impression in the hasty surgery of the battle- field. It was not so likely to occur in hospitals, how- ever ; it is human to err in judgment, but it has always been my impression that more lives were sac- rificed because of attempts to save various members of the body than by members needlessly cut off. I lost several cases of belated amputation by reason of over-taxed vital power. There was one case of such intense interest that I think all lay readers will be glad to know about it.
A soldier was sent back to our hospital with a severe wound of the upper-third of one of his thighs, so severe that an amjDutation might well have been considered. When he reached us so much time had been lost that death seemed inevitable. To determine what should be done, even in such a hopeless case, his surgeon had him taken to the operating-room and we were all summoned for a consultation. On examination under anaesthetics the wound was found to be so extensive that an amputation would be necessary, but evidently so hopeless that he would be likely to die under the operation, such had been the exhaustion of vi^al jDower. The question was so close, — and really there seemed to be no question, — that a vote was actually taken as to whether he should live or die, and by a small major- ity the operation was decided upon — and the result was, a life was saved.
Keaders, listeners, the surgery of the war was ele- vated to the highest possibilities of the science and art and the results were surprisingly successful — they seem more so now — the fact considered that we all were unaware of how our efforts were opposed by myriads of pestilent enemies, the bacteria of modern times.
INTRODUCTORY. 33
After this rather elaborate unfolding of the advan- tages of such a hospital to the surgeon, — and what would elevate him professionally would, by as much, be of advantage to the patient, — I will now go back to my entrance upon my Herculean task, and tell you how I got through with it, for your curiosity was excited, not to say your interest, and no doubt your sympathy (for my patients).
To begin, I can assure you that my steps through the aisles of my ward on that first day were very deficient in the tone and firmness that confidence begets. But I had a right to believe that most of my sick would get well, and from my knowledge of the inwardness of prescription structure, and from the structure of my mind, I was simply incapable of becoming very appre- hensiA^e as to giving less drugs than nature would actually ask for, and nothing in authorized medical science was capable of adding to that apprehension. None of my patients got any dangerous doses on that day. But I found a great deal to do that I could easily and naturally do ; there was mechanism in the dressing of wounds, in the coaptation and retention of the fractured ends of bones, there was force in the kind and encouraging word. Not one of my patients was aware that he had fallen into the hands of an amateur, and I never permitted one of them to become aware of the fact thereafter ; not one was aware of the internal commotion over the much that must be done where all was so new ; for, though in doubt over the materia medica, I was in no doubt but that more or less of drugs must be given, and 2vhat, when, Jtoiu , were paralyzing questions that faced me before each of the sick.
Let me give you a "pointer" just here, or perhaps a reminder ; whenever you are in need of knowledge in any important matter, ask the first person you
34 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
meet for it, if you think he has a supply on hand, and without any regard as to who or what he is ; that is just what I did, and very often while I was learning to walk through my ward. My sources of supply in cases of urgent need were large and of high character.
It did not take me very long to get a degree of assurance that enabled me to go on with my duties with some ease, and with very little apprehension of being found professionally short by the surgeon in charge.
How did I treat my patients ? you naturally ask. Well, in a general way, as did all the other surgeons, except that the dosage was somewhat less vigorous ; and how could it otherwise be when on getting well acquainted with my fellow-surgeons and finding out their medical methods, it seemed to me that cases of disease had a much more striking resemblance than the treatments to which they ivere subjected. I was impressed by this, and because of it I could not believe that dosage was as important as was generally believed. I failed to see any science in treatments so diverse. Science is always exact and never absurd.
Having kept you with me in the army for some time, before mustering you out of the service, I will conclude by informing you that I remained on duty for a year and a half, during which my clinical advantages were far greater than I could profitably use. I never had any reason to believe that my services failed to reach a full average of success, professionally and in every other way ; but I must be frank. I must say that I failed to have a single case where I felt certain that a human life was saved by the use of the medi- cines given. The mystery of cure was as deep as ever.
LECTURE 11. INTR OB UCTOB T—{ Continued).
Mij Friends the Readers : —
In my lecture of yesterday I failed to note that my materia medica suffered several abridgments at my hands while in the army ; and that the last abridgment by the exclusion of all forms of alcoholics, so reduced its bulk, that I easily brought it back in my vest-pocket. As I told you, I treated my soldier-patients in a gen- eral way as did my fellow medical officers, in the use of stimulants, but these were always used with a good deal of doubt whether they were not more harmful to the sick than they were to the well. I dosed my patients, then, as was usual, because I knew no other way ; but with less of energy and faith.
I have called you before me this morning to listen to a mere sketch of the history of eleven years of a general practice of medicine, that were years of grop- ing, of reaching for a higher plane of service for the sick ; years of constant striving for clearer concep- tions of Nature's power in disease : and so you will listen to my story with patience and perhaps with in- terest, void as it will be of heroes and heroines, of start- ling plots and surprises, and unrelieved by even a shade of romance.
I opened my office for this general practice and for this blindly groping of my way along beside Nature, very near her but always afar, in that my approach
36 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
was at an angle very acute and therefore long, in the autumn of 1866, at Meadville, Pa., a city of ten thou- sand inhabitants.
There was no "felt want" to be supplied by this opening of a new office ; for the supply of able, expe- rienced and well-read physicians, was in excess of the demand. But this could not be taken into account, for there must be the "bread of life" from the first, even though it had to be gained in the form of crumbs.
My experience in the army had given me familiarity with wounds and diseases, of the severest character ; with death in its numerous forms, such as enabled me always to maintain my intellectual poise at a fair balance in the homes of the sick, no matter how severe the case. A cool head in time of trial when others are unnerved is of vital importance, wherever anything vitally important is to be done. This was one part of my stock in trade wherewith to support my sign, "Physician and Surgeon." And I had become very familiar with the symptoms and history of the com- mon forms of disease as they occur in men at their robust periods of life, and hence had become able to interpret symptoms and forecast probabilities with a little of that assurance of which much is required by the friends of the patient when there is an agony of appre- hension. But it was confined to this class of cases ; hence I was compelled to enter the homes of the sick with this one-sided experience, and a very small side at that. I was very far from being a physician and surgeon in the sense of the gilt letters of the sign.
With this limited experience I was to go into the homes of the sick as an expert, to treat disease occurring at any age of life, patients of either sex, of every shade of constitutional strength and acquired
INTRODUCTORY. 37
weaknesses, and to treat any kind of a disease common to an inland city.
"Presumption," do you think? That word ex- presses it. The general practice of medicine calls out and keeps in habitual exercise more of the resources of reason, of judgment, of philosophy than any other human avocation ; and there is no other avocation so taxing to vital power where the sensibilities are delicate, because you are expected to stay the icy hand of death even after it has begun to close upon its victim with its chilly grasp. You are not insensible, when you are the very center of the emotional tension that surrounds the bed of the severely sick, — you can- not be insensible to the emotional storm that surrounds the bed of death. And you are not insensible to your need of philosophy, when superstitious faith in your powers holds you responsible where death is inevi- table.
This contact with emotional tension is a disabling experience, that confronts every physician at the bed- side of acute disease, and at times it is paralyzing in its force.
Since I began the preparation of this lecture I have treated, successfully, (in partnership with Nature), a severe case of fever where the patient was a delicate young lady who had a father and mother, four sisters and three brothers whom I was to meet day after day with every glance of the eye, every ex- pression of the countenance fairly vocal with the warn- ing, ' ' Have a care that your dosing is kept up fully to the need " — and had my case gone down to death, would it not have been an experience that would have cost me something of my own life ?
The care of a ward full of sick and wounded soldiers is child's play compared with the care of even one very
38 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
sick patient, surrounded by the family, friends, and neighbors, who are morbidly or sympathetically inter- ested. This taxing of vital power was inevitable.
Another difficulty that I encountered at the very threshold of practice was the unreasonable, unreason- ing, superstitious faith of the people in the power of drugs to cure disease, and it was not in the least confined to classes. Your college professor, your states- man, your lawyer who goes before juries to subject evidence to ultimate analysis, will take your dose with unquestioned faith when his life is in peril. Your railroad president, after surrounding himself with the highest possibilities of home talent, will send his pri- vate car to another city for a medical expert whose doses may, possibly, reach the point of disease with a better aim. This faith in the j^ower of drugs is univer- sal, and perhaps as strong to-day as ever, but is less associated with the absurdities of that superstition which characterized the earlier ages of medicine. Modern superstition is of a more refined character with the people and their jDhysicians.
There was never a time in all history when chem- istry and pharmacy were so busy in the manufacture of new remedies for disease as they are to-day. Our medical journals are constantly adding to their pages to make room for new and striking names, and already our materia medica has become an encyclopedia. Why should we ever endure sickness when cures swift, un- erring, are to be found on the pages of every news- paper and magazine in all the land ?
With a painful sense of the difficulties to be encoun- tered with every case of acute sickness, and of my defi- ciencies from lack of experience, I began to receive calls to exhibit my skill in cases of acute disease. I entered upon those services with the highest possible
INTRODUCTORY. 39
professional pride in my success ; with the most earnest desire to make those services effectual, by that closeness of attention that was needed to make them satisfactory ; and by all the cheer and hopefulness of manner that needs to shine in every sick-room, where all tends to darken life with gloom and apprehension : and my sensibilities were such that I would naturally seek to aid Nature by infusing all the cheer possible that is always a necessity in and about a sick-bed.
I shall now try to make you understand, as nearly as may be, the reason of my confusion over the ques- tion of dosage. I have already told you that most cases of disease recover regardless of treatment. If one of you has a watch to repair, go to what jeweler you will there will be a striking similarity of the tools used ; that is the science of mechanics. If one of you suffers from headache or an attack of indigestion, and you go to half-a-dozen physicians, and get as many prescrip- tions, then compare them, the chances will be that none of the parts of one will be found in any of the others ; that is the science of therapeutics. Very many diseases, such as pneumonia, pleurisy, measles, etc., are very much alike in all the features of their general history, and always very much more alike than the treatments to which they are subjected. I received a hint of this, yoa remember, while in the army, and years of ex- perience have only made it more evident.
Among my professional brethren whom I was to know intimately for years were men of learning, of high character, ability and experience ; and alike only in faith in remedies. There were those of such exalted faith and executive force that every patient was com- pelled to exhaust the resources of a small drug-store, while the conflict between the disease and the remedies was on. And there was the other extreme. One
40 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
of them informed me that he was treating a common disease with the 30th dihition of sulphur, and with good success. I scanned his expression closely to see if he were trying to measure my power of belief without evidence — but it was serenely sincere. Now his dose, of the same remedy, for the same disease, if it were even enlarged to the 10th potency, would be to mine, in size, as the microbe to the solid earth including all the inhabitants thereof ! Now where, between these ex- tremes, is the science of cure to be found ? Or is it to be found all along the line ? What think you ?
Again, is not the very multiplicity of new remedies an impressive indication that the older ones have not proven satisfactory ? And yet each in its time was supposed to be a veritable necessity. Drugs are sub- jected to chemical cheinges that are exact in every process after they reach the stomach ; is it not possible that at times it is so dry, as in a case of fever attended with intense thirst, that it is unable to become changed into a chemical laboratory ? Is it not unable, in fact, to perform chemical operations ? In this light does dosage seem to have any right to be classed with the exact sciences ?
Now, in all the small cities and towns, a physician hears more or less about most of the cases of severe sickness, particularly of those ending fatally, and very particularly where there are indications of an epidemic of a disease ; hence some estimate can be formed of the comparative success of physicians. After close study of this matter for many years it is my strong conviction that the death-rate in a practice has a range in harmony with the number of patients treated, and is very little dependent on the science or the art of therapeutics, crude or refined.
My friend of the 30th potency had a large general
INTRODUCTORY. 41
practice, and, for aught the public could see, he was as successful as my friend of shot, shell and canister, and both as successful as we who were between these extremes.
You will now better understand that either the science of cure has not been discovered, or that drug- ging the sick is a most haphazard adaptation of a means to an end. And you will also understand that when means so diverse are attended with results so nearly uniform you are often likely to exalt the ph3^sician far above his deserts, and to crucify him where death was inevitable.
Can you not easily see, then, that I was very likely, not to say certain, to have average success from my first case, no matter what my line of treatment ?
Having raised serious doubts in your minds as to the science of dosage, you have some curiosity as to how I met the question in a practical way at the homes of the sick, where something has to be given every one, two or three hours, or a life is not being saved. As my lectures are not to tell you how, or when or with what to dose, but how to avoid, I may say little more than that I had from the beginning a strong point in my favor, and for the patient as well, in the matter of palatability. I had not been unimpressed by the fact that homeopathy had secured a very considerable foot- hold among the people, and it seemed to me to be largely due to its consideration for the sense of taste, reinforced by a success that seemed to me a full average beyond question. Certainly it would be so, if most cases of sickness recover regardless of treatment. My own sense of taste being very delicately adjusted ; with a painful aversion to all things bitter, for sympathetic reasons as well as for weakness of faith, I was moved to make my doses of a character that would neither
42 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
offend the sense of taste, nor structurally impair the membrane of the stomach, and therefore save my patients from wandering after other " gods."
The sense of taste is a very powerful factor in the matter of the nutrition of the body, as I shall show you in a future lecture. It was not made to be violated by strong dosage. Many of you have your ailments for which you have heavily dosed, and each dose taken never failed to cause this delicate sense to reveal its disapprobation, by a serio-comical expression of coun- tenance ; serious because painfully offended ; comical, as if palliation for an absurd proceeding were being attempted. I will not have you believe, however, that some dosing is not necessary. We all are com- pelled to dose at times. We all use the needle in a case of agony, even my friends the homeopaths, and in its dose and its results may be found a close resemblance to exact science. You will understand, then, that it was a very easy matter to do all the dosing the credulity of the patient and the friends required, without encumbering nature by violating the sense of taste or the structural condition of the stomach.
With such conceptions, I began to visit the homes of the sick, and it was not so very long before this service became a specialty, almost in the sense that it would have been had I limited my services to one or more forms of disease, and without any design that it should be so. It came about in this way. I, myself, was some- what the victim of that monster with many heads once called "dyspepsia," and had been for years ; and even before I began my studies, homeopathy and allopathy each had its "fair and square" trial to deal with symptoms and not causes, but with total failure. Later, as a student and as a practitioner, I was ever on a search through libraries, for living vital knowledge that would relieve me of my enemy. I never found a
IN TE OB UCrO RY. 43
remedy that was not to be pitted against a symptom, never a suggestion that was helpful by an aim at the cause, and why should I have so found ? My enemy was in ambush, and I could not know his size and proportions, nor his power of resistance, nor even when or where to aim, and hence could not know whether to load with bird or grape-shot ; whether with solid shot or shell. And then it did not seem wise in a matter of so much doubt to subject my sense of taste to a series of revolting and debilitating experiences ; nor my stomach to the structural effects, more or less damaging, of doses that would excite the mouth into convulsive efforts to relieve itself.
The science of dosage had nothing for me then, nor has it now, nor has it for any who are suffering from the multiform ailings, due to deficient nutrition, through failure in the digestive process. If this is not true, why so many sanitariums ; why this endless procession from one physician to another ; why one side of every drug-store covered with patented cures ; why their names painted in clearest lettering on every fence-board and on great rocks along the highway, on every ice- berg of the polar sea ? ( If only the heavens could be painted what lettering there would be ! )
No, I soon found I w^as not able to cure aching heads, nor neuralgia, nor diseased livers, nor palpitat- ing hearts ; that I had no appetizers whereby people could eat with relish ; no pepsins that could pardon the sin of untimely feeding. For me, then, to attempt to cure with such conceptions, was to deliberately be- guile revenues from failures believed to be inevitable ; to decline these attempts was better morals, perhaps, than business sense, and so I let chronic cases go to other offices to encounter failure.
Soon after I began my practice I formed the ac-
44 THE TR UE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
quaiiitance of a young physician who had built up the largest practice of the city ; that acquaintance devel- oped into a lifelong friendship. He had just begun to lay the foundation of a surgical career that was to make his name known the state over. Very soon he began to call on me for assistance in his operations, and to make calls in an overflow, and for many years I cared for his business during his vacations and absences, and until a trained assistant became neces- sary.
Now his was a larger faith than mine, and of a much more forceful energy in medical therapeutics, and it was fully in accord with the methods authorized by medical scienae, and it was kept in such accord as the years went on ; hence I had abundant chances to com- pare results of our respective methods. The great majority of his cases recovered, as did mine, and I never saw any such striking results from his stronger dosage, as to induce me to add to the strength of mine.
Confining myself almost exclusively to acute sick- ness, I used my little materia medica with all the care and discrimination I could master, for there was occasional need of the helping hand when Nature was prostrate, borne down from (too often) avoidable cause. And I went on year after year, doing my utmost to achieve special success. In a general way I dosed as I did in the army, but always with all the deference possible to the sense of taste, and of the integrity of the stomach, and I never permitted my homeopathic friends to drive me out of nurseries by their lighter medications.
As I gained experience in the history of disease, so I became more helpful to patients and friends ; and I was not so very long in finding out that the greater part of my care in every case was to minister to the
IN TROD UCTOR Y. 45
need of the friends, and that this need can veiy often b^ duly met even in the most intelligent, hy practi- tioners (not doctors), morally corrupt, mentally coarse, socially uncouth and professionally stupid. All that is required is confidence, and no matter whether founded on a rock or on the sands. In a matter of business importance, confidence must have a clearly defined foundation uj^on which to rest — but rarely in a case of sickness. Let me illustrate. A few weeks ago a patient fell into my hands, in the last stages of dropsy from disease of the heart. No encouragement was given; none could be given. Two men called, and with infinitely more zeal than sense, insisted that the services of an expert be obtained ; and the result, a self-con- stituted vendor of drugs who was also a farmer and an anti-prohibitionist. He could cure that disease, for he had done the like often, and even in worse cases, and hope revived in the invalid chair and through all the house. But death none the less occurred, and before a second inspiring visit could be made. Confi- dence, confidence, unreasonable, absurd ! Such experi- ences are common in every community, and are very far from being confined to the homes of the unintelligent.
As the years went on I believe my services became more and more valuable to all the needs, even to the minutest, which were revealed in and about the sick-bed except in the possible shortage and weakness in the dosage. Did I become a physician of marked success ? Scarcely. At times I thought I was certain to become such, and then would come a paralyzing experience, AVhy, I was called upon to take charge of four old physical wrecks at about the same time in close prox- imity in a suburb ; in a few days there were four dead bodies awaiting burial at the same time. To the vicinity there did not appear in all that a "special- ism in success." Had that same experience occurred
46 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
a few years later it would have excited notice, and derogatory comment, in all the city outside of my own attached families.
Other experiences occurred less marked, with suffi- cient frequency to keep me in a measure from the evil of over-confidence. But these are met by all phy- sicians as well. What did I gain by eleven years' attendance upon the acutely sick, whereof no case was ever neglected, not even a visit missed because of disability myself ?
1. A great deal of experience, including that derived from nine years of service as physician to the county Infirmary, and something of that intellectual growth that must come where one mind comes into habitual contact with other minds of every shade of culture and power excited to vigorous action through fear or apprehension.
2. Only the reputation of being a painstaking, atten- tive physician, and a business created amply for the needs of professional culture, large enough to exceed the needs of daily living, but less, perhaps very much less, than would have been but for a presumed defect in dosage. 1. It was too strong, apparently, to attract business from homeoi^athic considerations. S. It was too weak in a general way, J3resumably, to attract business from '^ allopathic " considerations.
And what the result upon myself ? A feeling that I had reached my highest possibilities in the science and art of treatment of the sick, and that in a business and a professional sense I had fallen far short of my ideal.
The mystery of cure luas as deep as ever.
LECTURE III.
Nature Revealed in a New Light by a Case of Fever — Diges- tion IN Health and Diseases Compared — An Illustration BY the Case of President Garfield.
My Friends the Readers : —
I closed my lecture of yesterday with the suggestion that, both in a business and a professional sense, I had reached the end of eleven years of the closest attention to all the requirements of my practice in a rather dis- appointed state of mind.
One of the most discouraging things encountered during these years was the fact that a very large business could be done without any vital knowledge of the business to be performed, a fact, as I told you, I got a hint of behind the prescription case. This is really an anomaly in business affairs. That an intelligent, thinking, reflecting human being will put his own life or the life of his wife or child into the hands of those who, in every scientific sense, are as well fitted to per- form the most complicated scientific work of any kind of business without previous knowledge or experience, as they are to outrage the human stomachs of the sick, is a marvel in human affairs.
As I have intimated before, this arises from the superstitious faith of the people in the power of dosage over disease, and this faith of course arises from ignor- ance.
Cheer of mind, as I shall tell you about later on, is
such a prime necessity to health : and disease, with its
47
48 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
associated possibilities, is so gloomy a subject to even think about ; that the mind recoils from thought upon it ; hence results the prevailing ignorance even in the most cultured classes, and hence the ease with which all classes alike become the prey of the spoiler in times of emotional tension when reason has become impaired, and strong words, and strong assurances are received as cold water by a thirsty soul, even with child-like faith, no matter how founded upon ignorance. This must ever be so until the people become aware that disease is largely a condition arising from avoidable causes, and that the cure is largely a matter of Nature's own handiwork.
I also told you that I had reached a condition of mind when there seemed no more progress for me — a condition that was not founded on satisfied ambition. I was in a fit condition for the incipient stage of a wilting ; a dry rot of all the faculties necessary to my taxing duties. But this was not to be. On a hot day in July, 1S77, I entered a home to assume charge of a case of fever that was to rouse every possible faculty called out by care of the sick as by an electric charge. I was now to have a revelation of Nature's power in disease, and that was to be all the more Impressive because of the untoward conditions of environment.
The disease was typhoid fever ; the patient a young married woman of rather full habit, that is, she was rather well rounded from undue proportion of fatty material, the muscle portion being light and weak. Her health had always been unstable, mental and moral faculties weak, and ambition scarcely large enough to furnish substantial reasons for being alive. The home consisted of one room and a small adjoining kitchen ; this room was unprotected by a shade-tree to shut out the hot rays from a southern exposure, with no fly- screens, and the patient had only hap-liazard nursing.
NATUBE EEVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 40
Now I am not going to give you any history of symptoms as I would need to do if you were an audi- ence of physicians. I will tell you that there was the foulest tongue I had ever seen in a sick-room, with an intense aversion to food. Now, to support the strength and vital power, it would have been my duty to en- force feeding in spite of the fact that the stomach was in as abnormal a condition as the tongue, and as functionally disabled. But Nature would have none of it. Every dose, every drink of water was instantly rejected for a period of three weeks, and it was not until the twenty-fifth day that suggestions of beef -tea failed to excite aversion. What was the condi- tion of my patient ? Was there a hopeless collapse of all the vital powers because they had not been ade- quately supported by the digestion of food by that very sick stomach ?
I was a very surprised doctor, for, as the tolerant con- dition of the stomach was approached ; even without food I found the tongue cleaning, and a manifest gain in both mental and physical strength, that became even marked at the time when food and doses could be borne ; and I was moved to let Nature continue to have her own way. And, from thence on, I only watched, without enforced feeding, and with only unmedicated doses, until the thirt}^- fourth day, when she politely bowed me out.
This was an object lesson :
1. Vital power supported without food.
2. Mental and physical strength increasing with the decline of symptoms.
3. A cure without the aid of remedies, and a cure that was eminently complete in every way.
4. No unusual wasting of the body.
4
50 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
I was set to thinking, to reflecting as never before. I tried to recall all I could of every seriously sick case I ever had with reference to these four points.
I failed to tell you how I had fed my sick during these eleven years because I wished to reserve it until I could make it more impressive. I always permitted my sick to feed or be fed, when there was not special aversion, and with milk as the preference. But I never enforced this even in a single case.
It soon began to occur to me that the sum total of food taken by every severely sick case was infinitely small in proportion to the indicated need, and always too small to account, reasonably, for the support of vital power. And it began to occur to me that there was always a waste of the body in continuous opera- tion, during the entire period of aversion or indiffer- ence to food. I had noticed this with eyesight but not with insight.
I had had numerous cases where for so long a time so little food had been borne that I might have wondered, but did not, how vital power was being sup- ported. Such cases are constantly occurring in the practice of every physician. I began, too, to become aware that in every case, when the appetite point was reached, there had been a decided gain in mental strength that was not to be accounted for by the sup- port of digested and assimilated food.
Is there ever a happier expression on all the earth than is revealed by the invalid who has reached the point of keen relish for his food, before the lines of ex- pression have become drawn by the tension of his affairs ? Is there not mental and physical energy re- vealed in every line ?
Readers, listeners, you who have become in some
NATURE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 51
doubt as to the science of dosage, was there not enough of suggestiveness in this case to move me to try to find out whether Nature might not do as well in my very next case ? I was so moved, and I began a series of tests that were to be conducted with the scientific spirit and with scientific interest and ac- curacy.
Before giving you a thread of the history of my course of investigation, the following points naturally raised by the case of fever may be properly discussed, that you may better understand the logic by which conclusions are to be drawn, and therefore your estimate of Nature's power in disease may be more easily enlightened and deepened :
1. Can the severely sick digest food ?
If so, it is criminally stupid not to give it ; if not, it may be criminally stupid to give it ; if not needed, the disposal of it, without undergoing the process of diges- tion, is not only a needless tax on vital power but a most serious one, and by as much a hindrance to Nature that may often turn the balance in a fatal direction.
There are as many methods in medicine as there are doctors in medicine ; each doctor is largely a law to himself as to the size and frequency of his doses, and, no matter how closely diseases may resemble each other, there is rarely any uniformity in either general or special treatments, as I have already told. But no matter how doctors may differ in methods and dosage, there is a very general concurrence of opinion that the aversion to food that characterizes all cases of acute disease, which is fully in proportion to the severity of symptoms, is one of Nature's blunders that requires the intervention of art, and hence enforced feeding re- gardless of aversion, or of conditions affecting digestive
52 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
power adversely, is nearly universal. And it may be stated as a general fact that the desire to support vital power by feeding, is in proportion to the apparent need, by reason of the severity of the symptoms.
In the consideration of this vast question as to whether the sick can digest food, some suggestive ideas may be derived by a study of the conditions of normal digestion as they exist in their highest type, in contrast to the conditions as they exist in disease.
We find the conditions in their highest type in child- hood and youth. And the first and most striking condition to be noticed is the continuous cheerfulness of mind.
The child, the youth mind seems to be in a state of continuous ecstasy which is rarely depressed unless by a task or disease. This cheer is to digestive power, what the draft is to the flame, and so continuous are the demands made upon the blood for sustaining and building material that there cannot be the least de- pression of mental cheer without cutting down the supply, by lessening, the very motive power of the digestive function, and causing, not seeming, but actual fatigue or loss of mental and physical power.
We may see an exhibition of this needed cheer in an exaggerated degree in the yard of the ward school during recess, where pent-up Nature finds relief in the tumultuous action of muscle and mind.
There is such running and jumping, such screaming and laughter, such acuteness and intensity of mental action as to suggest that an unseen hand is at work to restore a lost balance.
Cheer of mind is a primal law of life ; it determines what every human employment shall be where there
NATUBE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 53
is power of selection ; it is the very motive power of all human effort, whether of virtue or vice.
There is no period of life when the digestive power needs the support of mental cheer as when the foun- dations are being built up ; no period when Nature guards this source of power with such unceasing vigi- lance.
Then there are those general muscular activities in the fresh air that cause the keenest of appetites for the most nourishing of foods, and also that sense of gen- eral fatigue that makes the bed only less a luxury than the playground, and sleep so perfect as to scarcely interlude the days.
In disease or injury all these conditions are reversed, and, for an illustration, the case of President Garfield may be cited. He liad reached the highest pinnacle of his human ambition, and when he was on his way to a joyous reunion with his fellow alumni at the home of the alma mater, he might well have been considered the happiest of all men ; but he was overtaken by the assassin's bullet and laid low.
His extensive knowledge of wounds from his army- experience required no hint from surgical authority that he was under sentence of death, and from thence on there was no cheer in life for him. He never saw the countenances of his great surgeons illumined with a single ray of confidence ; the severe exactness with which every detail of his care and treatment was carried out was continuously ominous of the gravity of his condition. The frequent taking of pulse and temperature to satisfy the greedy wants of the bulletin- board was a long series of blasted hopes. That there was a painful perseverance and rigidity in all that was done for him ; that there was only continuous doing with drawn countenances and hushed manners was in-
54 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
evitable, for he was the center of the intense interest and sympathy of the world.
With even the sHghtest shade of gloom having its degree of depression upon the digestive function, was there not enough in the president's mental condi- tion to nearly, if not quite, paralyze this function ?
The bullet tore its way through several inches of his body, leaving behind a track of lacerated nerves. The agony from his wound soon began to be reinforced by the agony of a slowly developing abscess, by which tender nerves were kept in a continually increasing tension. From thence he was never free from pain except by the mercy of drugs.
With the slightest shade of discomfort having its degree of depressing effect upon digestive function, was there not enough of agony in the president's case to nearly, if not quite, paralyze this function ?
To maintain normal digestive power there must be more or less muscular activity in the fresh air, rein- forced by perfect sleep.
The president's body had to be kept motionless by reason of his wound. There was no breath of life in the stifling air of the White House, not one moment of natural and therefore invigorating sleep. Was there not enough depression in all this to nearly, if not quite, paralyze digestive function ?
There was continuously a high pulse and temper- ature ; the mouth, the stomach, the entire digestive tract was therefore abnormally dry ; the fountains of the saliva and gastric juices were nearly if not quite dry. Was there not enough in this to nearly, if not quite, paralyze digestive function ?
It is Nature's plan that digestion shall he performed after the general muscidar activities have created a
NATURE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 55
demand for it, and with the body in the erect posture ; this posture favors the somewhat circular sweep of the food around the walls of the stomach, known as peri- staltic motion. In the lying posture this process in me- chanics is imperfect ; the dependent portions of the stomach being somewhat unduly affected by the weight of the food from the force of gravity, and then, in the lying posture, particularly during sleep, there is so little waste of tissue from cell destruction, that there is very little if any need of digestive energy. There was excessive general prostration of muscle energy, which was shared by the muscle fibers of the stomach, hence enfeebled if not paralyzed peristaltic power.
Was there not enough in this and the continuously prostrate position to seriously affect digestive func- tion ?
In addition to all these depressing forces that were inevitable there was another of great power that was inevitable because strongly indicated, and that was the medicine used to relieve pain and enforce sleep (stupor).
To make you see clearly how such medicines para- lyze digestive power I will illustrate by a case drawn from real life, and that will not be tinged by a shade of fiction.
I was called to a home where I found a patient that had been confined to a bed for nearly a month as the result of an attack of cholera morbus. The treatment that had been instituted was, naturally and properly, the hypodermic needle to relieve the agony. Now this so-named attack might possibly have been called an insurrection, a convulsive commotion, or a battle in the stomach and bowels, the "tug of war " being over a food mass that had to be disposed of without diges- tion ; or it might have been called an operation in
56 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
vital chemistry, whereof the new combinations were natural, but none the less inconvenient to the patient who had to furnish the laboratory ; but the dose was indicated.
To keep up the strength, and therefore to supj^ort vital power, a tumbler of rich Jersey milk was taken within three hours after the dose was given. Now it is just barely possible that the so-named disease was only a chemical commotion, badly located and wholly due to the taking of food not wanted, and that there- fore should not have been taken.
Opium and its derivative, morphine, say the books, in addition to power to relieve pain, also " dries the secretions.'''' Well, the saliva and the gastric juice certainly are very important in cases of digestion. How then is milk to be digested, if the foundations of these secretions have become dry ?
' We are not enjoined by these same books, nor by any other authorities, for this reason, not to give food while the secretory glands are in the drying grasp of this powerfully paralyzing drug ; at least such a hint has escaped my notice, if to be found, as it has every one of the many physicians to whom I have suggested the matter. The giving of the milk, then, in connection with the dose was accepted medical science. And it had the support of so learned and able authority as Prof. H. C. Wood, who tells us in his Practice of Medicine that in such cases as pneumonia, scarlet fever, etc., we must not withhold food beyond the sec- ond day, that we must feed even if there is decided aversion to food ; and in cases where the stomach has become so disabled that none can be borne, we must resort to nutrient enemas, and that if the temporized stomach proves restive then we are to throttle with a quieting dose of laudanum mingled with the food !
NATURE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 57
But how efficient could be the dry excretory mem- brane, and the paralyzed muscle tissue beneath it as an aid, a vehicle for the transportation of food so digested as to be ready to fairly drop into the form of living tissue ? The professor has great faith in this means of supporting vital power where the stomach is dis- abled, and he cites a German authority who, in a case of total disability of the stomach, kept his patient alive a whole month — remember the time, readers — a luhole month.
It is barely possible that laudanum and food, no matter how predigested, might not form a good com- bination for digestive and assimilative purposes when taken into the stomach, nor would the sense of relish be likely to be restored when the aversion is due to disease.
The tumbler of milk duly taken, and others later on, either because there was a recurrence of the attack of disease, or of another conflict over cheese curds, the needle was again summoned. Now, for nearly a month there were taken from three to five tumblers of this rich milk during the day and the night as well, and more than as many doses of the "quietus," and all the while a loss of strength and a wasting of the body went on. There was just a bare possibility that there was no digestion going on the while, for the foregoing reasons.
Now, my treatment involved a radical revolution, a challenge, in fact, to be flung at the very teeth of authorized medical science.
" Madam, you are to take not one drop more of milk, not another dose of morphine. You will have a rest- less night, but when the present invoice of cheese curds are disposed of 3'ou will have no more pain. You are going to let that stomach rest until it calls as loudly
58 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
for food as it did for relief. You will not starve ; on the contrary, you will so gain in strength right along that it will hecome very marked by the time you get hungry. And mark you, when real hunger comes, when you let Nature rest until she can so speak that you can hear every word she says, then give her the exact hill of fare she calls for, and no mistake will be made. "
Eesult. Second day. — A restless night, but on the whole stronger and more comfortable. The vital powers had now become freed from the grasjD of the last dose, and there was repose all along the line of re- cent conflict. No hunger. Third day. — A better night with increased mental and physical strength. There was an attack of hunger on at 10:30 A. m., and noth- ing but a boiled potato was called for, and it was taken with such unction of relish that a second meal of the same was required later in the day. Fourth day. — Still improved and bill of fare enlarged. Fifth day. — Light duty begun and my services no longer needed. My dosage had nothing to do with the cure in this case.
Now, readers, is it not barely possible that this was not one of those cases of a " fool for luck " ? Why, it happened some three years ago, and on a visit to get the points of the case freshened, she remarked, "I never in all my life ate anything that so refreshed me as did those first two meals of boiled potatoes. " Nature generally knows what food she wants when she has a voice in the matter.
The treatment of my predecessor was very much more in accord with accepted medical science than was mine. Believing as he did that vital power must be supported by the taking into the stomach of a certain amount of food daily, he gave the only kind that could
NATURE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT. 59
be taken without such special aversion as to nearly be prohibitory.
It has been my impression that we of the army some- times dangerously erred in this way. I well remember a case where a great operation was successfully and skillfully performed, and the resulting wound com- pletely healed, but the relieving dosage went on as did the three daily meals. There was no disease of the diges- tive tract, and it was specially indifferent to the ordi- nary irritations of decomposing food, and under the powerful grasp of the drug, there was kept uj) contin- uously an apathetic indifference to all things earthly. The position on the back was very nearly motionless, and nothing seemed to go on but seeing and breath- ing, and yet the three daily meals were kept up against these intensely adverse conditions of digestion, the body wasting away with every heart -beat ; but when the skeleton condition was reached, weeks after, death came, and perhaps it is barely possible there was a martyr to accepted medical science.
A few years ago, while on a visit to a sister in a city in the West, I had need to deliver a lecture on the dietetics of infancy by reason of the presence of a badly nourished infant from badly adjusted feedings. This led to a call to see an infant supposed to be near its death from some wasting disease. The doctors had ' ' given it up, " and well they might, for the skeleton con- dition had about arrived, and hope was gone. What was the trouble ? A great many irregular feedings per day and a great many doses to stifle Nature's pro- tests. It was again milk and opiates, with the stomach and bowels the line of battle.
The theory was explained to the receptive mind of the mother of the first-born, a higher method of living
60 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
instantly adopted, and that mother to this day be- lieves a life was saved thereby.
Eeaders, I recently read that we were never to try to reason a prejudice out of any j)erson's mind, be- cause it never got into his mind by reason. And now let me ask you, you in particular, because the very structure of your minds makes a jorejudice impossible, let me ask you if you can possibly believe that against the array of adverse digestive conditions, the president ought to have been fed ? He was fed until Nature very promptly decided that the surgeons were wrong, by permanently locking the stomach against all their unbidden efforts to support vital power in the usual way. And from thence on, this power was to be sup- ported through a less defensive portion of the digest- ive tract by means of predigested food. "Was it possible to sujDport vital power in this way ? Let us consider :
The stomach was functionally powerless, not actu- ally diseased, and as it was one of the results of dis- turbed vital power, the entire digestive tract was probably in a similar powerless condition.
The mucous membrane of the extreme portion of the digestive tract seems to exist for the sole purpose of generating and throwing out a slimy coating for the foecal contents that jDrotects by its antiseptic quality, and renders their expulsion easier. It is then an ex- creting, and not an absorbing membrane, though it is capable of absorbing water and alcohol and medicines clearly soluble in either. It is therefore something of a draft on credulity to suppose that nitrogenous food could be made so soluble, as to be made capable of ab- sorption by a membrahe whose natural function is in utter reverse to that of the stomach, and which must have been very nearly as powerless as was the stomach.
NATURE BEVEALEB IN A NEW LIGHT. 61
The stomach is the firebox of the human locomotive, and there is no other that can consume Hfe-maintain- ing fuel.
The mucous lining of the stomach is both an excre- tory and an absorbing membrane ; it throws out its marvelous solvent juices when hunger indicates the need. There is instant digestion, instant absorption, and an instant and continuous sense of refreshment until hunger is sated, which is one of the most acutely pleasurable in all human experience.
No sense of refi'eshment ever comes when food is taken, even in health, without hunger, and because there is little digestion, little absorption ; much less can there be in disease.
No one ever thinks of eating if the appetite is abol- ished by a trivial ailment and plainly for the reason that it would be an unpleasant experience attended by depressing results ; but if the ailment is thought dan- gerous, why, then the physics and chemistry of diges- tion are utterly ignored and food must be enforced.
Was it not asking a great deal for the mucous lin- ing of a receptacle, that was situated nearly thirty feet from the fire-box, or from the chemical laboratory which is our only reliance in time of health for the conver- sion of nitrogenous food into a soluble, absorbable condition whereby we live ; was it not asking even a miracle of this excreting membrane which must have been as functionally disabled as was the stomach, to take upon itself the disposition of food artificially digested ?
1 see that you begin to look puzzled, for you have always believed that the president's life was main- tained during those long weeks through the absorp- tion of food by this most accommodating of excretory
62 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
membranes, of food so marvelously predigested as to be ready to fairly drop into the form of living cells. I will add to your confusion. It is my strong convic- tion that the pr^esidenVs life was not prolonged one second thereby, and that the wholly unnatural and seemingly unreasonable method of attempting to sup- port vital power was a torturing exiDerience that was void of any credit to medical science.
I see you begin to wonder : ' ' What you, you call in question any method of these great surgeons ! " Great they were in ability, in skill, in experience ; great in all that ennobles and elevates human character, and they were the greatest of living surgeons, but
One of the greatest of College Presidents once said to his class, "Young men, cherish your own concep- tions," in other words, do your own thinking and draw your own conclusions.
LECTURE IV.
Illustrative Cases — La Grippe— Fever.
My Friends the Readers : —
Before beginning my lecture this morning I will read a note I find upon my table written by one of you.
Doctor : As a matter of mere theory, you have made it strongly evident, that the president had no power to digest food, but you know how often it occurs that the best constructed theory has to go down before an in- exorable fact. Now there are three rather striking facts in this case. 1. You admit that the excretory membrane had some power of absorption. 2. Pre- digested food was habitually used. 3. The president hved SO days. Do you then expect us to believe that the membrane did not absorb and transmit enough of the digested food to prolong his life, far beyond what it otherwise would have been ? Why, think of it, 80 days are nearly three months, and to believe that any human being could live so long without nourishment of some kind, taken in somewhere, is, to say the least, incredible, unbelievable in fact.
Sincerely your friend,
A LISTENER.
I am very glad to meet this question so clearly stated and so pointedly })ut, as the j^oint raised is now to be considered under the second question.
2. Is it necessary to feed the sick f
63
/
64 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
The president was shot on the morning of July 2d, and I shall never forget the tolling of the bells near midnight of September 18th announcing his death, in tones muffled with a seeming grief deeper than human. What kept him alive all these weeks, months even, of agony ? Food, do you say, artificially digested and most artificially administered, not to say unscientific, in conception ?
I now draw for your consideration a very suggestive parallel. On the morning of June 4, 1886, I was called to see a frail boy of four years, of unu-^ually spare build, who had just taken a drink of a solution of caustic potash. He was the only son of intimate per- sonal friends and I had been attached to him from his birth ; and so all the more I was moved to watch his case with exceeding closeness and to do all that could be done to alleviate, and to save.
The solution that was gauged to clean the wood- work of the house was strong enough to destroy the stomach, and from thence on every drink of water, was ejected. Of course you will understand that drugs and liquid foods, would be even more objectionable to this inflamed stomach. It was not within human pos- sibility to treat the inflamed stomach with any form of drugs, to support vital power with food predigested or otherwise. He promptly ejected the first drink of water, and as promptly the last he ever took,
I saw him draw his last breath, and it came seem- ingly from a skeleton covered by a thin skin, and this last breath was drawn on the morning of the ITth of August, 75 days after the fatal draught. The mental condition was clear to the last hour.
All that seemed to be left of the great president when he drew his last breath on the night of the 80th
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. 65
day at Elberon was a thin skin covering a skeleton. What became of the tissues in these cases ?
Did they evaporate ?
Now there is room for the suggestion, that if some predigested food could have been absorbed by the ex- cretory membrane, it might have given the stomach a little more time for a possible merging into a reten- tive condition for some light aliment. But the sensi- tive membrane of the delicate child would soon have become so restive under the abnormal service, as to have required the subjugation of doses of laudanum which, mixed with food predigested or otherwise, forms a combination no matter how sanctioned by high authority, and which would not work well in the stomach, in the case of a picnic dinner.
To get into this question a little deeper, I am going to show you a table which I have taken from Yeo's physiology, an authority unquestionable. It shows the estimated loss of the several tissues of the body in cases of starvation.
Fat 91 per cent.
Muscle .30 per cent.
Liver 56 per cent.
Spleex 63 per cent.
Blood 17 per cent.
JVerve Centers 0 !!!!!!!
Listeners, there is a combination of words that when I first saw it, impressed me, pleased me, far beyond my power over written or vocal language to express. At last I had found a clearly-defined bill of fare for the sick, and a bill that I had been relying wholly upon for years before I saw it, and without any conception of just how vital power was supported in the absence of digestive power. A mere glance at this table seemed
66 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
to me to settle this whole tremendously important and interesting question of nutrition in disease.
I had never had any thought or conception as to how the integrity of the brain and nerve centers was pro- vided for in acute disease. I had seen, as I told you, while in the army, that no matter how emaciated the body might be, the brain, the heart, the lungs never re- vealed any loss, but there was no seeing with insight.
The brain is the organ of the mind, the home of the soul : it is the power-house of the human plant. It is the source of all physical, mental and moral energy. Shooting out from its depths upwards, outwards, downwards, are its bundles of electric cords to divide into a vast net-work of single wires, with the sensa- tion wires ending each at a little station, a signal sta- tion. How useful, and, at the same time, how like a structure of human devising does this battery oper- ate !
An unbidden meal is eaten, and in due time there is set up the chemistry of decomposition in the temj)orized laboratory — a signal from the sensation station goes to the battery, and forthwith there are groanings that cannot be so uttered as to do justice to the commotion, the emotion within, in the appeal for aid.
And then there is the electric cord with its reinforc- ing batteries that presides over and regulates the mech- anism of the vital organs, slow in its action but vital in importance. Seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, love, hatred, happiness supreme, misery that drives to suicide, comfort indescribable, agony unendurable, all, all depending on the continuous integrity of the central battery, the brain !
Readers, is it conceivable that an organ so vital to life and to all that is worth living for, should be left to the
ILL USTRA TIVE CA SES. 67
hap-hazard feeding of the stomach of a sick body? "TellitnotinGath."
Let us look at this table again, and first we notice that 91 per cent, of fat disappears in the starv^ed. That is a matter of business sense on the start, if it is drawn upon as nourishment by the brain, for how easily we may get it back again, and what vast multitudes there are who are heavily inconvenienced by vast masses of it, that is sheer dead weight to be carried about with hurried respirations. Now, if this is nourishment for the brain and always available, need we be in hot haste to force food into unwilling stomachs, as soon as the tJi ird day of a severe attack of pneumonia or fever, if also disease is also a depressing force to digestion ? We can always spare fat, when there is excess, without loss of strength, as you know. The prize-fighter has to go into training that the fat may be brought down and the muscles brought up to the " fighting weight."
The president had a vast store-house of fat, my starved boy a very small one, and yet how long they lived without food ! With an ample supply of fat for weeks of fasting, if it may be considered a store of predigested food, is it reasonable, is it conceivable that in the light of this tal)le, even without other evidence, the excretory membrane of a receptacle can be changed into an absorber and transporter of artificially digested food, when its irritable aversion to the service has to be stilled by laudanum? ''Tell it not," don't even whisper it in " Gath."
The muscles lose P><» per cent. ; well, we can easily get that loss back when digestive power is restored, and then we do not have so very much occasion to use the voluntary muscles when we are sick. The liver and spleen seem to be heavily drawn upon, but
68 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
we are never aware of special trouble from them on this account in time of sickness.
The blood loses IT percent. Perhaps the brain, also the heart and lungs, which are not down as suffering a loss in starvation, can be kept nourished with this per cent, below the normal of nourishing power, or perhaps it may be in a normal condition for the required degree of service.
Now, Avith this table right before you let me reiterate, a favor I shall ask again and often, for I cannot meet the purpose of these lectures without.
1. Nature takes the appetite away always with an empliasis equal to the severity of the disease, and with sjDecial emphasis if the digestive tract is the center of attack,
2. There is the progressive loss, or wasting that goes on unhindered by any kind of feeding, while aversion to food exists. In this connection I will inform you that some four years ago, when I had become as fully satisfied as I am now, that the stomachs of the sick are unable to digest food, and, without having seen this table, had, by experience, arrived at the conviction that vital power was better sustained without food than with it, I was moved to write a short article for publi- cation on "Feeding the Sick," which contained this statement, and also the suggestion that there is an in- crease of strength, in accord with the decline of symp- toms, in all acute attacks that recover, that becomes marked even before any food is taken. This article contained these, to me, original ideas, as well as some others, and where should I offer it for publication where it would not be buried alive ? There was only one paper even for a moment considered. The " Scientific American " has more readers in the ripe maturity of their powers, and of discriminating in-
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. 69
tellectual force, than any other paper ever published, and therefore the best paper in the world to put a new, live idea into.
To that paper I offered my first-born, a mere con- densed outline of a much longer article that I had been long at work over, expecting that it might be worthy of the column of some high-class monthly. It was promptly accepted, published, and was widely copied. For more than two years it floated among the papers as a thing of life, or a derelict. It attracted the attention of an assistant surgeon of the U. S. N., a stranger, who joined issue with me on the question of progressive waste regardless of all feeding. He admitted the waste, but was very certain that, by the use of various foods, predigested and otherwise, this waste could be somewhat lessened. Of course he could not prove that such was the fact, nor I that it was not.
But mine was a much larger experience than his. It was not a question that could be solved by science. There could only be inferences drawn from a pre- ponderance of evidence. Several letters were ex- changed, and he was moved to write that " friction of minds similarly bent is useful to both," as the result on his side.
Now I was moved to go into print at that time, because an unusual previdence of that intolerable disease. La Grippe, was moving a great many physicians to go into print on the importance of keeping vital action in support, by doing all the feeding possible^ ; the stomach must be kept busy ; the medical journals and newspapers were full of this sort of thing. And now I will draw a third suggestive parallel.
About this time a case fell into my hands of this same disease. The patient was a lady of very spare
70 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
build, frail, of mature age, and had always been very much of an invalid ; in fact she had not known anything about vigorous health since she was a child.
I found her prostrate and in such apparent exhaus- tion, as to be scarcely able to whisper ; there did not seem to be power to even draw the breath of life. The pulse was rapid and even thready, and in every way vital power seemed so utterly prostrate, as to make recovery a matter of exceeding doubt. Now, these same physicians would in this case have forced unbid- den food, their own bill of fare, into the stomach, with not one thought that it was as functionally disabled as were all other powers ; with not one thought that it would have been an additional tax on vital force ; great in i^rojDortion to the prostration already existing.
I am going to pause long enough for a suggestion that I will utter in Italics, and I want you to receive and blaze it into your memories in Italics, to be kept side by side with the table I have given you which you are always to remember as "Nature's bill of fare" for the sick. The suggestion that tuheu death occurs before the skeleton condition is reached it is cdivays due to old age or some form of disease or injury, and not to starvation.
Now, there could be no feeding in this case, for there was a continuous degree of nausea that would scarcely abide water ; much less any form of food or drugs. For thirty-three days no human doctor could have fed this patient because there was nausea every day, and scarcely a day without several spells of vomiting. What did I do the while— what could I do with a stomach that would not hold still long enough to let me try to cure (?) it ?
During the war, when the Proclamation of Freedom was pending, Gov. Richard Yates, the lifelong friend
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. 71
of President Lincoln, became very impatient over the delay, and to one of his pressing importunities, he re- ceived the telegram, ' ' Stand by, Dick, and see the salvation of the Lord ! " And so I had to stand by day after day as a minister to the need of the friends and utterly unable to do one thing for the patient, but with a keen eye to the wasting of the tissues ; to the change of the mental and physical condition that went ceaselessly on.
The extreme prostration of the first few days soon became relieved little by little ; the heart slowed down to firmer beats, and all along the line, except the stomach, there was a slight improvement, and the only question with me was, will the bill of fare hold out until the unknowable morbid condition behind that sick stomach can be cured by Nature's divine hand ?
Thirty-three days of nausea, of starving, when the patient, from thinness and mal-nutrition was half- starved at the inception of the attack ! That was a long time for the vital powers to go without support, was it not, really ?
You will remember that the German physician act- ually proved that his case was kept alive a whole month, by the kindly accommodation of the excretory membrane; how would his logic fit a case like this ?
The thirty-fourth day came, and with it a stomach in repose, and with every mental and physical energy elevated to newness of life, but the body was exceed- ingly wasted. The thirty-fifth day came and with it the "Salvation of the Lord," clearly, unmistakably achieved, for there was a call for food of the same digestive worth that must be on the noon-table of the logger's camp of a January day in the Maine woods ! Nature had changed the bill of fare ; the skeleton con- dition was not nearly reached, and a case of La GrijJiDe
i'2 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
cured without that meaningless, that senseless, that most dangerous stuffing that is warranted by accepted medical science.
"Will you kindly listen while I draw a fourth par- allel ? I was called to a case of typhoid fever after it was under full headway, in the case of a frail girl nearing her 1-ltii year — a bad age for a case of fever. A homeless orphan, she became a county charge and was taken to the hospital. Now the matron, a grad- uate of a Woman's Training School, and well expe- rienced from the care of patients under the masters of medical science of New York and Philadelphia, had heard a great deal about my shortness on the food question in cases of the severely sick, and hence was anxious to see a case, especially of fever, treated with the inevitable milk and the commonly inevitable stimulants absolutely prohibited. And to gratify her, and just possibly from considerations of humanity, I retained charge of the case that rightfully belonged to the paid service of the city physician. And so day after day, under the best nursing the case went on — the doses, with rare exceptions, unmedicated, were administered with exacting punctuality, and the fever chart was made to reveal the nightly and daily changes with habitual regularity.
And here I will pause to interpret another sugges- tion— that most of the need of drugs to allay rest- lessness and pain, and to enforce sleep in cases of the severely sick, arises from the exhaustive taxing of vital power from the enforced feeding and stimulation, that is, I believed such to be the fact.
In this case there was a degree of mental apathy, I thought might be normal, as the girl was a stranger ; but after two weeks the digestive tract all along the line became quiescent, and the mental condition had
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. 78
become clearer and stronger, and an early recovery seemed assured; but one day she asked for food, and not being at all ready for it none was given, and a crying spell, as I learned the next day, resulted. Now, what could I do ? The danger line seemed not yet fully passed, and to deny a crying call for food, would not do in the present stage of civilization. I felt that I pos- itively knew it could not be digested, and yet as I could not actually know that recovery was assured, what would be the result to me personally were death to occur with the unheeded crt/ for food, to ring in t\\.Q public ear ? No, no, that would not do, and then it is often well to gratify the whims of the sick, if it can be done safely, when reason cannot sway.
I left my sick girl with directions to give a light feeding in case another attack of want sliould occur. It occurred, and on my evening visit the temperature had taken the highest jump of all of the days of the sickness, and an irritability of the entire digestive tract resulted that cost a week to recover from.
That settled the food question while the disease had sway ; there was none called for again until about the end of the fifth week, when there was a clean, moist soft tongue and stomach as well, and food was wanted well worth the digestive process. The skeleton con- dition was yet afar off. And from thence on no wood - chopper ever wanted stronger food, nor relished it with a more acutely ravishing sense of taste.
The method of the German physician could not have availed in this case, because of the irritability of the entire digestive tract ; and yet how would he account for the support of vital power for so many as five or perhaps six weeks, as the girl had been ailing for more than a week before I was called ?
In this case the cure was one of Nature's own '' clear-
74 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
cut " jobs all the way through, for such was the del- icacy of the stomach that water very often caused nausea, and much more, strong doses would have been as objectionable. Can you believe that my part in this transaction was a matter of intellectual stupor ? If so, do not, not just yet, " publish it in the streets of As- kelon," for I am not yet done with parallels. I must give you another and a very striking one. And in this case, and in all that are to be mentioned, all that have been mentioned, you are not to abate one "jot," not even one slight " tittle " from the apparent ineaningof my words, for I am not unfolding my own but Nature's power. I am making no appeal to your credulity. Some of you have gone to the spoiler for aid in your time of need, and by wise looks and strong statements in language, you could not fully understand, your hopes were raised only to be dashed. I have no mystery of treatments to offer in words of "learned length and thundering sound," no hopes to raise other than founded on all the reason I can command, and, where reason fails to meet your idea, then don't make any effort to believe.
My next parallel will be drawn in the next lecture, and in the meantime fix all the points thus far raised firmly in your minds so that you can give each a care- ful, a deliberate consideration, before they can become your own, or be rejected because they are not able to stand the test of reason.
LECTURE Y.
Fourth Parallel Considered — Illustratre Cases.
My Friends the Readers : —
The difference between one mind and another is often the diffei'ence between the machine-shop and the ware-room. One mind is all machine like a thrasher ; the sheaf goes in, the chaff flies, and the winnowed grain flows in a stream to meet the world's need.
Another mind is an absorbent with a ware-room annex, into which floats all sorts of odds and ends, to settle into a fixed, conglomerate mass, as deposits form the crust of the earth. And there is still another mind with its annex, an Academy of Fine Arts, from which nothing ever gets out, and into which no one can enter but the proiDrietor.
There was a Halleck and a Grant in war-time. The former cultured, stately, impressive, of large head and learned beyond any general of his nation. One day a genius, in a moment of inspiration, called him "old brains," and instantly a nation held its breath to see the rebellion go down with a crash.
There was the "silent man," unimpressive in every way, with his faculties asleep or withered from years of inaction ; or they were, perhaps, nuggets of gold, only waiting discovery, or perhaps giants slumbering in the most healthful repose, only awaiting the electric touch of a great opportunity to rouse them to power- ful action.
75
76 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
Artemus Ward, the inimitable, one day said, " Some of our generals ought to be old women : some of them are." "What was an encyclopedia when the supremest need of a nation was "action, action, God-like action f " One a splendid figure-head perched upon a magnificent ware- room, and the other — Aj^pomattox ! Grant was not the old woman.
The most learned physician I ever knew, learned because he read everything, learned because he never forgot anything, had no machine behind his encyclo- pedia charged with moral energy. His was a store- house only, and he died, and no one was ever the wiser or the better because he lived. This same inimitable Artemus once said that "a well-balanced mind, is a mind that always balances in any direction the public requires."
Perhaps the most striking example of an immense ware-room filled to bursting with an assorted, classified list of wares, each ready for instant use, and all adequately supported with an engine charged with moral force, was revealed in the case of Franklin. Poet, philosopher, moralist, humorist, scientist, elec- trician, politician, statesman, he became the world's greatest schoolmaster, and, with his intense practical- ity, he ever used his vast stores, and rare powers for the good of all nations and peoples, finding therein his highest happiness.
And there was a Lincoln, surrounded with a cabinet ; all with infinitely larger ware-rooms, yet he was the intellectual superior of each ; unapproachable in scope, clearness and power of philosophic vision ; towering above them all physically, they were as children in the presence of his overshadowing, moral presence. No member of his cabinet was ever magnetically affected by the moral force of any of the others, because
FOURTH PARALLEL CONSIDERED.
none "had rather be right than be president;" at least no one of them could approach him in such utter abandonment of self when a need was to be met.
Listeners, we ought always to keep our eyes open for truths, that we may be able to seize upon them, even if they eject us from our cherished beliefs or our beaten paths of life. To refuse to consider truth because not popular ; because it seems averse to the even tenor of our ways of life is to condemn without evidence. One of my very best friends has never even permitted me to hint to him, that there is any physiology behind my " science of cure, "such is his attachment to the beaten paths of medicine,
I am now going to give you an illustration of the very highest character, of the scientific mode, and per- sistence in the search for truth. I find it in a lecture on Scientific Culture by Prof. J. P. Cooke of Harvard, the first of a series on scientific subjects that you lovers of science ought to read. It is an account of an investigation of the composition of water by Sir Humphrey Davy. Sir Humphrey was a plodding old gentleman, very slow, indeed, to believe without evi- dence— was always averse to drawing conclusions by the aid of his imagination.
" The voltaic battery which works our telegraphs, was invented by Volta in 1800 ; and later, during the same year, it was discovered in London, by Nicholson and Carlisle, that this remarkable instrument had the power of decomposing water. These physicists at once recognized, that the chief products of the action of the battery on water, were hydrogen and oxygen gases, thus confirming the results of Cavendish, who, in 1781, had obtained water, by combining these elementary substances ; oxygen having been previously discovered in 1775, and hydrogen at least as early as 170G. It
78 TUE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
was, however, very soon also observed, that there were always formed by the action of the battery on water, besides these aeriform products, an alkali and an acid ; the alkali collecting around the negative pole, and the acid around the positive pole of the electrical combin- ation. In regard to the nature of this acid and alkali, there was the greatest difference of opinion among the early experimenters on this subject. Cruickshanks supposed that the acid was nitrous acid, and the alkali ammonia. Desormes, a French chemist, attempted to prove that the acid was muriatic acid ; while Brugna- telli asserted that a new and peculiar acid was formed, which he called the electric acid.
" It was in this state of the question that Sir Hum- phrey Davy began his investigation. From the analogies of chemical science, as well as from the previous experiments of Cavendish and Lavoisier, he was persuaded that water consisted solely of oxygen and hydrogen gases, and that the acid and alkali were merely adventitious products. This was undoubtedly well founded ; but, great disciple of Bacon as he was, Davy felt that his opinion was worth nothing unless substantiated by experimental evidence, and, accord- ingly, he set himself to work to obtain the required proof.
"In Davy's first experiments the two glass tubes which he used to contain the water were connected together by an animal membrane, and he found, on immersing the poles of his battery in their respective tubes, that, besides the now well-known gases, there were really formed muriatic acid in one tube, and a fixed alkali in the other. Davy at once, however, suspected that the acid and the alkali came from a common salt con- tained in the animal membrane, and he therefore rejected this material and connected the glass tubes by carefully washed cotton fiber, when, on submitting the
FOURTn PARALLEL CONSIDERED. 79
water as before to the action of the voltaic current, and continuing the experiment through a great length of time, no muriatic acid appeared ; but he still found that the water in the one tube was strongly alkaline, and in the other strongly acid, although the acid was chiefly, at least, nitrous acid. A part of the acid evidently came from the animal membrane, but not the whole, and the source of the alkali was as obscure as before.
''Davy then made another guess. He knew that alkali was used in the manufacture of glass ; and it occurred to him that the glass of the tubes, decomposed by the electric current, might be the origin of the alkali in his experiments. He therefore substituted for the glass tube, cups of agate, which contain no alkali, and repeated the experiment, but still the troublesome acid and alkali appeared. Nevertheless, he said, it is possible that these products may be derived from some impurities existing in tlie agate cups, or adhering to them ; and so, in order to make his experiments as refined as possible, he rejected the agate vessels, and procured two conical cups of pure gold, but, on repeating the experiments, the acid and alkali appeared again.
" And now let me ask who is there of us who would not have concluded at this stage of the inquiry that the acid and alkali were essential products of the decomposition of water ? But not so with Davy. He knew perfectly well that all the circumstances of his experiments had not been tested, and until this had been done he had no right to draw such a conclusion. He next turned to the water he was using. It was distilled water which he supposed to be pure, but still, he said, it is possible that the impurities of the spring- water may be carried over to a slight extent by the
80 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
steam in the process of distillation, and may therefore exist in my distilled water to a sufficient amount to have caused the difficulty. Accordingly, he evaporated a quart of this water in a silver dish, and obtained seven-tenths of a grain of dry residue. He then added this residue to the small amount of water in the gold cones and again repeated the experiment. The pro- portion of alkali and acid was sensibly increased.
''You think he has at last found the source of the acid and alkali in the impurities of the water. So thought Davy, but he was too faithful a disciple of Bacon to leave the legitimate inference unverified. Accord- ingly he repeatedly distilled the water from a silver alembic, until it left absolutely no residue on evapora- tion, and then, with water which he knew to be pure, and contained in vessels of gold from which he knew it could acquire no taint, he still again repeated the already well-tried experiment. He dipped his test- paper into the vessel connected with the negative pole, and the water was still alkaline. He dipped his test- paper into the vessel connected with the positive, and the water was still decidedly acid.
"You might well think that Davy would have been discouraged here. But not in the least. The path to the great truths which Nature hides, often leads through a far denser and more bewildering forest than this ; but then there is not infrequently a ' blaze ' on the tree which points out the way, although it may require a sharp eye in a clear head to see the marks. And Davy was well enough trained to observe a circum- stance which showed that he was now on the right path and heading straight for the goal.
" On examining the alkali formed in the last exper- iment, he found that it was not, as before, a fixed alkali, soda or potash, but the volatile alkali ammonia.
FOURTH PARALLEL CONSIDERED. 81
Evidently the fixed alkali came from the impurities of the water, and when, on repeating the experiment, with pure water in agate cups or glass tubes, the same results followed, he felt assured that so much at least had been established. There was still, however, the production of the volatile alkali and of nitrous acid to be accounted for. As these contain only the elements of air and water, Davy thought that possibly they might be formed by the combination of hydrogen at one pole and of oxygen at the other with the nitrogen of the air, which was necessarily dissolved in the water. In order, therefore, to eliminate the effect of the air, he again repeated the experiment under the receiver of an air-jDump from which the atmosphere had been exhausted, but still the acid and alkali ap- peared in the two cups.
" Davy, howev^er, was not discouraged by this, for the ' blazes ' on the trees were becoming more numerous, and he now felt sure that he was fast approaching the end. He observed that the quantity of acid and alkali had been greatly diminished by exliausting the air, and that was all that could be expected, for, as Davy knew perfectly well, the best air-pumps do not remove all the air. He therefore, for the last experiment, not only exhausted the air, but replaced it with pure hydro- gen, and then exhausted the hydrogen and refilled the receiver with the same gas several times in succession, until he was perfectly sure that the last traces of air had been, as it were, washed out. In this atmosphere of pure hydrogen he allowed the battery to act on the water, and not until the end of twenty-four hours did he disconnect the apparatus. He then dips his test- paper into the water connected with the positive pole, and there is no trace of acid ; he dips it into the water at the negative pole, and there is no alkali ; and you
may judge with what satisfaction he withdraws those G
82 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
slips of test-paper, whose unaltered surfaces showed that he had been guided at last to the truth, and that his perseverance had been rewarded."
I have at times the mere glimmering of an idea that where a hand-trunk is taken to the bedside of acute illness, filled with an assorted variety of remedies, of cures, whether coarse or refined, there is revealed, in exact proportion to their number, an incapacity to be a Sir Humphrey Davy. Sir Humphrey was a great deal better qualified to study out exact science than remedial therapeutics. The very structure of his mind made it impossible for him to convert inferences into facts ; his imaginative powers only seemed to in- cite him to a more persistent search for facts, for truth. No, he was cut out for a scientist and not a physician, for science tvalks by sight and not hy faith — not for him a fusilade at a possible enemy in ambush. Did you ever stop to think what a whirli- gig route, remedies have to take before they can reach the precise spot of supposed need ?
Take, for instance, a remedy that is supposed to be needed for its local effect upon the small bronchial tubes in the so-called bronchial catarrh. Into the mouth, down into the stomach, there to pause for chemical analysis — then into the blood— into the right chamber of the heart to the lungs ; from the lungs back to the left chamber of the heart, and from thence through the arteries to the diseased tubes ! To expect curative results from such means would involve too much of the imagination, too much loose inference for a man of Sir Humphrey's scientific temper of mind.
Having thus given you a high ideal of the scientific method in the search for truth, and some new concep- tions as to the reception and appropriation of truth,
FOURTH PARALLEL CONSIDERED. 83
and having tried to impress your minds still more deeply of the importance of the subject we are in- vestigating, we are better prepared to go on to a con- sideration of the fourth parallel.
A gentleman beyond his 60th year was brought to his bed with an obscure disease of his stomach. From his youth he had more or less trouble with his stomach, and for the previous ten years he had been so disabled by his frequent attacks of painful indigestion, as to have become very nearly a mental and physical wreck.
This attack was to be a repetition of several previous ones that had gradually increased in gravity. It had been characterized by pain gradually increasing in se- verity, until vomiting would occur, when perfect relief would ensue for a time, but to be soon followed in due time by an uneasiness — the low muttering of the distant storm that ended in the usual convulsion. These spells of illness would last generally from a month to six weeks, and at all former ones, feeding had been deemed necessary to support vital power as disabled as was always the stomach. To feed the disabled stomach, to contrive some delicacy that would be forced past the palate in the absence of the sense of taste, or with taste in bristling aversion, was the experience that kept the science and the art of the kitchen in a state of chronic exasperation.
During one attack the Garfield method of sui:)port had been tried, with a view to give the stomach that rest it needed, but after a half month's trial it became unendurable, and as there was a general scare over the possibility of starvation (the patient seeming to be wasting away the while), it was given up.
I found my patient wanting either relief or death, and as there was a possible ulcer near the outlet or just without it, there was need to prevent the tearing of
84 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
the diseased structures by the convulsive action of the muscles in vomiting. And then there was defective heart-action ; it was going on in a go-as-you-please way, that is, better described by that uncouth word, "wobble."
What was I to do, shut out of the stomach as I was, and the patient exceedingly thin already, from months of deficient digestion ? It was my first acute case in that family, and I might find it difficult to defend the stomach from the invasions from the kitchen.
I delivered an address about as follows: "Madam, it will be necessary to relieve the agony in this case, and it can only be done with a hypodermic needle ; it will have the effect to make him really comfortable for hours, and not only this, it will be actually helpful to Nature in a curative sense, because as these spells of vomiting only come on after he has suffered pain for a long time, we may be able to prevent this process by making pain impossible ; in short, we will try to keep the ulcer or the disease, whatever it is, still, while Nature goes on with the cure, just in the same sense that we must keep a wound or a fracture quiet while the cure goes on. As for feeding the patient, your former experiences were a series of annoying disap- pointments ; you did not nourish him in the least, as the thinning process went right on until natural hunger came, regardless of your soul-crushing efforts to prevent it.
" He will not starve to death for many weeks, and if he dies before he becomes a skeleton, it will be from disease only. This treatment will not only be relieving, curative, but it will save you from the annoyances of the kitchen ; and as we may expect him to be kept com- fortable 3"ou will care for him with an ease that you have never before experienced."
FOURTH PARALLEL CONSIDERED. 85
(Note. — This speech was not delivered until several days of dosing had demonstrated the theory.)
But what was I to do with the heart ? What could I do ? I could not administer digitalis, for the stomach was too sick ; and were I to try to use heart remedies with the needle, my patient, failing to realize any bene- fit, would soon object to being made into a needle- cushion on so large a scale ; and so with very little concern on its account I simply let it wobble on ; and it was not so very long before it toned itself down to a very orderly heart.
The dosing went on day after day, and for nearly a month any attempt to cut it down was resented by the stomach by aggravation of symptoms. The thinning process also went on, but there was little if any appar- ent loss of strength, while the mental condition, though affected by the dosage, seemed to suffer no loss.
At first there was an odor in the breath that could be perceived some feet from the bed. This gradually declined and was scarcely perceptible at the 30th day. After this time the need of dosing rapidly declined, so that after the 35th day it was abandoned. At the ^Ist day Nature changed her bill of fare, and there was no trouble in the kitchen to meet the need ; and, I am able to tell you that on this day, there was actual ability to walk unsupported across the room, and that the skeleton condition had not been nearly reached ; while, mentally, he was every way brighter than dur- ing the earlier days of the attack.
Could this possibly have been, had the brain been starved ? Is there any scientific evidence in a case like this that should incite thinkers to thinking ?
Since I began upon the preparation of this lecture, there died a lady physician in my city, of wonderful
86 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
acuteness of intellect, from some slow wasting disease. I frequently saw her in this last illness, not as her physician but as her friend, and I never saw any decline in quickness of perception or in interest in all her human affairs ; yet on that last day of her life the muscle and fat tissue of the arms had seemingly totally disappeared. And the skeleton condition was hard by. Fifteen minutes before death she asked for the time, and when the beginning of the end was reached she knew that it had come. She said she was dying.
Could this have been with a brain also wasted by disease ? The little starved boy was mentally clear to within an hour of his death. Could this have been with a wasted brain ?
Listeners, readers everywhere, have I gone " daft " on this particular subject, or is there a mighty physio- logical fact under process of unfolding ?
In the case of my patient there was a gradual development all along the lines of wasted tissue, and it did not cease for many months — not until ten pounds of solid tissue had been added to the ordinary weight of more than a score of years. This case occurred some seven years ago, and, though he has had two or three light attacks since, he was always able to trace them to an avoidable cause, and now, in his YOth year, after an average lifetime of martyrdom, he recently in- formed me that he considers himself strictly a well man. And all through a higher obedience to the law of his God "manifest in the flesh."
One more case in this line. My friend, Prof. H. R. Barber of the Meadville, Pa., Theological School, informed me that Calvin Cutter, the very popular physiologist of years ago, ^^er/^zi^Yfec? himself to go through a course of typhoid fever lasting five lueeks,
FOURTH PARALLEL CONSIDERED. 87
luithout taking an}j food whatever. I was not informed that that experience incited any thinking through which conckisions might have been drawn, that would have induced others to trust nature, ev^en as he had done.
In this last illness of the lady physician she managed her diet in her own way, and with a clear intellect she was able to know what she wanted ; she always claimed that her food was taken with a relish, and always without trouble with the stomach, and with body so enfeebled that not the least exercise could be taken. The also enfeebled stomach, even though it were voiceless, was tasked with three or four feedings per day. But further along the digestive line were the recurring attacks of the chemistry of decomposi- tion. Were these a tax on vital power ? Did the insen- sible stomach ever have tune to rest into power, be- tween the meals, was there nutrition of the body by such feeding ; was there support to vital power where digestion was so slow that the meals must have been received in layers ?
It is possible that if the digestive conditions of dis- ease had been duly apprehended, those rare, brilliant powers might have been preserved for years of enthu- siastic work in the lines of her ambition and tastes ? But medical literature had failed to incite thought, study, investigation ; and her medical friend, with all the medical world against him, was unable to incite thought, study and investigation.
The sick must be fed to support vital power ; and her life went out, possibly years before the physio- logical limit was reached. And yet that mind, while it did not trust nature, even as I dared not trust drugs and enforced feedings, was the first to suggest that
88 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
my therapeutical conceptions were worthy of the printed page.
I have chanced to hear two farewell addresses by patients of mine. One was by a woman of great intel- lectual gifts, who reached thedyinghour after months of wasting away with consumption. There was an address to the parents who were to become childless by her death, and to her son, her only child. Death was known to her to be very near, and yet she was able to talk with an easy flow of language, and with a clearness and directness of thought that was no less remarkable than thrilling. Was there a wasted brain in her case ?
And I heard a father's parting words to his only son, who stood sorely in need of kindly admonition, and they were words of choicest wisdom marshaled in tell- ing aptness. He, too, had become a skeleton. Was his a starved brain ?
LECTURE Aa.
Heredity Considered — Milk Considered as a Food for the Sick- Sir Wm. Roberts Quoted.
My Friends the Readers : —
You have now become somewhat convinced that if the very sick have any power to digest food, it is very much less than you have always supposed ; and have become wholly convinced I trust that the brain hasno need of stomach digestion to save it from waste or to conserve its functional powers, even when all else has yielded to the destructive forces of disease. You are now ready for a consideration of the third question naturally arising in this line of investigation.
Is feeding the sick a tax on vital poiuer f
This question is so involved with the first and second, that it has already received an incidental consideration, and would seem to be in part answered ; but the answer so involves the whole field of disease, and remedial therapeutics, that a library might be written upon it.
The j:»hysiological limit of a human life is deter- mined in the germ period of existence to a moment ; hence, " length of days " is a matter of heredity in this physiological sense. Did you ever stop to think of the possibilities of heredity ? Let us see : go back eight generations and there are 256 persons to inherit from. What are the possibilities in the line of disease ? of consumption, cancer, scrofula, lunacy, etc. ? Our rela- tives, perhaps, not so very far back have died in hovels,
89
90 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
in palaces, in infirmaries, behind grated windows, of every kind of inherited and acquired disease — perhaps at one end of a rope — and they have been the contend- ing forces on all battle-fields of history.
Mark Twain, our — th cousin, roamed all over the old world with welling emotions, duly guarded for a gush- ing forth over the grave of Adam !
He who would boast of pure blood and a noble ancestry has pressing need to keep clearly within the lines of credible history or tradition.
The capital stock of a human life, therefore, is its hereditary or constitutional power, and it can never be enlarged, and the vital question with every life is— shall living be confined to the interest, or shall the principal be cut down to meet the extravagances of the days, of the hours ?
Every human life goes on serenely so long as the physiological balance between the constructive, and destructive forces of the body is maintained, by the digestion and assimilation of food. The first step, then, in every disease, is the first loss of this balance by whatever lowers digestive power.
Behind every attack of pneumonia, of rheumatism, behind all fevers, and all malignant diseases that sweep whole families away is heredity, and a taxing from food decomposition, of unknown time, of unknown gravity. It is the "fittest" that survive, and because of he- reditary power of self-protection.
To get down to closer work, you must first clearly understand that the digestion of a meal in the most perfect health is such a tax on vital power as to de- cidedly enervate both mental and physical energy dur- ing the active period of this process. What must it be then when this digestive power is weak through he-
nEEEDITY—MILK AS A FOOD FOR THE SICK. 91
redity, debilitated in the ailing, and prostrate in the very sick ? It is not denied by physicians that the most 2^e>^fect defense against disease, is the rich blood of vigorous, perfect digestion ; and for the present the defense against the deadly microbe ; while we await the germ-killer that will permit life to go on with more indifference to this blood-making power.
Now a case of pnemnonia falls into my hands ; it has been made possible by a loss of defensive power of the blood ; certainly, if the theory is correct, this would be so, but good blood is the product of good digestion. Weak digestive power, then, must have been subjected to duties that, by as much, must have been an addi- tional tax on vital power, causing a degree of exhaus- tion of this power, " nervous prostration," hence paving the way for disease.
No one ever gets the slightest sense of refreshment from a meal, without appetite in time of health. All the more it must be so when vital power is taxed, by the extra labor of handling a meal that must be digested very slowly, through impairment of this power, and yet more slowly when the chemistry of decomposition is incited, as in the case of cholera morbus.
Now, in my case of pneumonia, I have a right to as- sume that the blood has been below the normal in de- fensive power, for an unknown period ; that this could not have been had not the blood-making machinery been overtaxed ; that it could not ever have been except more food was taken than could have been handled, without the aid of the chemistry of decomposition ; that my patient has been brought to his bed by over- eating for an unknown period. Shall I, then, enforce still more eating when all the powers are prostrate with disease ? x\nd, particularly, as there is likely to
92 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
be a degree of pain at times that will indicate the re- lieving doses that paralyze, as you know.
Do you think the brain needs to have any chances taken of added taxing, that must be inevitable when food is taken, after Nature, in the clearest, the most emphatic language, through aversion, forbids ?
It was not so very long ago that two children were taken with acute bowel troubles, that were called cholera-infantum. One of them, a delicate child of eighteen months, who was teething at the same time, was sick enough to have twenty-five actions, tinged with blood, before it fell into my hands. The other was also very sick.
There is no other disease that causes such a melting away of tissues, and therefore that so indicates the need that the loss be lessened, as much as possible, by the digestion and assimilation of food, according to accepted medical science. This child was fed, and with all the science and art of predigested and other foods, and the agony duly relieved by appropriate dosing as far as it could be done. That the treatment was kept up to the highest level of accepted science, there can be no doubt.
In my own case there was a degree of nausea at first, and it was deemed that when so extensive a portion of the digestive tract was in a state of active disease, there was no dividing line where the abnormal met the normal ; that the high pulse and intense thirst, meant total loss of digestive power all along the line ; and that of all diseases it would be unscientific to feed, where decomposing food would have to be forced along a bleeding viaduct ; and because inflamed, congested, bleeding, it needed to be held in repose as a wound or a fractured bone.
HEREDITY— MILK AS A FOOD FOR TEE SICK. 93
Now, with the utmost disregard of accepted methods in treatment, I permitted the stomach that absolute rest Nature seemed to call for, and all the pure cool water the dry mouth, throat and stomach indicated, and they indicated a great deal as soon as the nausea disappeared, which was early in the attack. The intensely alarmed parents were easily made to be- lieve that food not only could not be digested, but for these reasons would be actually dangerous. The child had swollen gums which always incites a nervous con- dition, and how often during the time of teething do spasms occur, that are generally referred to digestive trouble as the exciting cause ! In spite of the best of care this child had a spasm, and for one night and day hope became nearly extinct. The pulse ran way up to be nearly uncountable. What would likely have been the outcome at this period, if the bleeding way had been worried with green cheese in a state of decompo- sition ? Would the nervous system have been unaf- fected ?
The nervous storm passed over after two teeth had appeared, and from thence on, there was a gradual de- cline of symptoms, and, with the disappearance of thirst, it became possible, for the mother's sake, to ad- mit beef-tea. Now, for many days, tliis child was so utterly helpless that it had to be gently raised to re- ceive every cool drink. The 13th day came and there was a cry for bread (a favorite food when well), and when it was brought in sight, the child raised itself from its couch with surprising agility to receive it. The disease had lost its grasp on vital power, and there was still a nourished brain, but Nature had changed the bill of fare. And the other child, much older, that had been ill about as long as mine, had its voice stilled in death at the time mine was calling for bread.
Now I cannot know but that my case would have
94 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
recovered with enforced feeding, even though the par- alyzing dose would thereby have been necessary. But there was apparently so near an approach to death, that I can but believe that the chances of recovery would have been seriously diminished ; and then do you not see, that the brain was kept duly nourished and, while very much fatty matter had disai:)peared, there was ample muscle-power left for all the need of a healthy growth back to the normal condition.
Nor can it be known that the other child would have recovered, had my method been carried out, for death may have been inevitable from the first. We can only draw inferences from a preponderance of evidence, but inferences at times are strikingly conclusive.
The lady with the cholera morbus that I sj^oke of had been ailing for years with digestive trouble, in fact had been under medical treatment for months, whereby she was to have the intractable stomach strengthened into power of vigorous digestion through the agency of remedies ; but a case of cholera morbus was not thereby forestalled. But, by living in stricter regard with the physiological conditions involved in digestion, there have since been three years of comfort in the region of the stomach, and a much happier, because a more healthful, life. In her former life the eating was regulated by the time of day or by the whims of a morbid appetite, and never according to the indications of natural hunger. There were headaches, severe colds, days without any eating, nights of fitful sleep, and always a gloomy impression that there was disease behind all that tended to dan- ger, but that could only be met by some remedy some- where in some skilled hands. And so the wreckage went on.
Having very nearly convinced you that we need not
HEREDITY— MILK AS A FOOD FOR THE SICK. 95
feed the sick, wholly convinced you that the brain needs no food at all, other than as provided for in the fat we can so easily spare, and in the muscles, etc., in any kind of sickness, until the skeleton condition is reached, you are now better prepared to understand the testing of Nature that I proposed to undertake, as the result of the new views of her powers that were revived in the case of fever.
It was to be a line of investigation that, so far as I was aware, no physician had ever undertaken with the motives that incited me. True, there have been phy- sicians that have not fed the sick, physicians that have not used remedies. I once read that Thomas Jefferson had occasion to consult a Parisian physician, and was surprised that the treatment did not involve drugs, and that none were used in his j)ractice.
I have recently read in a large work,'' How Nature Cures," by Emmet Densmore, M. D., that the sick do not need feeding, but no reasons are assigned.
You will remember that in this case of fever, I noticed that there was no unusual waste of the tissues because of the enforced fast ; that not only was there a gradual decline of symptoms in every way, but actually a cor- responding increase of vital power, as manifest in an increase of physical strength and a brightening of the mind. Now if Nature were able to support vital power unaided in so severe and prostrating disease as typlioid fever, whfj should she not he able to do the same in other, in all other, severe diseases f And with more ease in diseases of lesser magnitude ?
How can I find out without trying, how is any new thing ever found out without trying '. Sorac^tliing starts the mind by a mere hint, as the falling apple the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and forthwith, there is a new line
96 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
of thought originated and the law of gravitation is dis- covered. A hint to the mind of Sir Humphrey, and the world knows the composition of water. It was to be an investigation in the line of science purely ; it was to be in the search for a fact that, if established, would stand for all time to come, and a fact of immeasurable importance.
It was, too, to be a line of investigation that every thinking physician, capable of thrashing out even a large sheaf for a possible grain of truth, would be more than glad to have undertaken.
But how are you going to carry on such a line of in- vestigation, with all the world against you in a general practice, where the need to feed is supposed to be meas- ured by the severity of the disease ? Will the friends of the sick permit the danger of starvation to be added to the danger of disease ? You may well and naturally ask this question. You may well think that the introduction of a method that involved an apparently dangerous neglect of support to vital power, would require either extraordinary reasoning powers on my part, or that very soon I would be considered too dan- gerous to be intrusted with even trivial cases.
Let me surprise you. In the first place, I had a very strong ally in Nature herself. In every severe case the difficulty of feeding was always measured by the severity. I had but to prohibit milk to let Nature practically have her own way so as to fully meet the scientific demands of the question.
Milk is considered a fit food for the sick, not only because it can generally be taken without aversion, but because it is a "typical food." Is it? Yes, for the calf for a few months of its life, but for the human body only for that period of life when there is little
HEREDITY— MILE AS A FOOD FOR THE SICK. 97
sense of taste and no teeth, hence the wisdom in the providence of a solid food in Hquid foi^m that can be taken without mastication, and that fully satisfies every want and every need. The typical food of hunger of mature life is the food that hunger calls for at each meal, and the mouth of hunger never calls for milk first at the dinner of a loggers' camp. What would be the result upon yourselves, were you compelled to live on milk, however typical it may be, for a whole month while engaged in your business affairs ? Would you not go down under it because of its lack of variety, because it would appeal so little to the sense of taste, and therefore to the pleasure of eating ? Why cannot we all go on this simple typical article of food and so abolish our kitchen, banish the maids, and hence on, be able to fill our stomachs to distension between two breaths, and so have time saved by the rapid taking of the meals ? And how much less expensive would the cost of living be !
Now milk, when taken by the drink, soon becomes whey and a very tough stringy mass of curds, very green cheese, in fact, every mother knows this. Is so solid a food, then, as green cheese to be taken without mastication, a fit food for the sick ? And yet patients are kept upon it, and very commonly in cases of fever, Aveek after week, when in cases of health it would fail to be a typical food, because Nature would sooner or later revolt against it. Readers, I am able to say that I was always able to reason milk out of the bill of fare for my sick, when beef and other meat teas were permitted. So little is their power of support, and so averse to the palates of the severely sick, that the largest freedom of use could be permitted with assur- ance doubly sure, that not enough could be enforced to add danger to the dangerously sick.
Sir William Roberts, in his elaborate work on Diges-
7
98 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LI VING.
tion and Diet (edition of 1891), says, "In a state of health milk must be dealt with in the stomach and the casein is curdled into solid masses ; these masses have to be broken up and to be more or less dissolved in the gastric juice before they can traverse the pylorus." (Query, do they really traverse the pylorus and get into the duodenum, Sir WilUam, vi^ithout digestion ?) " In the seriously sick, with an almost paralyzed stomach, milk is not meddled with in that viscus. There is neither pepsin nor acid to curdle it, and it passes as a flowing liquid into the duodenum. Arrived there it encounters the secretion of the still active pancreas, and milk is especially amenable to the action of the pancreatic juice."
With the stomach half paralyzed and utterly des- titute of pepsin and acid, how is it possible that there can be a "still active pancreas" in the "seriously sick " ?
Where is the exact line between the normal and the abnormal in these cases ? Now, when you eat because you think you must, to keep up your strength in your ordinary health, or in the absence of acute symptoms, and when there is only real indifference to food, you always find it a task. There is no sense of relish, and you always arise from such a meal with a feeling of depression, and a wish that you had not taken it.
On the contrary if there is keen hunger you begin to get a reviving sense of refreshment from the very first mouthful ; this means that the chemical change that takes place when the first mouthful reaches the stomach is instant, and the resulting absorption into the blood also rapid. And so this goes on till enough of digestion has taken place in the stomach, to fully satisfy hunger before the last mouthful, and, as you arise from your meal, you have reached the highest
HEREDITY— MILK AS A FOOD FOR TUE SICK. 99
sense of refreshment that a meal ever gives. This is in accord with the physiological fact that muscle- forming foods are digested in the stomach, and makes it all the more improbable, not to say absurd, that, in the debility of sickness, muscle- forming foods can be appropriated, no matter how artificially digested, by an excretory membrane twenty-five or thirty feet from this wonderful stomach !
Now the duodenum is only a little tube twelve inches long, a very small organ to serve as a deputy stomach even when aided by a pancreas active with health. A part of its duty is to receive and carry away, as a viaduct, the indigestible rubbish of all the meals, several hours after they have been taken, and hence this process, is never attended with any sense of re- freshment ; thus it may be presumed that it, as well as the pancreas, plays a very minor j^art in the handling of nitrogenous or muscle-forming food in time of health, and a very minor part in time of disease.
You will thus see that the exclusion of milk was not all a mere whim.
LECTURE VII.
Unknown Factors in Disease.
My Friends the Readers : —
In forming an estimate of the value of a method in treatment several things have to be taken into ac- count.
1. That most diseases are self -limited, with a ten- dency to recover. This statement, found in some of the works on the practice of medicine, ought to be placed on the title pages of such works in underscored italics; and in raised letters just below, the table, Nature's "bill of fare for the Sick."
2. That behind every attack of disease is the con- stitutional power, or the constitutional weakness, due to heredity, and the acquired weaknesses, or diseases due to life-long and more or less grave violations of the laws of life, that very largely determine whether- the outcome is to be recovery or death.
These are the unknown, unknowable factors, that are to be met with in every case, and are most potent to the making and unmaking of medical reputations. They are the enemies always in ambush ; we can never know just where they are, in what form they exist, how weak or how mighty their power.
Heredity determines what disease, by reason of the
constitutional tendency or by an actual structural
weakness, local or general, and violated laws, shall
100
UJSFKNO WJSr FA CTORS IN DISEA SE. 101
occur. There is an undue exposure upon developed, acquired weaknesses — and their results — a cold light or severe, a pneumonia, or pleurisy, or rheumatic fever, etc., with the constitutional tendency, behind, as the determining force, as to what disease it shall be ; and what, in connection with acquired weaknesses or disease, the resisting or the curing power shall be, whether recovery or death.
Of the ultimate processes of disease we know noth- ing. We may see its tracks upon the body in the diseased structures, in the ulcer, in the abscess, in the various forms of skin diseases, etc., and in those diseased structures, found post-mortem, were the un- seen forces, the contributing forces in ambush that made death, from the attack of pneumonia or of fever, inevitable from the first. The ultimate action by which a part becomes diseased, or a diseased part becomes normal, is a matter of self-generated cell- power as in the growth of a plant. Hoiu we are to reach the mysterious force luitJi drugs, so as to actually influence it, restore it if lost, is one of the unsolved problems of mediccd practice. The ultimate cause of disease has been through all the ages a matter of merest conjecture, until, in these later modern times, we are finding something tangible in the germ theory of the origin of disease ; already we have the bacillus of consumption, the bacillus of diphtheria, the bacillus of cholera, etc.
3. You are also to take into account the fact that the treatment of disease is in a state of constant evolution. The treatment of a hundred years ago with its bloody lancet, with its blisterings, its sweatings, its denials oT^' cold water to thirsty souls," is the barbarism of to-day, and the treatment of to-day, much of it, is to be the barbarism of the time to come ; yea, it is barbarous even now. There is no evolution in Nature's method
102 TUE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
of cure. She performed her work in the long-ago in exactly the same mode, in cell action, no matter how enfeebled by the withdrawal of pints of the "elixir of life ; " and her power to achieve victory against numer- ous odds is often surprisingly great. Even under the barbarous treatment of the darkest ages, she was able with consummate power to restore most of the sick. Each treatment was orthodox in its time, and he who failed to use it efficiently was deemed disqualified for the grave duties of his profession.
But neglect the lancet in a given case, and death occurs ; veritable malpractice is involved. In my child- hood my boy eyes once saw the dark-blue stream spurting into a bowl from my mother's arm, and for some trivial ailment that did not confine to the bed for two days. Yet that was a treatment that the science of medicine perhaps scarcely questioned at the time. In the early years of my practice, a young friend heavily loaded with fatty tissue, by reason of frequent dizzy spells, determined that I should bleed him because he had "too much blood," and also because it was " too thick." As he was impervious to argument, a lancet was procured, and, after due study of the topographical region of the arm, a vein was reached after several attempts, through the thick layer of fatty tissue. The stream flowed, and though much less in amount was drawn than was taken from my mother's arm, there ensued several days of such general prostra- tion, as to settle that mode of treatment in the negative for all time to come. The dizziness was worse than ever.
And where are we to-day in the evolutionary progress of treatment ? A few years ago, the entire medical world was aroused to a degree of expectancy unparal- leled in all its history over a possible cure for consump- tion, through a remedy that was to destroy its causative
UNKNOWN FACTORS IN DISEASE. 103
germ, but never were such great expectations so suddenly dashed ; and only recently there comes float- ing across the ocean from Europe the stimulating, the uplifting announcement, that at last the true germicide of the bacillus of diphtheria has been dis- covered, and that the Board of Health of a great city has become aroused. Do you not see that, pending the further development of the germ theory of disease, treatment must be kejDt almost at a stand- still ?
Diphtheria is a disease which, under different names, has been treated daring many centuries ; and never in a single case scientifically, if this new treatment proves to be the correct one. The discovery of new germs is far in advance of the discovery of agencies that are to neu- tralize their destructive, disease-inciting power. A remedy that shall be able to save whole families of children from being swept into the grave at one fell swoop by diphtheria, will deserve a monument to the discoverer higher than was ever erected for mortal man. Great is the mystery of cure !
Among the nerve- stretching diseases that have in- vited the most decided, the most crucifying treatments throughout all the ages is rheumatic fever, or inflam- matory rheumatism. Medical science is ever and nat- urally on the search for causative agencies, and in this disease, at last, a peculiar acid was discovered in the blood, and hence a treatment alkaline in character, that should reach the blood and neutralize its power, was the orthodox, the scientific method for many years. True, it did not take into account the underlying con- dition or agency behind this acid, that made its (exist- ence possible ; but it was a tangible mark to aim at, and so long as firing is a necessity, a mark always adds to the interest, and a synii)tom is better than nothing for an exj^losion when powder must be burned.
104 TTIE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
Then in recent times came into very general use the salicylates, and the medical journals began to teem with their successes, not supported, however, by the Sir Humphrey method in investigation.
But rheumatic fever continues to go in its old ways deliberately, torturingly, with not a day cut down from its own allotted time, for a return to the normal. And we are still without a specific treatment for rheuma- tism ; and what is true of this disease, or of diphtheria, is true of all others. If the germ origin of disease is to be supported by a germ treatment that shall be effi- cient, then to-day we are all at sea as to treatments, as we always have been of that most terrible disease, when occurring in the malignant form, diphtheria.
But if this remedy should prove to be the boon we are searching after, and if all other severe diseases prove to be of germ origin, and the true germicide be discovered, whereby disease may be paralyzed at its very inception, then shall we enter upon the golden age of medicine ; for our means of cure will be curative, direct, simple, preventive. We shall then have no more diphtheria, no more cholera, no more consump- tion, nor pneumonia, for their development can be im- mediately arrested at their very threshold.
A very distinguished physiologist went into the col- umns of the ' ' Scientific American " a few years ago over possibilities of this kind, in very roseate phrase. And not only the golden age of medicine but the golden age of living, when life will go on easily, with no perplex- ing care over what or what not to do for the sake of health ; what or what not to eat to keep the body well nourished, for no matter what we may do, there will always be the ever-ready germ-killer by which disease is made impossible.
4. And you have to take into very careful account
UNKNOWN FACTORS IN DISEASE. 105
the fact that a physician is never called until the dis- ease has got such headway as to excite alarm in the patient or friends.
In the case of dropsy I referred to, more than a year of perceptible symptoms had been allowed to go on in due development, without the slightest effort to alleviate, and it was only when swelling of feet, hands and body occurred, and ability to sleep in the lying posture became impossible that aid was summoned ; but then what frenzy of effort, what clinging to even straws, what absurd hopes and expectations from the utmost straw in remedial agency !
The time when that case could have been helped, the time when Nature extended her hand for relief from the overtaxing of her vital force, was years before — help ivas called too late.
I was summoned to a case of a little boy suffering from a sore throat that had excited no alarm because an attack of quinsy in an older member of the family had occurred some months before with recovery, and this was supposed to be the same disease. Fatal delu- sion ! I found the boy still able to sit in his chair or walk across the room, but beyond the power of swal- lowing even a drink of water. In an hour he was dead with diphtheria ; and the fell hand was not stayed until four of the flock were swept away. What could I do without a treatment ? For many months the only outlet for the gas of a cesspool was into the living- room !
There were eleven children in this family, and in a future lecture I will tell you what was done to prevent those without symptoms from taking the disease. But in these fatal cases there was a malignancy that would seem to defy all human means known at that time. What might have been, had there been available this
106 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
new germ-destroyer! Ah, "what might have been," are often the saddest of words.
In the case of the young lady with the fever at her own home, there were many months of indifferent appetite, of depressing languor, mental as well as phys- ical, in which Nature was getting ready to sum all up in a case of fever, hut which might have been avoided had her hintings been duly heeded. I had to take the case on the wing. The voices of Nature in the incep- tion, in the development of disease are of vital im- portance far beyond the ordinary conception ; and when you have failed to call upon your physician in time, make all the allowance that is his right for time lost that ought to have been his, to use preventive means. For behind every attack of disease, are the weeks, the months, and often the years of preparatory work, and work largely avoidable, unless the germ is proven to be the inciting and the developing cause.
5. And you also ought to take into most thoughtful account the physician's limited power in the cure of disease, that you be able to justly estimate his services, and therefore that you err as little as possible in holding him resj^onsible for miraculous results, when he is without miraculous powers.
What, who cures disease f So grave an accident as a broken bone occurs, very grave when the fractured ends are forced through tissues and skin to the surface. The surgeon is called, the fractured ends are placed in apposition and in line, and securely retained by the splints and bandages that the wounded parts may have the perfect rest that is the supreme need. Then the feeding, the work of the stomach, is next adjusted to the change of living habits, then the repairs are all left to the divine hand of Nature.
So grave an operation as an amputation of a limb
UNKNOWN FACTORS IN DISEASE. 107
takes place, or so exceedingly grave an operation as the removal of a large tumor from the abdominal cavity ; the stitches are taken, the straps and the band- ages are applied, and, with due antiseptic precautions, with the diet regulated to the changed life-habits, Nature is intrusted with the rest !
But in disease, simple or grave, there must ever be a bombardment or a fusillade if a cure is to be achieved! And with treatments, with remedies that are the science of to-day only to be the barbarism of to- morrow !
Now, readers, I have placed the table before you which I have called '" Nature's bill of fare for the Sick." Admitting that it is Nature's sole reliance for the sup- port of vital power, you are struck by the marvelous provision by which the brain, the seat of all power, can keep itself duly nourished no matter how sick the stomach, no matter how changed the conditions of normal digestion, by the absorption and appropriation of those tissues that can be easily spared, and in exact proportion to the need ; never calling for the minutest atom in excess ! Is there anything more marvelous than this in all nature ?
You easily see, them if this be a fact in physiological science, that beginning my course of investigation with the very next case of fever, I would have a decided advantage in the outset, of having my care of how vital power was to be sustained entirely eliminated, thus permitting by so much a concentration of atten- tion and care upon disease itself, and so be able to study Nature in disease with an interest I had never known before.
There is one more question that I must needs discuss before you can draw conclusions as to the success or failure of my treatment, or care of the sick, and that
108 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
will be the effect of strong dosage on the stomach itself. As this will involve a consideration of alcoholics as local irritants, I will consider their use generally in my next lecture.
I will close this lecture by reading an extract from a charming little volume in easy rhyme, " Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque," which contains ideas quite in line with some suggested in my present lecture.
The good doctor was making a tour through Eng- land on his grizzle mare for the purpose of gathering materials for a book which he was to print, and so make his fortune. He was to
" Sketch it here and prose it there, And picturesque it everywhere."
As it was written nearly one hundred years ago, you will be surprised at a layman's conception of Nature in disease, and a layman's conceptions of the medical methods of his time, who was also a poet.
While making a sketch from a rock on the edge of a pond he fell in, and with the result portrayed in this extract.
" It was not Vice that e'er could keep Dear Syntax from refreshing sleep ; For no foul thought, no wicked art, In his pure life e'er bore a part. Some ailment dire his slumbers broke, And, ere the sun arose, he 'woke ; When such a tremor o'er him pass'd, He thought that hour would prove his last. His limbs were all besieg'd by pain ; He now grew hot, then cold again : His tongue was parch'd, his lips were dry, And, heaving the unbidden sigh,
UNKNOWN FACTORS IN DISEASE. 109
He rang the beil and call'd for aid, Then groau'd so loud, th' affrighted maid Spread the alarm throughout the house ; When straight the landlord and his spouse Made all despatch to do their best, And ease the sufferings of their guest, ' Have you a doctor ? ' Syntax said ; ' If not, I shortly shall be dead.' * Oh, yes, a very famous man ; He'll cure you, sir, if physic can : I'll fetch him quick ; — a man renown'd For his great skill the country round.*
" The Landlord soon the doctor brought, Whose words were grave, whose looks were thought : By the bedside he took his stand. And felt the patient's burning hand ; Then, with a scientific face, lie told the symptoms of the case. ' Mis frame's assail'd with fev'rish heats ; His pulse with rapid movement beats ; And now, I think, 'twould do him good Were he to lose a little blood : Some other useful matters, too. To ease his pain, I have in view. I'll just step home, and, in a trice, Will bring the fruits,of my advice; In the meantime, his thirst assuage With tea that's made of balm or sage.' He soon return'd, — his skill applied, From the vein fiow'd the crimson tide, And, as the folks behind him stand. He thus declar'd his stern command: ' At nine, these ^^oioders let him take ; At ten, this drauc/ld^ the phial shake; And you'll remember, at eleven. Three of these j^H^s must then be given ; This course you'll carefully pursue, And give, at twelve, the bolus too :
110 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
If lie should wander in a crack Clap this broad blister on his back ; And, after he has had the blister, Within an hour apply the ch/ster: I must be gone ; at three or four, I shall return with something more?
*' Now Syntax and his fev'rish state Became the subject of debate. The mistress said she was afraid No medicine would give him aid ; For she had heard the screech-owl scream, And had besides a horrid dream. Last night, the candle burn'd so blue; While from the fire a coffin flew ; And, as she sleepless lay in bed, She heard a death-watch at her head. The maid and ostler too declar'd That noises strange they both had heard. ' Ay,' cried the Sexton, ' these portend To the sick man a speedy end ; And, when that I have drunk my liquor, I'll e'en go straight and fetch the Vicar.'
"The Yicar came, a worthy man, And, like a good Samaritan, Approach'd in haste the stranger's bed. Where Syntax lay with aching head ; And, without any fuss or pother, He offer'd to his rev'rend brother His purse, his house, and all the care Which a kind heart would give him there.
*'Says Syntax, in a languid voice: ' You make my very soul rejoice ; For, if within this house I stay, My flesh will soon be turn'd to clay; For the good doctor means to pop Into my stomach all his shop.
UNKNOWN FACTORS IN DISEASE. Ill
I think, dear Sir, that I could eat. And physic's but a nauseous treat ; If all that stuff's to be endur'd, I shall be kill'd in being cur'd.' ' Oh,' said the Vicar, ' never fear ; We'll leave the apparatus here. Come, quit your bed— I pray you come ; This arm shall bear you to my home, Where I and my dear mate will find Med'cine more suited to your mind.'
" Syntax now rose, but feeble stood. From want of food and loss of blood ; But still he ventur'd to repair To the good Vicar's house and care ; And found at dinner pretty picking. In pudding boil'd and roasted chicken. Again 'twas honest Grizzle's fate To take her way through churchyard gate: And, undisturb'd, once more to riot In the green feast of churchyard diet. The Vicar was at Oxford bred. And had much learning in his head; But, what was far the better part. He had much goodness in his heart; He also had a charming wife. The pride and pleasure of his life; A loving, kind, and fiiendly creature, As blest in virtue as in feature. Who, without l)listers, drugs, or pills, Iler patient cur'd of all his ills. Three days he stay'd, a welcome guest, And ate and drank of what was best ; When, on the fourth, in health renew'd, His anxious journey he pursu'd."
LECTURE VIII.
" Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging ; and wliosoever is deceived tliereby is not wise."
Alcoholics Considered — Prof. N. S. Davis Quoted — Author's Views as to their Effects in Disease and in Shock — Story Continued with Illustrative Case.
My Friends the Readers : — •
Prof. N. S. Davis of Chicago is easily the Nestor of the Medical Profession of America. He is not only an M. D., but an A. M. and LL. D. as well. For many years he was Professor of Practice and Principles of Medicine and Clinical Medicine in Chicago Medical College.
He is the father of the American Medical Associa- tion, and was made its presiding officer at several of its meetings.
Because of his eminence in the profession he was selected to preside over the meetings of the great International Medical Congress that met in Wash- ington, D. C, in 1887.
He has written a work on the Practice of Medicine that is an authority among physicians the world over.
Among the apostles against the use of alcoholics he is pre-eminent.
That he has not been assigned to the ranks of
"temperance cranks " years ago, is because of his gi-
112
ALCOHOLICS— EFFECTS IN DISEA SE AND IN SHOCK. 113
gantic proportions in the intellectual life of the profes- sion. He has been too large a man to be so disposed of by smaller men.
In his work on the practice of medicine he writes this golden text (I quote from memory) : — ''A phy- sician may have the highest x>ossihle success in the treatment of any kind of a disease tvitliout the use of any form of alcoholics^ My dear doctor, why did you not print this golden text in golden letters on your title page ?
Prof. Davis has been my referee, my rock of support, whenever I have been called upon to stand against the use of alcoholics, and for many years. I have had to defend always, when, in a severe case of sickness, I have had counsel ; for the professional brethren of my school in Meadville, without an exception, believe that alcoholics support vital power ; hence, in the use of alcoholics, my treatment in their estimation has been defective.
Now here is the latest science of the effects of alco- holics, according to Prof. Davis, which I find in his introductory address before the International Con- gress :
"It has long been one of the noted paradoxes of human action, that the same individual would resort to the use of the same alcoholic drink to warm him in winter, to protect him from the heat in the summer, to strengthen him when weak and weary, and to soothe and cheer him when affected in body or mind. ..."
"The alcoholic drink does not relieve the individual from cold by increasing his temperature, nor from heat by cooling him, nor from weakness and exhaustion by nourishing his tissues, nor yet from affliction by increasing his nerve force, but simply by diminishing
114 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
the sensibility of the brain and nerves, and thereby lessening his impressions of all kinds, whether from heat or cold, weariness or pain. In other words, the alcohol by its presence does not in any way lessen the effect of the evils to which he is exposed, but directly diminishes his consciousness of their existence, and thereby impairs his judgment concerning the degree of their effect upon him. "
Words more alive with the white heat of truth, were never penned by mortal man.
There is one statement in this quotation that I wish you to plant in your minds where it will take root, namely : that these effects are produced by diminish- ing the sensibility of the brain and nerves, hence alco- holics are in a sense anaesthetics and not stimulants, that they paralyze, and do not support brain power.
No human being ever takes a drink of an alcoholic with an idea that his need is to be met in a curative sense, for he knows by bitter experience that it is not medicine for him. He always takes it, that his afflicted sensibilities, whether of body or mind, shall be for the time "drowned," knowing all the while that they never die under water ; rather, he takes it that they shall become so benumbed that life can be better endured the while.
Now I want to call your attention to the local effects of alcoholics upon the stomach.
They act always as irritants to its delicate mucuous lining. The irritation causes a congestion, a swelling of the capillaries that are so small and finely meshed, that the sharpest needle cannot enter the membrane without wounding one of them. Their walls are elastic, and hence irritation or pain causes such an active determination of blood that they become at once
ALCOHOLICS— EFFECTS IN DISEA SE AND IN SHOCK. 115
distended. Now, small as they are, there are still smaller tissues between them, which at once become subjected to a strangling pressure. The gastric glands also be- come subject to this pressure, hence the sources of their supplies whereof the solvent juices are generated, are diminished, and perhaps often entirely suppressed. This is an incipient stage of disease, and in proportion to the frequency, the power and the continuance of the dosage, so must be added an abnormal length to the course of disease, for there must be a normal stomach behind normal health, and it must get well, before its work can be done with power.
But this is not the new point against the use of alco- holics that I promised you, but you have not probably seen this fact so stated before, and this applies equally to all medicines that can be disagreeably felt when they reach the stomach.
The stomach, my readers, is a mighty power in con- valescence, when its delicate mucous membrane has been preserved with physiological care. Now, listeners, you are going to admit, for the sake of my argument, that the brain does not need any support through the digestion of food by the stomachs of the sick, and since alcoholics lack the indispensable nitrogen to make them in the least nutrients, and since they are never given as medicines in the curative sense ; that they are never given except as support to vital power ; and as. according to Prof. Davis, they actually paralyze instead of adding support to it, how can I, how can any one, logically, physiologically, ever prescribe them ?
If they are stimulants as generally believed, would they do more than to excite the machinery to a more rapid and needless waste of the brain food ? If a depres- sant to brain power, can any dose be other than harm- ful ? Every dose taken in the time of normal health,
116 THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIVING.
has its depressing effect on vital function, a fact no one will care to dispute. Why then not all the more grave when the resisting power to the effect has been lowered by disease ?
AlcolioUcs are ancesthefics. — The brain will care for itself until the body is nearly absorbed, when disease does not paralyze its power. Must I then give these paralyzers of brain power in diseases that are very generally self-limited, that are very likely to re- cover, when such doses cannot be administered without structural injury to the stomach, and are exhaustive to brain force ? "Tell it not," do not even whisper it, "in Gath." "Publish it not in the streets of Askelon."
The citadel of the demon Alcohol has always been, the supposed need in the shock of injury and in the crisis of disease, the tiding-over, the bridging-over period of Nature's supposed extremity. The flagging heart must be kept in motion. It is only in modern times that the guns of the scientists in medicine have been turned upon this citadel.
Says Prof. Davis in this same address: "Speaking of the very generally accepted doctrine that alcohol is a cardiac (heart) tonic, capable of increasing the force and efficiency of the circulation, and therefore of great value in the treatment of the lower grades of fevers, the more recent experiments of Professors Martin, Syd- ney, Ringer, Sainsbury, Reichert, H. C. Wood and others, have clearly demonstrated that the presence of alcohol in the blood as certainly diminishes the sensi- bility of the vaso-motor and cardiac nerves, in propor- tion to its quantity, until the heart stops, j^aralyzed, as that two and two make four ! ! " And that ' ' nothing could more clearly demonstrate the power of alcohol to paralyze both the respiratory and cardiac organs (or
ALCOHOLICS— EFFECTS IN DISEASE AND IN SHOCK. 117
the lungs and heart), than the experiments detailed by Dr. H. C. Wood in his address to the recent Interna- tional Medical Congress at Berlin, on the subject of anaesthesia."
Again, " After an ample clinical field of observation in both hospital and private practice, for more than fifty years, and a continuous study of our medical literature, I am prepared to maintain the position that the ratio of mortality from all the acute general diseases has increased in direct proportion to the quan- tity of alcoholic remedies administered during their treatment ! ! "
And that "both the