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 ETERNAL HEALTH TRUTHS
OF
A Century Ago

Edited by
CHRISTOPHER GIAN-CURSIO

Published on the Occasion of the First Annual Convention of the

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF HYGIENISTS
Chicago, Illinois . . . June, 1960
HYGEAN PRESS • NEW YORK
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY DR. CHRISTOPHER GIAN-CURSIO
4807——67TH STREET, WOODSIDE, N. Y.
FIRST EDITION
PUBLISHED BY HYGEAN PRESS, NEW YORK
DESIGNED BY MILTON J. GOODMAN
PRODUCED BY INTERSTATE GRAPHICRAFT CORP.
MANUFACTURED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
The Good That Men Do Lives After Them

Biography: ISAAC JENNINGS, M.D.

WHAT IS DISEASE?

Biography: WILLIAM A. ALCOTT, M.D.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS

FOR A VEGETABLE DIET

Biography: SYLVESTER GRAHAM

MY SICKNESS AND APOLOGY

IS MAN OMNIVEROUS?

Biography: RUSSELL T. TRALL, M.D.

WHO ARE THE HEALTH TEACHERS?

A RARE LETTER
WRITTEN BY RUSSELL THACTER TRALL, M.D.

Biography: THOMAS L. NICHOLS, M.D.

CURATIVE AGENCIES

Biography: GEORGE H. TAYLOR, M.D.

HYGIENIC AND DRUG PRACTICES

OF MEDICINE CONTRASTED

A HEALTH ITEM FROM ILLINOIS HEALTH

Biography: JAMES C. JACKSON, M.D.

THE GLUTTONY PLAGUE OR HOW PERSONS

KILL THEMSELVES BY EATING

Biography: HARRIET N. AUSTIN, M.D.

SICKNESS IS ALWAYS CAUSED BY WRONG DOING

Biography: ROBERT WALTER, M.D.

NUTRITION: What It Is And How Promoted

Bibliography

NOTE: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BY THE EDITOR

 OUR CREDO
Man is so constituted and organized, and is so related to the
external world, that if he will obey the laws of his being he
may live free from sickness and the fear of premature death,
and may attain to a high degree of physical strength and
beauty. But there can be no law without penalty; and pain,
sickness, sorrow, deformity, decrepitude, and untimely death
are the direct and legitimate results of the violation of
physical law. Yet men are so stupid and blind as to sit down
meekly and quietly under these, in the superstitious belief that
they are the means which God employs for their spiritual
purification. We have a great desire to arouse the people
from this stupidity, to induce them to think and investigate,
and to turn from the habits which are undermining their
strength, ruining their constitutions, and fastening a curse
upon the earthly lives of their future offspring. This is the
object of our labor.

DR. JAMES C. JACKSON and DR. HARRIET AUSTIN

1860
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
"THE GOOD THAT MEN DO
LIVES AFTER THEM"

History is replete with the thoughts and deeds of men who

have been labelled "great." But in one human endeavor, so
all-encompassing that it surpasses in value much of what has
been said and done by the great figures of history, little has
been written. What has been said is so distorted that it has
given a false perspective of the great work that was done by
those who pioneered basic concepts in health and disease, and
also organized the first health movement in America. This
great work for the betterment of mankind has scarcely been
noticed by medical and social historians because its truths and
grandeur are alien to them.

Far too often those who have delved into history have
concerned themselves with men and nations who have
become enmeshed in the endpoints of wrongdoing.
Biographical writings have sometimes been about ordinary
men who have become involved in unusual and often
destructive episodes. Studies of this kind are merely
isolations of what was different in order to attract or allure the
potential reader. The bizarre, to the blase mind, proves
exciting and enjoyable; and historians have tried to supply
this kind of mental fare even when they referred to the
masterminds of Hygiene.

In presenting this group of essays from men on the highest

pinnacle of human endeavor we do so with the thought that
the truth be known and that these great minds of the past
reveal it to you. Moreover, we believe that these basic truths
relating to life and health can prove of great value today in
the attainment of human redemption and true contentment. If
one were to assiduously investigate what has been written by
advanced modern thinkers in medicine, biology, and
physiology, almost all of what the pioneer health reformers
strove to advance would be pertinent today and valid
scientifically.

Shortly before 1830 there were three men on the American

scene who were outstanding, because their ideas on health
were basic to man and essential for the preservation of human
life. They were Dr. Isaac Jennings, Dr. William Alcott, and
Sylvester Graham. Serious illnesses in these men, instead of
leading to dejection and a state of resignation, served as a
stimulus to seek an answer through natural methods. They
felt that solutions existed, and could be found to the problems
of health and disease that beset them. These three men,
though dissimilar in nature and with different backgrounds,
nevertheless came to conclusions that were the same. In their
search they began with the idea that medicines were
worthless. With the discontinuance of drugs and food
materials that had drug properties, they became aware of
great improvements in health. As a result, their hearts became
filled with an overwhelming desire to learn more about the
agents and conditions of health. Within a short time the
Hygiene concepts dawned upon them, and along with this
revelation came the drive to disseminate the great principles
that they recognized as being eternal and essential for the
normal growth and development of each individual and of the
human race. The ideals of these men fused them into a grand
triumverate.

What distinguishes these men from others of that period,

who were also concerned with the problems of health and
disease, was that they were interested, not in symptomatic
relief or palliation through the use of specific agents, but in
the removal of causes of disease through the establishing of
the causes of health. They sought not only to bring man to
truth but to make him aware of it. In the application of these
health truths, not only was all of man considered, but basic
health principles were formulated into a technique of living
that sought to improve the environment in which man lives.

In their promulgation of health knowledge they did not

swerve one iota from the basic concepts of life. Faddism,
fanatacism, and other derogatory remarks were levelled at
them because they were uncompromising. But their tenacity
in advocating the principles of hygiene was not a sign of
being erratic but only one of honesty. Another mark of
identification of these pioneer health reformers was their
integration of biological principles into a workable everyday
format. Hygienic living was not for special occasions but for
every living moment.

The first writings of Hygiene Science to appear in print

were two small pamphlets from the pens of Sylvester Graham
and William A. Alcott. From these meager beginnings in
1832 developed the greatest amount of basic health literature
ever published in the history of man. For fifty years there was
indeed a "Golden Age" in health literature. The first book to
appear by Dr. Alcott was "A Rational View of the Spasmodic
Cholera, Chiefly With Regard to the Best Means of
Preventing It," published July 17, 1832. This treatise of 36
pages is one of the rare items in health and medical reform
bibliography. "Health From Diet and Exercise," a pamphlet of
16 pages by Sylvester Graham, appeared at about the same
time along with Graham's edition of that health classic, "The
Sober Life" by Luigi Cornaro. Dr. Isaac Jennings, who, at this
time, was also one with Dr. Alcott and Graham in principle
and practice, had not as yet written anything. The first book
by him appeared in print in 1847.

The men who followed these three illustrious health

crusaders carried on in the same spirit. They were motivated
after seeing first-hand what hygienic principles could
accomplish when applied to their own problems of ill health.
They were: Joel Shew, M.D., T. L. Nichols, M.D., Russell
Thacter Trall, M.D., George H. Taylor, M.D., James C.
Jackson, M.D., Harriet Austin, M.D., and Mary S. Gove.
Later on, shortly after the Civil War, other hygienists who
became prominent in the advocacy of basic health principles
were Robert Walter, M.D., Charles Page, M.D., Felix
Oswald, M.D., and Susanna Way Dodds, M.D. They carried
on the work of health and medical reform, and followed the
same physiological and ethical blueprint as their
predecessors.

Every means known to man was used by the masters of

Hygiene Science to spread their ideas. Periodicals were
published, the first one being "The Moral Reformer and
Teacher of the Human Constitution," edited by William A.
Alcott; the first number was published in Boston in January,
1835. The next magazine to appear was the Graham Journal
of Health and Longevity, published in Boston on April 4,
1837. One cannot overlook the fact that a fine health
magazine called The Journal of Health was published a few
years earlier. It was not identified with the health movement
that began with the Great Trinity.

Early in the history of the movement health societies were

formed for the improvement of their members and the
dissemination of health principles to the general public. The
first society of this kind in the entire world was the American
Physiological Society that was organized in Boston in 1837.
The individuals of this group were vegetarians, and they
sought to advance the cause of hygiene through an
understanding of physiological laws. Though another group
existed, the "Bible Christians," formed in this country almost
twenty years previously, that advocated a fleshless regimen—
it was a religious one and not basically concerned with the
science of health. Among other societies that followed were
the World Health Association and the Physiological and
Health Association. By way of the printed word, the lecture
platform, and health resorts, the health movement grew and
developed.
 Today, much of what these pioneers accomplished in
health and medical reform is being advanced as new
discoveries in medicine, psychology, physiology, and
nutrition. Though truth is everlasting, what is needed today is
the spirit that animated these men and women of the past. To
advance the cause of Hygiene Science, or the art and science
of health, we must have an altruistic and noncommercial
approach. The only legitimate basis for spreading health
principles is a group of individuals who, in the promulgation
of health truths, are motivated by the desire to do good. When
truth becomes involved with commercializing and
merchandising, then a movement, no matter how well it
succeeds financially, would have within it no perpetuating
factor. Truth, unless combined with compassion and the all-
embracing desire to better humanity, becomes infertile.

This group of health essays is issued with the hope that we,
today, will see and truly comprehend what inspired the health
reformers of the past, and thereby become imbued with the
same spirit that moved them in the establishment of the great
health movement called Hygiene.

The true moral measure of what we advocate must always

be the physical, mental, and spiritual good that results, and
equally important, what motivates us in the doing of good.
Hygiene, or fundamental Health Reform, can enter into a
serious decline if the motivation for this work is not
compassion, as well as the love of man, demonstrated in
everyday living.

Hearken to these voices of the past and let the vaults of

your heart reverberate with the sound of their message.

CHRISTOPHER GIAN-CURSIO
ISAAC JENNINGS. M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

DR. ISAAC JENNINGS WAS BORN IN FAIRFIELD,

Connecticut, in 1788. He studied medicine under the
tutorship of Eli Ives, M.D., in New Haven from 1809 to 1811.
Several years later he obtained the degree of Doctor of
Medicine from Yale University. For almost fifteen years he
was engaged in the practice of orthodox medicine,
bloodletting, and the use of heroic drugs. Early in 1820, after
realizing that the orthodox medical methods were far from
what he had thought them to be, he abandoned them. His loss
of faith in drugs occurred while he was attending a young
woman afflicted with typhus fever. When it appeared that she
might die, he discontinued the use of medication. From a pure
spring he obtained some water which he placed in a vial and
gave to his patient in place of drugs. In a short time she began
to improve; and shortly afterwards made a complete recovery.
This case convinced Dr. Jennings that drugs were worthless,
and from then on he ceased to use them. But drugs were only
one of the things proscribed by him. He saw in disease not
only elements that brought it about or made it necessary, but
a body wisdom working dynamically in behalf of the
organism. His "let alone" plan meant not interfering with
body intent. This gave the organism a chance to remove the
immediate cause of disease and to terminate the abnormal
processes properly.

Dr. Jennings also recognized that the maintenance of health

depended on certain conditions and substances. All that one
had to do to preserve himself in a state of health and to
prevent disease was to supply the essentials of health to the
body.

Dr. Jennings' life illustrates how a man, even with the

loftiest motives, can be misunderstood. His ideas, though
basically humanitarian, were resisted because they, though
not proven to be false, were contrary to those advocated by
allopathic doctors. If barriers had not been put in Dr.
Jennings' way, his wonderful thoughts for human betterment
could have instigated, in 1839, a great health movement
among medical men.

Jennings was held in high esteem by his contemporaries in

areas not reached by other hygienists. Alcott, Jackson, Trall,
and Oswald recognized in him a great medical philosopher.
He was a profound thinker who, without aid, had worked his
way out of the wilderness of medicine. He became a shining
light in Health Reform and was indeed the Prince of
Hygienists.

Sylvester Graham read his book, "Medical Reform." It was

one of the very few books that this fastidious man considered
worthwhile. On October 27, 1847, shortly after the book had
been published, he was given a copy by M. Bedorthea, M.D.,
at New Lebanon Springs, New York. The first books written
by Dr. Isaac Jennings are — "Medical Reform" and "Defense
and Appeal"— a small pamphlet in which he defended his
ideas against the maligning that was taking place in Oberlin,
Ohio; it was an appeal for rationality, humaneness, and
tolerance. The "Tree of Life, or Human Degeneracy,"
published in 1867, is monumental in its approach to the
problems of life. A prior book, "The Philosophy of Human
Life," published in 1852 definitely shows the genius of this
man.

Many men in modern medicine are trying to express what

Jennings so clearly and forcefully put forth in words. In
reading the fourth edition of MacKenzie's "Diseases of the
Heart," I could not help but think of Dr. Isaac Jennings. Here
was a great cardiologist searching for truth, seeking to
explain the phenomenon of disease in a rational and more
basic way, but floundering because of the ideas in medicine
that encumbered his thinking. Sir James MacKenzie, like
many other iconoclasts in medicine, would have been helped
tremendously if he had only known of the works of Dr.
Jennings. He would have had a clear view, not only of
disease, but also of all of human life. When Dr. Jennings
spoke of health and life, he recognized what a few biologists
recognized centuries ago: that behind what we call "life"
there is order, there is direction, and life proceeds on a basis
in which energy is economized and in which the organism
curtails expenditure and makes use of vitality in the most
constructive way.

What Dr. Jennings taught has often reappeared as

something new. His ideas, explained in modern terms, can be
of great value. The language may be different, but the truths
expounded by Dr. Isaac Jennings are eternal.

Dr. Jennings went from Connecticut to Oberlin along with

David Campbell, who had been the editor of Grahams
Journal of Health during all of its short lifetime from 1837 to
1839. Jennings and Campbell sought to help establish a
community dedicated to fundamental purity in living, a way
of life that was to conform with physiological law. They did
not succeed. It was one of the great tragedies that can befall
good men. Jennings mentioned it with regret when he spoke
of leaving the beautiful Atlantic coast for the murky climate
of Oberlin; murky, not only because of the differences in
weather conditions, but because of the people who had
discarded the health principles.

A few years after Oberlin was established, it gradually

deteriorated to a pattern of life that was orthodox and far from
the physiological and hygienic principles advocated by Dr.
Jennings. Within a short time, living in this community
became incompatible with the ideals that had prompted
Jennings and Campbell to associate themselves with the
Oberlin Colony.

WHAT IS DISEASE?
By ISAAC JENNINGS, M.D.

So valuable on the whole do we consider the

following article written and forwarded to us
by our friend, Dr. Jennings, that we publish it
at length, though we are aware that some of
the philosophies which it presents may not be
in exact accordance with the views of scientific
men. — HARRIET AUSTIN

What is disease? is the question of the day. A correct

settlement of the question will settle the question of theory
and practice. All power is distributed by the simple law of
elective affinity. In the distribution there can be no mistake.
Call for aid is graduated by necessity. The greatest destitution
gives the loudest call. To the point where danger threatens
most urgently, force, which is drawn to the part in danger,
and which can be spared from other parts without
endangering their immediate vital existence, will repair with
as much certainty as water will run down an inclined plane.
No human device can hasten the elaboration and supply of
power by recruiting faculty; there can be no substantial
advantage gained by artificial interference even in cases of
extreme suffering and danger, further than to make all
external circumstances favorable for the action of the internal
economy.

Disease is abatement of health — nothing more, nothing

less. Fancy, as well as you can, a perfect model of material
humanity. Fix your thoughts upon the best specimen within
your knowledge; a man well advanced in years, who never
had a cold, cough, fever, headache, or anything of the kind —
who "was never sick a day in his life." Then put your
hypothetical faculty upon the stretch and contemplate a man
elevated a hundredfold above such a one, in every important
particular of structure and vital endowment: — complete in
general contour; complete in every individual organ or group
of organs; complete in every fiber; not an atom lacking in any
part of the body; not an atom of redundancy. For the
maintenance of this condition there is a full capital of vital
force always in store, beside an ample income. From a well
husbanded stock of original rudimental material, the
elaborating apparatus, itself in prime working order, keeps
every deposition of the system — special, common, or
general — full to overflowing of sustaining energy for the
working department, and every texture and fibril are flushed
and sparkling with the life-giving principle. Thus constructed
and supplied, all the vital machinery perform their parts with
as much untiring and undeviating steadiness, as the planets
move in their orbits. The beat of the pulse is firm, steady, and
uniform; appetite for food unwaveringly good, and the
digestion and assimilation perfect. The synthetical and
analytical functions cooperate with each other with the
utmost precision in maintaining the integrity, "all and
singular," of the God-like fabric. As soon as a particle of
matter becomes in the least impaired by use, it is removed
and a new one put in its place, wounds heal by the "first
intention" without the intervention of "adhesive
inflammation" that is now supposed to be requisite for the
reunion of all incised wounds; and the man stands erect and
unharmed against noxious causes that prostrate the best
constitutions of the present day. But such constitutions, with a
constant strong and inviolable upward tendency implanted
deep within them, may be reduced to a complaining point by
a long course of outrageous abuse.

The first step or gradation in the descending scale, is

reduction of power; second, functional derangement; third,
structural derangement, or organic disease. As force abates,
action enfeebles and vacillates; the composing or
decomposing functions of the several departments fail in a
greater or lesser degree to fulfill their important trust. In some
cases the secretaries or builders fail to extend their work to
the outlines of a full-sized man; in others, there is a lavish
expenditure of material, through lack of restraining and
restricting influence in the excretories, and thus the body is
made to exceed a normal healthful magnitude. In all cases
there is a want of a symmetrical, compact, and vitalized state
of parts, that can only give to the whole system the principle
and power of endurance. Here is laid the foundation of
disease, or "predisposition" as it is called. Let it be
remembered that this wretched condition has been produced
by a long, persistent course of violation of the laws of life,
which the vital economy failed to arrest or prevent for the
want of ability, not disposition, or strong native upward
tendency.

This predisposition or depressed and impressible state of

the body differs greatly in different individuals, and in the
same individuals at different times. On one occasion colds are
produced by very slight causes; at other times there is no
danger of "taking" or "catching" a cold. So of fevers,
rheumatism, dyspepsia, bilious effections, and all the long
catalogue of ills that flesh is now heir to. When the vital
ability of any department or portion of the system is replete,
morbific causes of ordinary power make but little impression
upon it; when its vitality is low slight causes disturb or
derange it. But for every species and grade of mutation from
the acme of symmetrical form and functional vigor, to the last
glimmers of life in a wasting structure, there is but one and
the same proximate occasion — deficiency of force.

For the whole there has been but one generic, remote or
producing cause — Sin; that is want of conformity unto, or
transgression of the heaven-ordained laws of life. Dr. Rush
was inclined to believe that disease was a unit; but there is no
such thing as cold or darkness. There are such things as heat
and light; these are positive entities and have laws by which
they are governed. But cold and darkness are only the
negation of these — absence of heat and light. Life in its
essential element is an absolute existence, comprehensible
and demonstrable by its sensible manifestations, and has its
laws by which it is governed. This life principle is a unit in its
aim and tendency; always maintaining a sound and healthy
position, whether treated well or ill, while it has power to do
so; and when drawn from its position does the best it can to
recover and hold it.

Morbific causes, too, are a unit in their ultimate action, or

in their effects upon the living organism. They are
multifarious in their modes of operation, and diverse in their
election of parts on which to act; but exhaustion of power
more or less, is the inviolable result of their action, however
specious they may appear at any stage of their action. As
individual organs are mainly dependent on their own
resources for sustaining themselves, we have every variety of
impaired health and defective irregular action. Loss of power
in any branch of the mentor nerves occasions a paralysis of
the muscles that are dependent on those nerves for their
ability to act. But the pathological ills that result directly from
the loss of power in the superintending department of the
nervous system, greatly exceed those that come from
deficiency of power in the nerves of motion.

All spasmodic action, or involuntary motion of voluntary

muscles is occasioned by want of controlling power in the
superintending nerves. When muscles of voluntary motion
have power to act, and there is nothing to control this power,
they yield obedience at once to their primary law of
contractility. This law would secure a regular contraction of
the muscles, with distinct intermissions, if there was no other
force to interfere; but the controlling force is seldom entirely
exhausted and then only for short periods. In some cases of
tetanus the controlling power is nearly or quite exhausted for
a while, and then the muscles contract in obedience to the
simple primary law of contractility, with tremendous force. In
these cases the muscles possess no more contractile force
than they do in a high state of health, when they manifest no
disposition to act spasmodically; for they can then only be
full of the contractile power, and this should always be their
condition. But while the cases are quite infrequent where the
controlling power is as fully exhausted as it is in the worst
form of tetanus, it is common to meet with a partial
deficiency of it. This partial loss of the controlling power
manifests in different ways according to the form and
function of the organs of which they are a component part.

In the stomach a suspension of the controlling power

occasions spasmodic action by paroxysms, as in cases of
vomiting. This state of the stomach may be readily induced in
most persons by various substances. The sulphate of zinc or
white vitriol, will probably produce as rapid temporary
exhaustion of the controlling power, as any other substance
that can be used with equal safety. In the bilious colic we
often find spasmodic stricture of the longitudinal bundles of
muscular fibers of the colon.

In the heart and arteries, deficiency of controlling power

sometimes manifests itself by a regular, strong and steady
trip-hammer pulse; when the contractile force of these organs
is feeble, we have a feeble, quick and frequent pulse, as in
typhus fever and other forms of debility. Deficiency of
controlling power in parts that possess no well developed
muscular fibers shows itself variously, according to
circumstances. A loose state of the bowels exists only
through lack of power. Some have supposed that nature
quickens the peristaltic motion of the bowels for the purpose
of carrying off offending matter. This is a mistake. The
motion of the bowels is quickened and whatever comes into
them will get a through passage, friend or foe; but this is from
necessity, not from design or choice.

The only reason that can be assigned for any changes from
the natural condition of function or structure, in any part of
the body, is want of power at the time to prevent it. And
"disease is remedial" in the same sense in which the highest
state of health is remedial. At all times, under all
circumstances, and in every condition of the system the vital
economy maintains every department of life at the highest
point of freedom possible under the then existing
circumstances.

To save life it becomes necessary, apparently, to lose it. In

most parts of the body vital action is suspended, save what is
necessary to keep them in a resuscitable state. The great
nutritive apparatus, throughout its whole extent, is put at rest.
The function of the brain, the mental function, is still. All
voluntary motion subsides; and action in the lungs and in the
heart and arteries is scarcely perceptible. Life is at a very low
ebb, yet just this state of things is called for by the extremity
and necessity of the case. The curtailment of expenditures to
this extent is either unavoidable by positive exhaustion, or it
is essential to the safety of the citadel of life and for securing
reinforcements from the recruiting faculty that remains
unaffected in the deep nervous centers. In this case, as in the
mild one, the symptoms are proportioned with great exactness
to the nature and extent of the difficulties. In all cases of
impaired health, and disease is but impaired health, the end to
be answered is a straightforward one; to bring up arrears of
damage and replenish power. There is no turning aside or
special effort made to expel or frighten the "monster disease,"
that figment of the dark ages, whose huge spectral form has
so long and so woefully haunted the medical profession.

In alcoholic sanguineous apoplexy, deficiency of force in

the cardinal vessels of the brain, is the immediate occasion of
their congestion; compression of the brain by the congestion
suspends its functions and occasions, for the time being, loss
of sense and motion. The accumulation of reiterated injuries
of the delicate network texture of the brain, beyond the
current ability of the recuperative instrumentality of the parts
to cancel, while the general function of the brain was
sustained at its ordinary standard of activity, has reached a
point of degree that calls loudly for immediate relief. And the
only way in which relief can be afforded is by concentrating
or using a large force at the immediate seat of difficulty
where the lesion is that needs to be repaired, and this cannot
be affected without depriving some parts of a portion of their
ordinary appropriation of power.

In this process of natural cure — when it is left to be

natural, the demonstration or manifestation of phenomena is
unavoidable. While it may reveal a sad, and, it may be, a
most alarming state of the very citadel of life, the process
itself is void of danger. It should be well understood that
there is never any danger in symptoms, however severe or
threatening they may appear. If the symptoms denote great
difficulty and imminent danger, the difficulty or danger lies
back of the symptoms. The latter may indicate the locality of
the former, and sometimes, in some measure their extent, but
never compose them. A removal of the symptoms is not
certain evidence that the difficulty is removed; on the
contrary, it is morally certain that difficulties are not
unfrequently seriously aggravated by the removal of
symptoms. A correct understanding of this branch of my
subject is of prime importance, for a critical knowledge of
symptomatology would make startling disclosures. It would
prove beyond a cavil, the utter baselessness of the common
theory and practice of medication, and by the term
medication here I mean the use of stimulants of all kinds and
grades, whether prescribed for and taken by the sick, or used
by persons in health.

That stimulants seem to do good, is a fact of too common

occurrence to be questioned. And that a mere novice in
medicine may apparently perform wonderful cures with
stimulants or poisonous substances, is equally incontestible.
A short time since, I fell in with a very honest, intelligent, and
worthy farmer, a staunch disciple of Hahnemann, just from a
homeopathic establishment with a package of sweating
powders. "I can sweat hundreds of persons with this
medicine," says the unwavering believer of homeopathy. "I
have cured myself and others many a time of rheumatism and
other diseases by thorough sweating." Another man, of the
allopathic school, told me that he was subject to bilious
affections and was obliged to take calomel to cure them. His
practice was to keep it by him and take it freely, at his own
discretion.

Many women and men know that a cup or two of strong

green tea will ordinarily "cure" for the time a sick headache.
Opium eaters and rum drinkers cure opium and rum "blues"
with opium and rum. "Hair of the same dog cures the bite."
This is like the homeopathic principle of "Similia similibus
curantur" [minute doses of a drug that produces symptoms
similar to a particular disease will produce a cure of that
disease].

When the jaded animal lags and moans under repeated

goadings, a deeper thrust of the same spur into the sore spot
excites to fresh activity. But sooner or later "pay day will
come," and nature demands of the violators of her laws a
liquidation of principal with compound interest, and now
gives no heed to domestic or scientific quackery. Here is one
class of facts, and an exceedingly numerous one too, and
apparent good is the characteristic basis of the whole group.
On this single slender foundation rests the whole stupendous
fabric of stimulation, or medication, or poisoning — whether
the material is procured at the grocery store, or apothecary
shop — it is all one thing throughout; antagonism to life; and
that is all there is about poisoning with any substance.

Arsenic, prussic acid, deadly nightshade, and the like, do

nothing more than to oppose life with all their might; and tea
and coffee, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, etc., do that, and can
do nothing else. They all have some power to induce action,
and they must all exert that power; and none of them
possesses a single element that can be used physiologically.
When received into the stomach, whether they are deposited
there secundum artem* or unsecundum artem, as they are not
convertible or transmutable agencies, they must be carried
forward as enemies to vitality by the general circulatory
process, to and through every part of the body, making their
rounds in rapid succession, goading and wearing delicate
structures, till their power to do mischief is exhausted.

* Dr. Jennings recognized that the damaging effect

of all drugs is not altered by the manner in which they
are given. The medical practitioner could be of good
repute, well trained, and considered scientific, and the
drug given secundum artem (according to an approved
and professional manner, or what is considered
scientific) and still hurt the organism.—EDITOR

Throwing pernicious substances into the stomach when the

body is disordered does not alter their nature, nor the
physiological relations they bear to the system. The only
difference in results between their action on a sound body and
a feeble, impaired one is, that in proportion to vigor of vital
action, their deleterious influence will be resisted and
obviated. The doctors think that they are founded on a
scientific basis, a basis of principles. Let us consult
symptomatology a little further, and see how the case stands
with them. We will take another class of facts to test the
solidity or truthfulness of the class of facts noticed above, on
which they rely for confirmation of their platform of
principles. Here in the outset let it be distinctly understood
that in a perfect state of humanity the sensibility cannot be
improved.

No artificial or unnatural means can make anyone feel

better than he or she is in the constant habit of feeling. And it
is only as the sensibility is impaired and in proportion as it is
impaired, that the "feel better" is created by excitants. Persons
of ordinary soundness of constitution and vigor of health,
who live habitually on a substantial, unstimulating diet, never
perceive any good effect from a trial of stimulants, but the
reverse. Since the temperance reformation commenced,
multitudes, who thought they had been greatly benefitted by
alcoholic stimulants, became satisfied, on a total
abandonment of them, that they had been deceived; that
stimulants were mockers. Some men desirous of helping on
the temperance reform, but who refrained from signing the
pledge of abstinence from intoxicating liquors on the ground
that they had periodical infirmities, or diseases that nothing
but rum or brandy, or something of the kind would relieve, on
being persuaded to make full trial of letting them alone, and
suffer one turn of their complaints to pass through a natural
course of recovery, and then be careful of their living, have
found that they were cured of their infirmities, and are more
strong in the belief that what they supposed were only cures
of their ailments, were both cause and "cure."
WILLIAM A. ALCOTT, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

DR. WILLIAM A. ALCOTT WAS BORN August 6, 1798.

Though he was born in the same vicinity as Sylvester
Graham, he did not become aware of Graham's work until
they both had become known in health reform. Independently
of each other, they came to the same basic concepts relative
to health and disease.

William Alcott has been referred to as the "uncle" in

Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." When one thinks of the
great work of Dr. Alcott, this reason for fame appears
insignificant. Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott, was a first
cousin to Dr. William Alcott, and almost at the same time
they adopted the health principles that we in Hygiene
proclaim today.

Though ill in early life, William Alcott was able, through

right living, to gain the health and mental stamina to enable
him to write a hundred books and numerous articles dealing
with human betterment. He wrote on every aspect of human
life; and the underlying theme of his writings was simplicity
in living. His chief objective was the attainment of a proper
relationship between man and his environment. In obtaining
from the surroundings those things that are normal to man,
one is able to create within himself an environment free of
elements that inhibit the organism in its work.

Dr. Alcott, like all Hygienists, wrote on the problem of sex.

His "Physiology of Marriage" was an early book on the
subject. Some of the subjects he covered in his books are —
the ventilation of school rooms, proper architecture of school
buildings, good housekeeping, the care of children, nutrition,
physical culture, healthful cooking, cleanliness of the
atmosphere, etc. He was motivated by the sincere desire to
elevate the level of man's existence. His autobiography,
"Forty Years In The Wilderness of Pills and Powders," is a
candid self-study.

Dr. Alcott was one of the early vegetarians in America. He

was one of the founders, and served several terms as
president, of the American Vegetarian Society, organized in
May, 1850. His book, "The Vegetable Diet," published 125
years ago, will always remain a classic. He did much to
advance the cause of vegetarianism, as did all Hygienists.
 Dr. William A. Alcott will also be remembered for his love
of mankind and of all living things. He was the epitome of
benignancy; nevertheless, he was forceful in the
promulgation of health truths, and was unswerving in his
determination to do away with evil and to bring man close to
Nature and to God.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND

MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR
A VEGETABLE DIET
By WILLIAM A. ALCOTT, M.D.

The best solids and fluids are produced by vegetable eating.

In the first place, it forms better bones and more solid
muscles, and consequently gives to the frame greater solidity
and strength.

In the next place, the fluids are all in a better and more
healthy state. In proof of this, I might mention in the first
place that superior agility, ease of motion, speed, and power
of endurance which so distinguish vegetable eaters, wherever
a fair comparison is instituted. They possess a suppleness like
that of youth, even long after what is called the juvenile
period of life is passed over. They are often seen running and
jumping, unless restrained by the arbitrary customs of
society, in very advanced age. Their wounds heal with
astonishing rapidity. All this could not happen, were there not
a good state of the fluids of the system conjoined to a happy
state of the solids.

The vegetable eater, if temperate in the use of his

vegetables, and if all his other habits are good, will endure,
better than the flesh eater, the extremes of heat and cold. This
power of endurance has ever been allowed to be a sure sign
of a good state of health. The most vigorous man, as it is well
known, will endure best both extremes of temperature. But it
is a proof also of the greater purity of his solids and fluids.

The secretions and excretions of his body are in a better

state; and this, again, proves that his blood and other fluids
are healthy. He does not so readily perspire excessively as
other men, neither is there any want of free and easy
perspiration. Profuse sweating on every trifling exertion of
the body or mind, is as much a disease as an habitually dry
skin. But the vegetable eater escapes both of these extremes.
The saliva, the tears, the milk, the gastric juice, the bile, and
the other secretions and excretions — particularly the
dejections — are as they should be. Nay, the very exhalations
of the lungs are purer, as is obvious from the breath. That of a
vegetable eater is perfectly sweet, while that of a flesh eater is
often as offensive as the smell of a charnel house. This
distinction is discernible even among the brute animals.
Compare the camel, and horse, and cow, and sheep, and
rabbit, with the tiger (if you care to approach him), the wolf,
the dog, the cat, and the hawk. One comparison will be
sufficient; you will never forget it. But there is as much
difference between the odor of the breath of a flesh eating
human being and a vegetable eater, as between those of the
dog and the lamb. This, however, is a secret to all but the
vegetable eaters themselves, since none but they are so
situated as to be able to make the comparison. But betake
yourself to mealy vegetables and fruits a few years, and live
temperately on them, and then you will perceive the
difference, especially in riding in a stagecoach. This, I
confess, is rather a drawback upon the felicity of vegetable
eaters; but it is some consolation to know what a mass of
corruption we ourselves have escaped.

There is one more secretion to which I wish to direct your

attention, this is in regards to fat. The man who lives rightly,
and rejects animal food among the rest, will never be
overburdened with fat. He will neither be too corpulent nor
too lean. Both these conditions are conditions of disease,
though, as a general rule, corpulence is most to be dreaded; it
is, at least, the most disgusting. Fat, I repeat it, is a secretion.
The cells in which it is deposited serve for relieving the
system of many of the crudities and abuses, not to say
poisons, which are poured into it and, in some degree, into
the blood, then secreted into the fat cells, and buried in the fat
to be out of the way and where they can do but little mischief.
Yet, even here they are not wholly harmless. The fat man is
almost always more exposed to disease, and to severe
epidemic disease in particular, than the lean man. Let us leave
it to the swine and other kindred quadrupeds, to dispose of
gross half-poisonous matter, by converting it into, or burying
it in fat; let us employ our vital forces and energies in
something better. Above all, let us not descend to swallow, as
many have been inclined to do, this gross secretion, and
reduce ourselves to the painful necessity of carrying about,
from day to day, a huge mass of double-refined disease,
pillaged from the foulest and filthiest of animals.

Vegetable eaters — especially if they avoid condiments, as

well as flesh and fish — are not apt to be thirsty. It is a
common opinion among the laboring portion of the
community, that they who perspire freely, must drink freely.
And yet I have known one or two hard laborers who were
accustomed to sweat profusely and freely, who hardly ever
drank anything, except a little tea or milk at their meals, and
yet were remarkably strong and healthy, and attained to a
great age. One of this description (Frederick Lord, of
Hartford, Conn.), lived to about the age of eighty-five. How
the system is supplied, in such cases, with fluid, I do not
know; but I know it is not necessary to drink perpetually for
the purpose; for if but one healthy man can dispense with
drinking, others may. The truth is, we seldom drink from real
thirst. We drink chiefly either from habit, or because we have
created a morbid or diseased thirst by improper food or drink,
among which animal food is pretty conspicuous.

I have intimated that, in order to escape thirst, the

vegetable eater must abstain also from condiments. This he
will be apt to do. It is he who eats flesh and fish, and drinks
something besides water, who feels such an imperious
necessity for condiments. The vegetable and milk eater, and
water drinker, do not need them.

It is in this view that the vegetable system lies at the

foundation of all reform in the matter of temperance. So long
as the use of animal food is undisturbed and its lawfulness
unquestioned, all our efforts to heal the maladies of society
are superficial. The wound is not yet probed to the bottom.
But, renounce animal food, restore us to our proper condition,
and feed us on milk and farinaceous articles, and our
fondness for excitement and our hankering for exciting drinks
and condiments will, in a few generations, die away. Animal
food is a root of all evil, so far as temperance is concerned, in
its most popular and restricted sense.

The pure vegetable eaters, especially those who are trained

as such, seldom drink at all. Some use a little water with their
meals, and a few drink occasionally between them, especially
if they labor much in the open air, and perspire freely. Some
taste nothing in the form of drink for months, unless we call
the abundant juices of apples and other fruits, and milk, etc.,
by that name — of which, by the way, they are exceedingly
fond. The reason is, they are seldom thirsty. Dr. Lambe, of
London, doubts whether man is naturally a drinking animal;
but I do not carry the matter so far. Still I believe that ninety-
nine hundredths of the drink which is used, as now used, does
more harm than good.

He who avoids flesh and fish, escapes much of that langour

and faintness, at particular hours, which others feel. He has
usually a clear and quiet head in the morning. He is ready,
and willing, and glad to rise in due season; and his morning
feelings are apt to last all day. He has none of that faintness
between his meals which may have, and which tempts
thousands to luncheons, drams, tobacco, snuff, and opium,
and ultimately destroys so much health and life. The truth is,
that vegetable food is not only more quiet and unstimulating
than any other, but it holds out longer also. I know the
contrary of this is the general belief; but it is not well
founded. Animal food stimulates most, and as the stimulus
goes off soon, we are liable to feel dull after it, and to fancy
we need the stimulus of drink or something else to keep us up
till the arrival of another meal. And, having acquired a habit
of relying on our food to stimulate us immediately, much
more than to give us real, lasting, permanent strength, it is no
wonder we feel, for a time, a faintness if we discontinue its
use. This only shows the power of habit, and the
overstimulating character of our accustomed food. Nor does
the simple vegetable eater suffer, during the spring, as other
people say they do. All is cheerful and happy with him, even
then. Nor, lastly, is he subject to hypochondria or depression
of spirits. He is always lively and cheerful; and all with him is
bright and happy. As it has been expressed elsewhere, with
the truly temperate man it is "morning all day."

The system of diet in question, greatly improves, exalts,

and perfects the senses. The sight, smell, and taste are
rendered greatly superior by it. The difference in favor of the
hearing and the touch may not be so obvious; nevertheless, it
is believed to be considerable. But the change in the other
senses — the first three which I have named — even when
we reform as late as at thirty-five or forty, is wonderful. I do
not wish to encourage, by this, a delay of the work of
reformation; we can never begin it too early.

A vegetable diet promotes and preserves a clearness and a

generally healthful state of the mental faculties. I believe that
much of the moral as well as intellectual error in the world,
arises from a state of mind which is produced by the
introduction of improper liquids and solids into the stomach,
or, at least, by their application to the nervous system. Be this
as it may, however, there is nothing better for the brain than a
temperate diet of well-selected vegetables. This Sir Isaac
Newton and hundreds of others could abundantly attest.

It also favors an evenness and tranquility of temper, which

is of almost infinite value. The most fiery and vindictive have
been enabled, by this means, when all other means had failed,
to transform themselves into rational beings, and to become,
in this very respect, patterns to those around them. If this
were its only advantage, in a physiological point of view, it
would be of more value than worlds. It favors, too, simplicity
of character. It makes us, in the language of the Bible, to
remain, or to become, as little children, and it preserves our
juvenile character and habits through life, and gives us a
green old age.

Finally and lastly, it gives us an independence of external

things and circumstances, that can never be attained without
it. In vain may we resort to early discipline and correct
education — in vain to moral and religious training — in
vain, I had almost said, to the promises and threatenings of
heaven itself, so long as we continue the use of food so
unnatural to man as the flesh of animals, with the condiments
and sauces, and improper drinks which follow in its train. Our
hope, under God, is, in no small degree, on a radical change
in man's dietetic habits — in a return to that simple path of
truth and nature, from which, in most civilized countries,
those who have the pecuniary means of doing it have
unwisely departed.

In one point of view, nearly every argument which can be

brought to show the superiority of a vegetable diet over one
that includes flesh or fish, is a moral argument.

Thus, if man is so constituted by his structure, and by the

laws of his animal economy, that all the functions of the
body, and of course all the faculties of the mind, and the
affections of the soul, are in better condition — better
subserve our own purposes, and the purposes of the great
Creator — as well as hold out longer, on the vegetable system
— then is it desirable, in a moral point of view, to adopt it. If
mankind lose, upon the average, about two years of their lives
by sickness, as some have estimated it, saying nothing of the
pain and suffering undergone, or of the mental anguish and
soul torment which grow out of it, and often render life a
burden; and if the simple primitive custom of living on
vegetables and fruits, along with other good physical and
mental habits, which seem naturally connected with it, will,
in time, nearly if not wholly remove or prevent this amazing
loss, then is the argument deduced therefrom, a moral
argument.

If, as I have endeavored to show, the adoption of the

vegetable system by nations and individuals, would greatly
advance the happiness of all, in every known respect, and if,
on this account, such a change in our flesh-eating countries
would be sound policy, and good economy — then we have
another moral argument in its favor.

But, again, if it be true that all nations have been the most
virtuous and flourishing, other things being equal, in the days
of their simplicity in regard to food, drink, etc.; and if we can,
in every instance, connect the decline of a nation with the
period of their departure, as a nation, into the maze of
luxurious and enervating habits; and if this doctrine is, as a
general rule, obviously applicable to smaller classes of men,
down to single families, then is the argument we derive from
it in its nature a moral one. Whatever really tends, without the
possibility of mistake, to the promotion of human happiness,
here and hereafter, is, without doubt, moral.

But this, though much, is not all. The destruction of

animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so
much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual — not
destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature — to
shudder. I recall: daily observation shows that such is not the
fact; nor should it, upon second thought, be expected. Where
all is dark, a difference in color is not perceived; and so
universally are the moral sensibilities which really belong to
human nature deadened by the customs which prevail among
us, that few, if any, know how to estimate, rightly, the evil of
which I speak. They have no more a correct idea of a true
sensibility — not a morbid one — on this subject, than a
blind man has of colors; and for nearly the same reasons. And
on this account it is, that I seem to shrink from presenting, at
this time, those considerations which, I know, cannot, from
the very nature of the case, be properly understood or
appreciated, except by a very few.

Still there are some things which, I trust, may be made

plain. It must be obvious that the custom of rendering
children familiar with the taking away of life, even when it is
done with a good degree of tenderness, cannot have a very
happy effect. But, when this is done, not only without
tenderness or sympathy, but often with manifestations of
great pleasure, and when children, as in some cases, are
almost constant witnesses of such scenes, how dreadful must
be the results!

In this view, the world, I mean our portion of it, sometimes

seems to me like one mighty slaughterhouse — one grand
school for the suppression of every kind, and tender, and
brotherly feeling — one grand process of education to the
entire destitution of all moral principle — one vast scene of
destruction to all moral sensibility, and all sympathy with the
woes of those around us. Is it not so?

I have seen many boys who shuddered, at first, at the

thought of taking the life, even of a snake, until compelled to
it by what they conceived to be duty; and who shuddered still
more at taking the life of a lamb, a calf, a pig, or a fowl. And
yet I have seen these same boys, in subsequent life, become
so changed, that they could look on such scenes not merely
with indifference, but with gratification. Is this change of
feeling desirable? How long is it after we begin to look with
indifference on pain and suffering in brutes, before we begin
to be less affected than before by human suffering?

I am not prepared to maintain, strongly, the old-fashioned

doctrine, that a butcher who commences his employment at
adult age, is necessarily rendered hardhearted or unfeeling;
or, that they who eat flesh have their sensibilities deadened,
and their passions inflamed by it — though I am not sure that
there is not some truth in it. I only maintain, that to render
children familiar with the taking away of animal life —
especially the lives of our own domestic animals, often
endeared to us by many interesting circumstances of their
history, or of our own, in relation to them — cannot be
otherwise than unhappy in its tendency.

How shocking it must be to the inhabitants of Jupiter, or

some other planet, who had never before witnessed these sad
effects of the ingress of sin among us, to see the carcasses of
animals, either whole or by piecemeal, hoisted upon our very
tables before the faces of children of all ages, from the infant
at the breast, to the child of ten or twelve, or fourteen, and
carved, and swallowed; and this is not merely once, but from
day to day, through life! What could they — what would they
— expect from an education of the young mind and heart?
What, indeed, but mourning, desolation, and woe!

On this subject the First Annual Report of the American

Physiological Society thus remarks — and I wish the remark
might have its due weight on the mind of the reader:

"How can it be right to be instrumental in so much

unnecessary slaughter? How can it be right, especially for a
country of vegetable abundance like ours, to give daily
employment to twenty thousand or thirty thousand butchers?
How can it be right to train our children to behold such
slaughter? How can it be right to blunt the edge of their moral
sensibilities, by placing before them, at almost every meal,
the mangled corpses of the slain; and not only placing them
there, but rejoicing while we feast upon them?

One striking evidence of the tendency which an habitual

shedding of the blood has on the mind and heart, is found in
the fact that females are generally so reluctant to take away
life, yet notwithstanding, they are trained to a fondness for all
sorts of animal food; very few are willing to gratify their
desires for a stimulating diet, by becoming their own
butchers. I have indeed seen females who would kill a fowl or
a lamb rather than go without it; but they are exceedingly
rare. And who would not regard female character as tarnished
by a familiarity with such scenes as those to which I have
referred? But if the keen edge of female delicacy and
sensibility would be blunted by scenes of bloodshed, are not
the moral sensibilities of our own sex affected in a similar
way? And must it not, then have a deteriorating tendency?

It cannot be otherwise than that the circumstances of which

I have spoken, which so universally surround infancy and
childhood, should take off, gradually, the keen edge of moral
sensibility, and lessen every virtuous or holy sympathy. I
have watched — I believe impartially — the effect on certain
sensitive young persons in the circle of my acquaintance. I
have watched myself. The result has confirmed the opinion I
have just expressed. No child, I think, can walk through a
common market or slaughterhouse without receiving moral
injury; nor am I quite sure that any virtuous adult can.

How have I been struck with the change produced in the

young mind by that merriment which often accompanies the
slaughter of an innocent fowl, or lamb, or pig! How can the
Christian, with the Bible in hand, and the merciful doctrines
of its pages for his text, teach me to feel another's woe — the
beast's not excepted — and yet, having laid down that Bible,
go at once from the domestic altar to make light of the
convulsions and exit of a poor domestic animal?*

* Since Dr. Alcott wrote this, many great minds have come
to the conclusions that he did regarding the killing of animals.
One of them, Leo Tolstoy, in 1892, in his essay "The First
Step" recognized, as did Alcott, that the regeneration of the
human spirit, as well as the human body, will only come about
when man stops killing. He states, "So strong is man's
aversion to all killing. But by example, by encouraging
greediness, by the assertion that God has allowed it, and above
all by habit, people lose this natural feeling.

"A kind, refined lady will devour the carcasses of animals

with full assurance that she is doing right, at the same time
asserting two contradictory propositions; first, that she is, as
her doctor assures her, so delicate that she cannot be sustained
by vegetable food alone, and that for her feeble organism flesh
is indispensable; and secondly, that she is so sensitive that she
is unable, not only herself to inflict suffering on animals, but
even to bear the sight of suffering.

"Whereas the poor lady is weak, precisely because she has

been taught to live on food unnatural to man; and she cannot
avoid suffering to animals— for she eats them."—EDITOR
 Is it said, that these remarks apply only to the abuse of a
thing, which, in its place, is proper? Is it said, that there is no
necessity of levity on these occasions? Grant that there is
none; still the result is almost inevitable. But there is, in any
event, one way of avoiding, or rather preventing both the
abuse and the occasion for abuse, by ceasing to kill animals
for food; and I venture to predict that the evil never will be
prevented otherwise.

The usual apology for hunting and fishing, in all their

various and often cruel forms — whereby so many of our
youth, from the setters of snares for birds, and the anglers for
trout, to the whalemen, are educated to cruelty, and steeled to
every virtuous and holy sympathy — is, the necessity of the
animals whom we pursue for food. I know, indeed, that this is
not, in most cases, the true reason, but it is the reason given
— it is the substance of the reason. It serves as an apology.
They who make it may often be ignorant of the true reason, or
they or others may wish to conceal it; and, true to human
nature, they are ready to give every reason for their conduct,
but the real and most efficient one.

It must not, indeed, be concealed that there is one more

apology usually made for these cruel sports; and made too, in
some instances, by good men; I mean, by men whose
intentions are in the main pure and excellent. These sports are
healthy, they tell us. They are a relief to mind and body.
Perhaps no good man, in our country, has defended them with
more ingenuity, or with more show of reason and good sense,
than Dr. Comstock, in his recent popular work on "Human
Physiology." And yet, there is scarcely a single advantage
which he has pointed out, as being derived from the
"pleasures of the chase," that may not be gained in a way
which savours less of blood. The doctor himself is too much
in love with botany, geology, mineralogy, and the various
branches of natural history, not to know what I mean when I
say this. He knows full well the excitement, and, on his own
principles, the consequent relief of body and mind from their
accustomed and often painful round, which grows out of
clambering over mountains and hills, and fording streams,
and climbing trees and rocks, to need any very broad hints on
the subject; to say nothing of the delights of agriculture and
horticulture. How could he, then, give currency to practices
which, to say the least — and by his own concessions, too —
are doubtful in regard to their moral tendencies, by inserting
his opinions in favor of sports, for which he himself happens
to be partial, in a schoolbook? Is this worthy of those who
would educate the youth of our land on the principles of the
Bible?
SYLVESTER GRAHAM

A Brief Biographical Sketch

SYLVESTER GRAHAM WAS BORN IN SUFFIELD,

Connecticut, July 5, 1794. He was the seventeenth child, and
his mother, soon after his birth, had to leave him because of
her ill health. Misfortune, that was his lot from birth, had a
constructive and dynamic impact on Sylvester Graham, and
the genius within him for physiological investigation
flowered as a result of the hardships he encountered. No
health reformer suffered as much as he did from
misunderstanding, persecution, and outright defiling. Here
was a man who, with great talent and zeal, sought to reform
the world through the establishment of principles that were
essential for health and conformed with the very essence of
man's being.

We today are accustomed to hero worship. We are

attracted to individuals who are to us examples of what we
consider high attainment, and whom we seek to emulate.
Sylvester Graham was able, though his philosophy was alien
to the habits of Americans in the 1830's, to instill a fervor and
respect that in many ways has not been equalled to this day.
He was indeed a hero worthy of emulation. Graham's time
was replete with reformation, and new concepts were always
appearing in religion, science, and education. The spirit of
that period was such that the old was readily discarded for the
new, but sometimes what was new was no more constructive,
or was of lower quality than what had been eliminated.
Sylvester Graham had within him the elements needed to
attract large audiences and to convert a great many of them to
a course of living that was natural, or proper, for man.

The books and articles that Sylvester Graham wrote for

twenty-one years had a great influence not only in the
vegetarian and hygiene movements but also in religious
groups. His writings were so basic that they can be read today
even by the most advanced nutritionists and physiologists
with great profit and also great inspiration. It is a sad
commentary on those who have investigated the origin and
history of ideas, that Sylvester Graham is only remembered
today because of his advocacy of whole wheat flour. In this
respect he is a forerunner, by many years, of those who are
advocating the use of whole grains because of the vitamins
and other nutrients that they contain that are essential for
health.
 That Sylvester Graham is always associated with whole
wheat flour not only indicates slovenly research but also
illustrates that writers of history are usually far from qualified
to write on the biological aspects of human Me. Those
investigators or researchers who have delved into Graham's
life should have freed their minds of medical and nutritional
fetishes. Had they done this, they would not have seen only
one small item in the dynamic health program that Sylvester
Graham helped pioneer.

Sylvester Graham never intended to affix his name to a

product of the oven; perhaps it is not regrettable that this is
so, because Graham at least is still mentioned, whereas the
names of other health reformers are known only to hygienists
and a few medical historians. Graham, when written about
even by the experts in medical history, is always referred to
as a vegetarian. Writers have ignored the physiological and
hygienic principles that motivated him and behind which he
stood all his life.

Though he was castigated and misrepresented in

newspapers, literary periodicals, and medical journals, and
even attacked by mobs, he nevertheless held fast to his ideas
and continued to advocate them all his life. Prominent people
in all walks of life were attracted to his concepts, and many
were converted to the principles of right living as a result.

He was a man who was filled with the spirit to do good,

who was impeccable in his honesty, and who strove to help
mankind because the doing of good was the only thing to him
that was worth while. The apology written by Sylvester
Graham, which follows this brief biographical sketch, gives a
view, though somewhat sad, of the honesty and fearlessness
of this great figure in Hygiene Science. When, some day, a
true and full history is written of nutrition, health, and
medical reform, he will be placed in the proper niche, and the
credit long overdue will be given him. We today, in
presenting two samples of his ideas, personal and on health,
hope they will engender in you the desire to read more of
Sylvester Graham and to gain from him the verities that
modern man so sorely needs.

Sylvester Graham will always remain a bright star among

the great thinkers of the ages. Today one can read his
monumental work, "Lectures on the Science of Human Life,"
published over 120 years ago, and obtain inspiration and
guidance.
MY SICKNESS AND APOLOGY
A Letter Written by Sylvester Graham, July 13,1840

Mr. Editor: -

It is generally understood that I have long and publicly

taught the doctrine that, as a general proposition, man causes
his own sickness and suffering — that in almost all cases, he
is more or less to blame for being sick, and that he as truly
owes society an apology for being sick as he does for being
drunk. I am not therefore surprised that my recent sickness
has occasioned many to exclaim: "Why here is the man who
taught that it is wrong to be sick, now extremely sick himself!
— He that taught others how to recover and preserve their
health, has lost his own! He saved others; himself he cannot
save!"

I frankly acknowledge that in view of the principles which

I am publicly known to entertain and promulgate, these
remarks are just; and I freely — yes, gladly confess that I feel
conscious that I owe the public an honest and full apology for
my sickness.

I now therefore propose to spread such an apology before

the public through the medium of your paper, with your
consent. And in doing this, I shall, in some measure at least,
adopt the sentiment of Madam Roland. — "He who fears to
speak well of himself is always a coward who knows and
dreads the evils that may be said of him, and he who hesitates
to confess his faults, wants virtue to repair or courage to
defend them." Or in other words, I shall speak of myself —
stating what I consider right or wrong, — praiseworthy, or
blameworthy in my conduct, — confessing my faults and
justifying my correct behavior, with the frankness of one who
more heartily desires to honor the truth for the truth's sake,
than to vindicate himself.

In order that my readers should accurately estimate the

force of the causes concerned in producing my late illness, it
is necessary that I should present them with a summary
history of my life, and the circumstances which have
conduced to shape my constitution and to modify my health.
And first: it is important that I should state, previous to my
birth, the constitution of both of my parents had become
exceedingly impaired.
 From such a parentage, under God, I derived my existence;
and yet I received from them a pretty firm and vigorous
constitution; but it was deeply tinctured with the effects of
their mental and moral, as well as physical experience; and
consequently, I inherited with a largely developed nervous
system, a highly sanguine nervous temperament, with
perhaps, a touch of the bilious; and a strong predisposition to
preternatural nervous excitability and sensibility.

With such a system, starting forward into life, — losing my

father before I had completed my second year, and soon after
being separated from my mother on account of her illness
which obliged her to travel, and being left in the care of those
who had no correct knowledge of the proper manner of
bringing up children, it is little to be wondered at, that, at the
age of five years, I had a serious fit of sickness which
apparently came near to ending my life. From this time for
about six years, till I was eleven years old, my health was
such as is commonly considered good. Thenceforward, it
became more variable, and gradually more and more
impaired, till I sank into a state of almost uninterrupted
chronic ailment and suffering; and before I had reached the
age of mature manhood, life was, for the most part, a
distressing burden to me.

This morbid state of my body, pertaining more

immediately to the digestive organs and nervous system,
naturally and necessarily affected my mind, and, together
with other causes growing out of a want of a proper
knowledge of myself, and the laws and relations of my
nature, produced a state of mental despondency and
wretchedness greatly exceeding anything of the kind I ever
witnessed or read of in any human being.

Naturally vivacious, and possessed of the social feeling

perhaps to excess, there were moments, when in company, in
which an unhealthy and excessive exhilaration would come
over me and wrap me up to a state of apparently unmixed and
exceedingly great enjoyment. But when the exciting causes
had exhausted themselves or were withdrawn, I was sure to
sink at once into commensurate depths of darkness and
misery. — And what greatly aggravated my mental
wretchedness was the firm belief that it was hereditary and
irradicable. Cowper and Chatterton and Henry Kirk White
were characters which I habitually contemplated as types of
my inevitable destiny.*

* William Cowper, Thomas Chatterton, and Henry

Kirk White were famous English poets, toward whom
Graham felt an affinity. They suffered at times from
 melancholia and their poetry reflected, to an extent, this
symptom of illness.—EDITOR

Yet with all this misery upon me, I continually felt myself
goaded to torment by the conviction that it was my duty to
qualify myself for, and appropriate myself to, some particular
vocation that I might exercise the faculties I possessed, in
some manner beneficial to myself and society; while at the
same time I experienced a living agony of consciousness that
I did not possess that mastery over myself which would
enable me to do anything with energy and success.

While fitting for college, I experienced the utmost

difficulty in applying my mind to study more than three hours
a day, and this was done in a condition of body and mind
which rendered it impossible for me to make any encouraging
progress.

Such was the state of my health, when in the autumn of

1824 I began to receive some valuable hints in regard to
mischievous effects of drugs and medicines when habitually
used for chronic ailment; and also some feeble and obscure
hints concerning the utility of a correct diet and regimen, in
all cases of chronic disease. These hints were eagerly
embraced and sedulously cherished and improved. Albeit I
was as one in the wilderness in a dark night, without a
solitary star to inform my vision, or any sure guide at hand to
direct my course. All was doubt and perplexity. Nevertheless
I slowly groped my way forward as I could, and, happily in
my case, with the sustaining encouragement of increasing
light as I advanced. Light, not emanating from the ten
thousand lamps and chandeliers, which had been artificially
arranged on every hand. No, these served only to bewilder
and confound. But when with an honest and earnest heart, I
looked steadily to Nature for illumination, and with the
guilelessness of a little child, said, "Give me the truth!" she
poured her clear and discriminating light into my soul, — not
with the overwhelming splendor of full day, but with such
increasing degrees as I was able to receive and endure, and
employ profitably withal. In short, I had no sudden
revelations of Nature's great truths; I made no sudden changes
in my diet and general regimen; but as I received instructions
I advanced, laying aside a little here and a little there, till, by
virtue of unremitting and untiring perseverance in research,
and investigation, and careful experiment, and observation, I
was at last permitted to step upon the broad threshold of that
great system of physiological and psychological truth, which
as an humble instrument in the hand of Divine Providence, I
am now suffered to promulgate to the human world.
 Two facts in the case before us, it is very important that we
should particularly notice. First: my own health was to very
little extent a motive which governed me in the course I have
described; but I was for the most part led on by an insatiable
desire to know truth; and in no small measure with reference
to the great Temperance Reform which was going forward;
and hence, secondly: I was by no means always careful to
investigate, with chief interest, those particular points which
more especially concerned my own case: and consequently, I
was often betrayed into error of practice by placing too much
confidence in the well-meant but ignorant advice of others:
and so I was, in many things, injured, and in the improvement
of my health greatly retarded.

Now, can any candid mind suppose that the vital organism
of any human being can, as in the case before us, be subject
to severe and diversified chronic ailment for fifteen or twenty
years, and particularly in the great primary organs on which
the whole system depends immediately for sustenance and
health, and yet be able, with all the energies of life
excessively impaired and the vital constitution itself rendered
extremely infirm, to put forth, under the most favorable
earthly circumstances and means, such recuperative,
renovating, and healing efforts, as will enable it, by the
miraculous power of Divine behest, to leap at once from the
depths of disease to the top of health — virtually from death
to life. No! all true experience has shown that the progress to
health is, to say the least, quite as slow as the progress of
disease. There may be some apparent exceptions to this
general rule, but they are, I think, in all cases only apparent
and not real. Yet, under the disadvantage I have named in
relation to my parentage —my hereditary predisposition, my
long continued and often very distressing chronic complaints,
the ineffable wretchedness of my mind, the great ignorance
with which I commenced a change in my own diet and
regimen, the slow and laborious progress I made in the
discovery of the truth, etc. — the improvements which I
made in health and conscious enjoyment of existence were
really wonderful. In the first place — and what I had
considered, in the nature of things, absolutely impossible —
the gloom and utter despondency of my mind began by
degrees to pass away, like a dense morning mist when the
bright sun rises upon it; and it continued to roll away, till, in
the course of three or four years, not a distressing cloud was
in the bright and cheerful firmament above me. The natural
buoyancy and vivacity returned to my bosom, and all the
enjoyments of childhood, in a good measure, returned to me.
My general bodily health did not improve with equal rapidity,
but such was its almost regular advancement that, in the
course of the period I named in relation to my mental
restoration, my bodily health was improved to such a degree
that I was rarely conscious of any remaining infirmity. My
muscular powers had increased astonishingly, so that I was
able to perform three or four times the amount of labor that I
could a few years ago. My mind, which could only endure
three hours of wretched and ineffectual effort, was now
applied with great intensity to difficult investigations in
science — eight, twelve, and even sixteen hours in the
twenty-four, for days, weeks and months in succession,
without making any very great complaint of weariness. Such
was I in the Spring of 1838.

S. GRAHAM

IS MAN OMNIVOROUS?
By SYLVESTER GRAHAM

There is a sense in which it may be said that the Creator has

made man omnivorous. He has a physical capacity for eating
and digesting and assimilating, (changing into flesh, bones,
blood, etc.) to a far greater extent than any other animal. He
can range over and subject to his use the whole animal and
vegetable world; indeed, he can almost derive nourishment
from a few of the minerals. He can subsist, and even enjoy a
degree of health, on food which is exclusively vegetable, on
that which is exclusively animal, or on that which is mixed;
and he can accustom himself not only to much or little at a
time, but to an almost endless variety in the form and manner
and hour of receiving it. In like manner, he can dwell in
almost every climate, and enjoy, everywhere, if he is prudent
in other respects, a measure of health. From the equator and
the burning sands around it, almost to either pole, he can live,
and in no small degree enjoy life. Existence is to him a boon,
even in the worst climates.

The same remark, in substance, might be made in regard to

our capability of accommodating ourselves to almost every
form and variety of dress and exercise; and to circumstances
exceedingly various as regards sleep, purity of body, and of
the atmosphere.

We may even go farther. Man has the power or capacity —

given no doubt for the wisest ends — of conforming himself
to every variety of intellectual and moral food, atmosphere,
etc. The mind may grow when fed on novels and the most
vitiated books; and the affections of the heart may be in some
degree developed in the worst atmosphere and under almost
the worst influences. In one word, man is not only
omnivorous — susceptible of deriving nourishment from all
things — physically, but also mentally and morally.

But because he can subsist on all things, does it therefore

follow that he must eat all things? In morals — though he
may form character under the worst influences, does it follow
that no choice is to be exercised in regard to circumstances or
condition? In intellect — though the mind may be fed and
may even grow by reading books of a very inferior character,
is no selection therefore to be made? In physical matters —
because man can eat all things, must he therefore eat all
things? For what purpose, then, in the name of reason and
sober sense, is man a free agent? Why is it given him to
exercise the right of choice? why even the power of
locomotion, if he is to submit himself like a mere machine to
the circumstances which surround him, and use no effort to
control them, or render them subservient to his improvement
— to the highest improvement, even, of which his whole
nature, physical, intellectual, social, and moral, is capable?

That man has the power of choice will not probably be

doubted. That the Creator had an object or end in view in
giving him this right of choice, is at least equally true. But do
we conform to His purposes — do we execute His will and
accomplish His ends, when we refuse to exercise it in regard
to the selection of our food?

Or are we to use our power of choice in regard to the books

we read, and the company we keep, and yet eat at haphazard,
guided by no rules — except to eat, if possible, everything we
can — and exercising no right of selection? Shall we consider
ourselves responsible to God for this very right of choice in
everything else except food and drink, while here there is no
responsibility at all?

With this view — and is it not a fair one? — how strange it

is, that because man can eat animal food and derive
nourishment from it, and even enjoy a measure of health in its
use, therefore he must use it! How strange it is, that while this
is the strong argument — and almost the only one worth the
name of argument — in favour of flesh-eating, mankind
should so blindly adhere, with a sort of superstitious regard,
to a practice so questionable, and in our own view, so
barbarous!

In the exercise of the right of choice, and especially where

food of almost every kind is abundant, is it not our obvious
duty to select our food; to be guided in regard to quality,
quantity, modes of preparing it, etc., by a wise reference, not
merely to health — for we have already seen that we can
subsist on almost everything — but to the highest health?
Should we not so eat as will produce the greatest possible
permanent health and vigour of body, and consequently the
greatest health and vigour of mind and soul?

Here we shall be interrupted by the old objection that it is

impossible to know what food is best; that on this subject
even "doctors disagree" most essentially; that it would be
presumption in the mass of mankind, unlearned as they are on
this subject, to hope to arrive at any just conclusion on this
subject; and that the safest way is to go on as we have done,
guided by the dim light of our own experience.

We will not stop here to show the fallacy of this reasoning,

or to show that, if sound, we do not apply it elsewhere. It may
not be necessary to do more than to urge people to act up to
the light they already possess. We do not ask them to be
governed by the rules of which they never heard, or which
they do not see to be well founded. To him that hath, shall
more be given, and in this view we do insist on men's acting
up to the light they have. If they believe bread, two days old,
for example, to be more conducive to health than bread hot
from the oven, we do insist that they ought to use it; and not,
as is the universal practice, continue to eat an article which
they acknowledge to be inferior.

But here comes one grand objection, after all, to acting up

to our convictions of duty in this matter. "I do not like bread
two days old so well as bread newly baked; and did the
author of nature intend I should eat that which is disagreeable
to me? Ought I not, as a mere matter of duty, to eat that
which I like best, provided I find no inconvenience from the
use of it?"

This objection is founded on several errors, which are

taken for truths. It is assumed that our own experience will
determine whether a thing is best for us; or at least that if we
experience no evil from the use of a thing which is agreeable
to our taste, then it cannot injure us.

But is it not obvious that to shut out the light of science and
the testimony of others in this case, is to take a course which
no wise man will take in other matters? Besides, have we not
admitted that we can subsist — without apparent immediate
inconvenience — on substances which are not the very best
for us? The mere fact that a thing does not injure us, is no
proof at all that it is the best for us.
 Another error here assumed as a truth is that our likes and
dislikes of food are innate, arbitrary — beyond our control.
Now nothing can be more untrue than this sentiment; and yet
it seems to us almost universal. We acknowledge that there
are what physicians call idiosyncrasies; that is, there are
persons, for example, who cannot at all bear a medicinal
substance which others will receive with apparent advantage.
This is sometimes extended to food, as cheese or butter.
Some persons are made sick with the smallest quantity of
cheese. But even these idiosyncracies may often be traced to
an unnatural or disgusting early association of ideas or things,
and can frequently be cured.

Aside from these cases, however — and they are not very
frequent (though, by the way, they are most frequent in
communities whose practices in regard to food are most at
war with the laws of health) — there is no rule which is more
true than that we can, in regard to food, bring ourselves to
like what we please. Not a day or an hour, perhaps, but in a
sufficient time. In general, the change of taste, when the
conviction is strong of its usefulness, is exceedingly rapid.

The person who, for example, does not like cold bread
quite so well at first, will soon, if his faith is strong in its
utility, and if he confines himself wholly to it, find his dislike
to it disappear. It may be best for a person, in a case like this,
to attempt only one new thing at a time. If he is in the habit of
using butter or cheese with his hot bread, and has even come
to the determination to leave off their use, it may be as well to
retain them till the cold bread begins to have relish, and then
he may go on to omit them also.

In this way we may gradually — as we have said before —

bring ourselves to relish almost anything. Why should it not
be so? We can change, by custom, our moral and intellectual
tastes and preferences. We can render what books, society,
manners, and customs, we please, agreeable to us, if we try
perseveringly. So well known is this fact that nobody ever
objected to the saying of Lord Bacon, that "Custom is the
chief magistrate of man's life; men should therefore endeavor,
by all means, to obtain good customs"; nor to that of
Addison, that "it is our interests and our duty to fix upon
those things that we know to be best for us, and custom will
soon make them agreeable." And it is as true of physical
matters as of moral.

Would it not be construed into a want of reverence for the

author of the remark, we might say in this connection,
"According to our faith, so be it unto you." The power of faith
to change our very tastes in regard to food and drink is
surprising to those who have experienced its effects. What we
strongly believe we ought to like, we soon come to regard as
not disagreeable, but as agreeable; and lastly as preferable.

The desire to change our food frequently, so common

among us, would be a difficulty here, were it not for the
curious fact that just in proportion as we confine ourselves to
articles of food, drink, etc., which we know to be best for us,
just in the same proportion do we lose the desire for perpetual
change. Thus he who has been in the habit of using bread of
inferior quality, and of being unwilling to use any one kind
for more than two or three or half a dozen meals in
succession, when he comes to use the best wheaten bread,
and to relish it, will feel no desire to change it. The longer he
uses it, the better he will like it, and the less willing will he be
even to exchange it. And so of other articles of food. The
same remark might also be applied, to some extent at least, to
dress, air, temperature, and a thousand things connected with
our physical well-being.

This supposed difficulty — that of relishing what we

believe to be the best for us — is probably one of the great
stumbling blocks in the way of reform. Every one wishes to
enjoy his food; few indeed are willing to be always denying
themselves; and the idea of eating, through life, a thing which
at present they dislike, appears so painful that they are
discouraged. But if the principles which have been laid down
in this article are well founded, it is obvious that no self-
denial is to be put in requisition. The articles we so much
dislike at present are shortly to become as agreeable to us as
those we now use; and the latter, so far as we deem them
improper for our use, are to be regarded with comparative
indifference, and some of them perhaps with positive dislike.

Could these views be fully entered into by those who are

erring, in respect to diet, from the path most conducive to
health, how would it change the whole aspect of things! And
it is extremely desirable that they should be understood, for
otherwise people cannot generally be expected to renounce
their table pleasures, even though they believe them to be
injurious. It is proper to mention, here, that it is quite
important, even in a physiological point of view, that we
should relish what we eat, though physiology does not require
us to enjoy the highest degree of pleasure in our food. It is
sufficient for the purposes of health, if we can take pleasure
in what we eat, without taking the highest degree of pleasure.
Still it ought here to be added that this highest pleasure is in
fact reserved for those who eat those kinds of food most
conducive to health, as they can abundantly testify. No
epicure ever enjoyed so much of mere gustatory pleasure, in
the very midst of its dainties, as the man of simplicity and a
pure stomach does with his loaf of bread, or his basket of
fruit.

There is one thing more to be added in this place. Not that

it is indispensible, but only because it will greatly facilitate
the progress and soothe the path of him who aims at
reforming himself. He should never eat a thing which is more
pleasant to the taste, when something which is less pleasant
would satisfy. If rice is before him when he seats himself at
his table, he should never add to it butter, molasses, cream,
etc., if he can get along comfortably without any of them. Nor
should he add butter, if molasses will suffice for his wayward
taste; nor molasses, if butter will satisfy. So of pudding, or
bread, or anything else. In a word, let him never eat a mixed
dish when he can enjoy, even tolerably, a simple one; nor eat
a variety when he can be tolerably well satisfied with one
dish. Few are aware of the importance of this last rule.
Thousands, who now eat mixtures, and seem to demand
variety, would find themselves satisfied with simples, if they
have a pure, healthy appetite, provided they confine
themselves to them, and let dainties alone. But when one has
begun upon a spiced or sweetened dish, or when he sits down
to eat with only half an appetite, it is no wonder plainer food
will not serve him. No wonder he calls boiled rice tasteless,
bread dull, beans flat, and apples and potatoes unsatisfying.
No wonder he desires with them sugar, molasses, vinegar,
etc., etc. Nor must we come back, after eating a plain dish till
our hunger is appeased, by way of compensation, to more
savoury dishes. Our path — if we would reach the goal —
must be ever onward.

RUSSELL T. TRALL, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

RUSSELL THACTER TRALL WAS BORN IN 1812, at a time

when the United States of America was freeing itself from the
last shackles that kept it from becoming a nation with full
freedom. Yet America, though freed of British influence at
this time, was far from being a nation of men who were
unfettered. Man's living habits were so contrary to natural law
that he was held in bondage by his faulty behavior. Dr. Trall
was not only a medical revolutionist; he was, as a health and
medical reformer, dedicated to the emancipation of man
through knowledge of physiological and hygienic principles.

Dr. Trall, through illness, learned of hygiene and spent a

lifetime advocating the basic tenets of physiology as applied
to everyday living. It could be said of him that he was the
greatest educator, through his extensive teachings of the
gospel of health, the world has ever known.

He was the founder of a school that graduated hundreds of

Hygienists with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. It first
opened its doors in 1853 in the city of New York and
continued as a school in the 1870's in Florence Heights, New
Jersey. Except for the early hygienists before his time and a
few others, all of the basic health reformers saw the first clear
presentation of the principles of health in the classrooms of
this great institution.

As editor of the Water-Cure Journal, a name far from

appropriate because what it covered was actually all of life,
he was, for many years, the leader of a great group of writers
who expounded hygienic principles and practices in its pages.
Later, as editor of the Herald of Health and the Gospel of
Health, Dr. Trall reached hundreds of thousands of
Americans with his message of hygiene.

To clearly define this man and his thinking would require

hundreds of pages. The constructive influence that he exerted
would require as many more. Dr. Trall was a man of
impeccable honesty. He was uncompromising in his
dedication to truth. Moral principles animated his work and
controlled every move he made in health reform. He typified
in his living what all the hygienic reformers had, a complete
abhorrence for expediency and compromise. His credo was
not merely verbal mutterings; whenever there loomed on the
horizon a threat that might compromise the hygienic
principles, or anything that was alien to the highest of ethics
in their promulgation, he did not hesitate to counteract what
was evil.

We, today, can profit a great deal from the pioneers in

Hygiene who strove to preserve the purity of the hygienic
principles. In the Gospel of Health for January 1867, edited
by Dr. Trall, we find therein an example of his high ethics.
Therein he gave the reason for severing all connections with
the proprietors of the magazine, The Herald of Health, that he
had edited for almost twenty years. And what was the cause
of his breaking off with this journal? It was the claim that had
been made in the Herald of Health that taking turkish baths
would lead to the recovery of health. Dr. Trall had
remonstrated with the proprietors of the magazine that their
claim was contrary to hygienic principles and untrue. The
indifference shown to Dr. Trall's plea left no alternative but to
sever relations with it.
WHO ARE THE
HEALTH TEACHERS?
By RUSSELL T. TRALL, M.D.

For a period of about three thousand years there has been a

medical profession to whom all the world has looked up to as
the recognized teachers of the laws of life and conservators of
the public health. This medical profession has always
professed to be in possession of a true science of medicine,
whose principles, applied to the various circumstances of
disease, constituted the proper healing art. Through many
centuries its ranks have been honored and distinguished by
men of exalted character, extensive learning, great
experience, untiring industry, and unquestionable
benevolence and honesty. Its schools have been numerous all
over the civilized world, and richly endowed with libraries,
museums, and laboratories, and its hospitals and clinics have
afforded ample opportunities for practical instruction for the
diagnostication of diseases and the administration of
remedies.

Yet what has the world been profited by all this? How
much better informed are the people in relation to the laws
and conditions of life and health, so far as this medical
profession is concerned, than it was three thousand years ago?
And why is it that the veriest charlatan, the acknowledged
ignoramus, and the most consummate quack, in this
enlightened age, is allowed to compete, successfully, with the
educated physician, for the public confidence and patronage?

These are grave questions. Who can answer them? Perhaps

a reference to a few of the authorities will suggest the solution
of these problems.

Said the late John Abernethy, M.D., of London, familiarly

known as "Dr. Abernethy the Good," because of his sterling
honesty and true philanthropy — in a lecture to a medical
class: "There has been a great increase of medical men of late,
but, upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion."

Said the eminent Dr. Lugol, of Paris: "We are following an

erroneous course in our investigations, and must resort to new
modes if we would be more successful."
 Said Dr. Evans, Fellow of the Royal College, London:
"The medical practice of our day is, at the least, a most
uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy
nor common sense to commend it to confidence."

Said Professor Gregory, of the Edinburgh Medical College,

to his medical class: "Gentlemen, ninety-nine out of every
hundred medical facts are medical lies; and medical doctrines
are, for the most part, stark, staring nonsense."

Said the famous English surgeon, Sir Astley Cooper: "The

science of medicine is founded on conjecture and improved
by murder."

Said John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S., the most

accomplished medical scholar and author of modern times:
"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon, and the
effects of our medicines on the human system is in the highest
degree uncertain; except, indeed, that they have destroyed
more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined."

Says Professor A. H. Stevens, M.D., of the New York

College of Physicians and Surgeons: "The older physicians
grow, the more skeptical they become of the virtues of
medicine, and the more are they disposed to trust to the
powers of nature."

Says Professor E. R. Peaslee, M.D. of the same college:

"The modus operandi of medicines is still a very obscure
subject. We know they operate, but exactly how they operate,
is entirely unknown."

Says Professor S. D. Gross, of the Jefferson Medical

College, Philadelphia: "Of the essence of disease very little is
known; indeed, nothing at all."

Says Professor Paine, of the New York University Medical

School, and author of "Institutes of Medicine"—a work of
acknowledged scholarship: "Remedial agents act on the
system in the same way as do the remote causes of disease.
They cure one disease by producing another."

From these ample testimonials, which could be extended

indefinitely, it seems pretty conclusive that the regular
medical profession has as yet done nothing in the way of
leading the people into better fashions and more healthful
habits. It has always been contented to let the people go on in
their violations of the laws of life and health, and then, when
disease, which is the inevitable penalty of transgression,
occurs, dose and drug at the penalty.

It is impossible for drug doctors to be health teachers. Their

whole system is in violation of every law of the vital
organism. Every dose of poison is an outrage against nature,
and a war on the human constitution. The false and absurd
dogmas of the drug system never did, and never can do
anything for the people, except to mislead them.

The hygienic writers and practitioners are the true and the
only health teachers. And we have abundant evidence that
they have done more, in the last dozen years, to teach the
people the essential nature of disease, the real action of
remedial agents, and the absolute conditions of health, than
the regular medical profession has done in three thousand
years. Thousands, yes, tens of thousands, of families in the
United States have learned of them to preserve their health, as
a general rule, and to find a restoration to health in the use of
simple hygienic means, always at their command, in the
exceptional cases. They have learned, in this way, to discard
drugs and to patronize no doctors. And we claim, in
conclusion, that the Water-Cure Journal alone has done more
to reform the unphysiological habits of the people, and check
the deteriorating tendency of the human race, than all the
medical journals of all the drug medical schools have done
since the days of Adam and Eve.

A RARE LETTER

Written by RUSSELL THACTER TRALL, M.D.

Florence Heights, N. J.
April 4, 1874.

Mr. Hoppen
Dear Sir:

I have yours of 2d. The alcoholic question cannot be

discussed scientifically without attacking the principle of
drug medication and this the Tribune would not do nor permit
me to do. I have read that journal from its first number to its
last, and I regard it now (whatever it has been) as one of the
most unprincipled journals in existence. It will publish
anything, pro or con, on any subject if it thinks it will make a
sensation and pay — not otherwise.
 No person who admits the principle of drug medicines —
that poisons are proper remedies — can argue, on scientific
grounds, against alcoholic beverages.

This is why nearly all the temperance literature of the

world is mere twaddle, and the "Bible Argument" all bosh.

If I ever am able to complete the large work I have in hand

I shall give this whole subject a thorough ventilation. But I
doubt if there is a periodical in the country, scientific, secular
or religious, that would risk its interests by publishing my
medical notions.

Very truly,
R. T. TRALL, M.D.
 This brief letter in Dr. Trall's handwriting is a fine example
of his style of writing. It shows his consistency when dealing
with scientific questions of a controversial nature.

His distaste for commercialization at the expense of ethics

is indicated by the last sentence of the first paragraph. One
can see, in the light of the present, that flexibility in ethics is
the way to moral vacuity. One must respect Dr. Trall for
being adamant in not compromising the principles of hygiene.
Law is constant and its verity eventually exposes the
charlatan.

His terse remarks concerning the temperance literature are

not evidence of pugnacity, but only of his being an
iconoclastic physiologist. The temperance workers, in
admitting the propriety of drugs, had no valid argument
against alcohol. By admitting that medicines, when given for
special conditions, are made remedial and good, they negate
the scientific arguments exposing the harmfulness of
alcoholic beverages. In fact, if the drug premise is accepted,
then alcohol is also remedial and good. Their only legitimate
argument against it would be that man does not have the right
to use alcohol arbitrarily.

To deny an individual the right to decide when he needs a

remedy (if we are to restrict its use only to disease) is to make
his will subservient to that of the doctors, who will determine
when the remedy is needed.

The large work that Dr. Trall mentions as "having in hand"

is a large treatise he was writing covering all aspects of health
and disease, the results of many years of observation,
reflection, and practice, truly a Magna Opus.

When this unpublished manuscript is found, and I know

that some day an assiduous researcher will ferret it out, it will
be the greatest of days in Hygiene Science.

Christopher Gian-Cursio
THOMAS LOW NICHOLS, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

THOMAS LOW NICHOLS WAS BORN IN 1815 in Oxford,

New Hampshire. At an early age he became interested in self-
betterment through right living. Though born almost twenty
years after the founders of Hygiene Science, he nevertheless
became a votary in the early phases of the Hygiene
movement. He was a man who also held in common with the
other hygienists the zeal for doing good. His love of man was
so great that at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 he left
this country because he could not bear seeing a brother kill
his brother. His second love was Britain and there he went, a
man who was neither against the South or the North. He was
for peace and love.

His books will always remain products of the soil on which

he was born. His "Forty Years of American Life" was first
published in England in two volumes, in 1864, and has been
re-published several times since then. One edition was issued
as recently as 1937. It is a choice piece of Americana and
covers a period of American life from 1821 to 1861. This was
the time in America when Hygiene was born and reached
great heights. This book, written in a style that was lauded by
critics in England, is an excellent example of descriptive
writing. It is a classic, and today can be read for enjoyment
and the gaining of knowledge.

Thomas L. Nichols' book, "Esoteric Anthropology," that

was published by him in 1854, is one of the great books in the
Hygiene movement.

Dr. Nichols founded the first college for the training of

professionals in Hygiene. It preceded, by a few years, Dr.
Trall's College that was founded in 1853. Dr. Nichols lectured
extensively in this country. He left no stone unturned to help
those who needed the gospel of Hygiene. He even delivered
lectures on health in Catholic convents.

In 1857 he married another health reformer, Mary S. Gove,

who, like himself, came under the influence of Sylvester
Graham. As early as 1832 she lectured to ladies on health and
life. Mary Cove's "Lectures to Women on Anatomy and
Physiology" was published by Harper & Bros, in 1846. Like
other health reformers she labored strenuously to free women
from the shackles that reduced them to a low state of
function.

CURATIVE AGENCIES
By T. L. NICHOLS, M.D.

"Prevention is better than cure," says our proverb. Even the

ratio in which it is better is sometimes set forth; and we are
told that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Our doctors either find that prevention is in no demand, or
that it is too cheap to afford them any profit; for they do not
deal in the article. The quacks advertise their nostrums,
sometimes as preventives of disease, especially when there is
some prevailing epidemic. And when there comes a disease
that the doctors cannot even seem to cure, they will
sometimes advise people how to avoid it, giving at times,
very bad advice, as in the case of cholera, when they at first
advised everybody to live on flesh, and avoid fruit and
vegetables. Experience caused them to change this
recommendation, but not until its application had claimed
many victims. The only disease that doctors have made
steady efforts to "prevent" is smallpox, by inoculation. How
can diseases be prevented? Simply in two ways: by living, as
far as possible, in accordance with all the conditions of
health; and by avoiding, in like manner, every cause of
disease; by keeping up the strength and purity of the system;
by avoiding all excess and every means of exhaustion; and by
living in such a manner as to keep free from all matter of
disease.

Strong as we may feel, and pure in our souls and our

bodies, we must not uselessly cope with the pestilence that
walketh in darkness. No man should needlessly expose
himself to the malaria of intermittent fever with which much
of the region around New York is blasted. Much less should
he sleep in a rice swamp, or take up his abode on the Chagres
River. The way to prevent disease is to study and obey the
laws of life.

The cure of disease is not accomplished by any medical

system. Nature does her own work. It is the power of life that
molds and builds up the organism; it is the intelligent soul
that first forms the body, and presides over all its processes,
which struggles against disease, overcomes it, and casts it out
of the system. No device of man can accomplish such a work
as this; and man's efforts to assist nature have, in most cases,
been full of error and mischief.

In all cases of disease, when the vital force is sufficient,

nature effects a cure. When there is more disease than this
vital force can overcome, nature sinks under the effort, and
the patient dies; sometimes after a violent and brief struggle,
sometimes after a weak and protracted one. The well-meaning
but very ignorant doctor, in most cases, mistakes the enemy.
Instead of attacking the disease, if indeed, he had any means
to do so, he begins a violent assault upon nature; he attacks
and weakens the vital energy, using poison and steel against
her, bleeding, blistering, and drugging, until he changes the
whole aspect of affairs; and nature, who was strong enough to
cope with disease, as Hungary may have been with Austria,
sinks under the power of the doctor Czar. Or it may be a
drawn battle; nature, overpowered by drugs, gives up the
struggle, and each party — nature, disease, and drugs —
occupy the disputed territory, and patch up a peace. But this
does not last long. Nature renews the struggle, the doctor
renews his mischievous interference; and life is made a long
agony by this intensive war.

When nature is left alone to cope with disease, the struggle

is brief in proportion to its violence. The matter of disease is
cast out by some sharp crisis — vomiting, diarrhoea, or
sweating — and there is quick recovery. I believe that a much
larger proportion of cases in all diseases would recover in this
way than with the ordinary methods of interference. The
mortality of some diseases is very notably increased by
allopathic medication. The cholera is a striking example.

To understand the mode of cure adopted by nature, and

how she may be really aided in her designs by art, we must
understand something of her operations. I have shown that
there is an intelligent soul which presides over the bodily
organism, as a whole, and in every minutest part. I have
shown that when a bone is broken, or an artery tied, this
intelligent power goes to work systematically to repair
damages. We shall find that it is the same in all vital
processes, both in health and disease. I trust that no person
will read this part of my work who is not prepared for it by
reading all the preceding portions.

When poison, as tobacco or opium, is taken into the

system, there is at first a violent effort to cast it out by
vomiting, accompanied by nausea, or sickness at the stomach.
This is one of the simplest instances of morbid action. In case
of failure to vomit, the next process in regard to these
substances is sweating. In one way or the other, or both, they
are expelled, unless in too large a dose, when they overpower
nature, and cast her out of the body. By nature here, I mean
this intelligent soul of the organism. They struggle for the
possession of the body; and one casts the other out; or,
possibly, it is a drawn battle, and both remain. It would be
more correct to say, that nature, trying in vain to rid the body
of the matter of disease, does the next best thing, in ridding
herself of the body.

If poison or diseasing matter is taken into the system in so

small quantities as not to call for any violent effort to expel it,
it is treated just like a few persons who venture into an
enemy's country. They are either allowed to go quietly out, by
the usual avenues, or are imprisoned and retained. Francke, a
German pathologist and hydropathist, has made some curious
observations on this point. He says, that in all cases where
poison, or morbid matter, is not at once cast out of the system,
it is enveloped in a coating of mucous, to prevent it from
doing injury, and then either carried out by the usual
processes, or, if this cannot well be done, it is retained in the
system, each atom being thus "slimed up" and protected from
doing more mischief.

But as these matters accumulate in the system, there is a

constant tendency to drive them out; and every cold, every
fever, every paroxysm of disease is such an effort. The matter
is always there, and always liable to be dislodged, and to be
the cause of diseased action, or of the effort toward health;
but when nature fails, either from the weakness of her own
power or the interference of the doctors, and the introduction
of more poison, unless she gives up the struggle finally, and
retires from the body altogether, she spends her remaining
efforts in again sliming up the materies morbi.

Sometimes masses of these slimed-up matters, medicines,

and other poisons, are collected along the walls of the
stomach and intestines, covering and rendering useless large
patches of those organs. Sometimes they appear in the form
of tubercle. In this case they have got as far as the glands, the
lungs, the areolar tissue, and even to the skin. There are many
phenomena in the cure of disease by hydropathy, which give,
to say the least, a violent presumption of truth to this
hypothesis.

But in whatever particular way nature deals with the matter

of disease, whether the product of the system or introduced
from without, the general fact is well ascertained, that these
matters are sometimes cast out at once, and sometimes after a
long course of years, during which they remained in the
system, always oppressing it, and liable at any time to be a
cause of disorder, like the aforesaid prisoners in an enemy's
country.

All this will be denied. We have, in the medical world, five

schools of pathology — the nervous, solidist, humoral,
chemical, and mechanical. They believe, respectively, that all
diseases arise from irregular nervous action, from disease of
tissues, from humors in the blood, from chemical changes,
and from animalcular or mechanical irritation. My pathology
includes all these theories, and all the facts on which they are
founded. Those who take any narrow, one-sided view of
nature, run into error and bigotry.

Modes of practice are based on these exclusive theories of

disease. The nervists deal in sedatives, antispasmodics, and
poisons, which directly affect the nervous system; the
solidists rely on mercurial and other alteratives; the humorists
purge; the chemists give alkalies and acids; and the
animalculists strive to poison the enemy, forgetting, as an old
doctor said of worm medicines, that man is but a worm, and
is liable to be killed by the same poisons.

As diseases consist of exhaustion and impurity; as

exhaustion causes impurity, and impurity produces
exhaustion, two things are requisite to a cure. These two
should be written in letters of gold — Invigoration and
Purification.

Let me make this emphatic by two definitions:

Pathology. — Exhaustion and impurity resulting in disease

and death.

Therapeutics. — Invigoration and purification resulting in

health and life.

The reader must have been struck with the constant

division of every part of our subject into three terms. I have
not sought it — it has come in spite of me. And here a third
term is wanting, which I have no language to express. It
belongs to the domain of psychology, or the science of the
soul. It lies back of exhaustion, and its curative agency must
precede invigoration. The pathological term I shall call
inversion, to express the discordance of the soul, which is the
cause of exhausting passional and physical demonstrations. It
is a condition of ignorance, unbelief, and desperation. The
opposite psychical therapeutic agency is one of insight, hope,
faith, and loving confidence in Nature and in God. It is a state
of concordance or harmonization. We may now more clearly
express the whole subject in this triple formula; and I prefer
to let it stand, just as I have worked it out, as I have been
penning these sentences:

Physiology. — Harmony in the soul; energy in the vital or

nervous power; purity in the organism. Unity of God, man,
and nature.

Pathology. — Inversion in the soul; exhaustion of vital or

nervous energy; impurity of organism. General disintegration.

Therapeutics. — Harmonization of the soul; invigoration of

the vital or nervous energy; purification. Integral restoration.

The physiological condition is that of health, harmony, and

fullness of life.

The pathological is one of disease, discordance, and

dissolution.

The therapeutical is one of hope, effort, and restoration.

So united are the three terms of each condition, that each

one may produce the two others; or if we can produce two,
the third is almost certain to follow; the best or worst results,
however, are derived from the concurrence of all three.

For instance, harmony in the soul gives energy of vitality

and bodily purity. Energy of vitality purifies the body and
harmonizes the soul. Bodily purity gives energy of life and
harmony of feeling.

Or, inversion, or discord of the soul, produces exhaustion

and impurity. Exhaustion brings discord and impurity.
Impurity brings discord and exhaustion.

On the other hand, harmonization, or faith and hope, give

energy and purity. Invigoration inspires hope, and causes
purification; and a simple bodily purification will go far to
produce vigor of life and harmony in the spirit.

Here, then, in few words,* and simply stated, is my theory

of Health, Disease, and Cure. Let us proceed now to its
practical application.

* In these concepts are actually contained the nucleus

of a psycho-biological approach to health and disease.
There is more to what Nichols says than appears at a
 first perusal; therefore, these passages should be read
many times, and with each reading there should unfold
before you a clear vista of health, life, and disease.
The harmonics of mind, or the science of soul, that
Nichols speaks of, encompasses a great deal. One
cannot separate this harmony from invigoration and
purity; but the initial breach that occurs in normal living
can come from a lack of orientation to truth. This
insufficiency of awareness leads to the first
transgression of health. In an organism that is pure and
sound it is quite obvious that there must be
psychological intrusion before perversity or wrongdoing
sets in, as illustrated by the first piece of candy that
seduces the child; or the first wrong act, as with the
Polynesians and other primitive people, that was the
beginning of physical decay and immorality.
In other words, vigor, purity, and mental ease are not
of themselves sufficient to prevent the fall of Man.—
EDITOR

What agencies can we make use of safely and profitably, to

aid nature in her threefold work of cure? In the answer to this
question lies the basis of all therapeutical science.

The first thing we must learn — the first principle of

medicine, and the one oftenest disregarded, is to do no
mischief. It is not true that we must do something. Unless we
know what to do, it is always safer and better to do nothing. If
we are not sure that we can aid nature, we must not run the
risk of hindering her with our blind and stupid interference.
All experience shows that, in a great majority of cases, she
effects a cure without assistance, and even in spite of ignorant
and mischievous interference.

But the moment any one is taken sick — that is, the
moment nature begins the operation of expelling some matter
of disease — everybody wants to be doing something to the
patient. Every old woman rushes in with her infallible
nostrum, and nature, who has honestly set to work to cure a
disease, finds herself hindered on every side. When the
stomach is incapable of digestion, it must be deluged with
gruels, rice water, and barley water, as if the moment one was
taken sick, he was in imminent danger of starvation. Then
comes the doctor, and if one of the common sort, the attack
begins in earnest. Out comes the lancet, and follows its rude
gash a quart of blood. Poor nature, feeling the work she has to
do, and needing all her strength, gasps at this murderous
sacrifice; but the next attack is to cover fifty square inches of
the skin with a torturing blister, and at the same time to pour
down the throat a dose of one of the most virulent poisons of
the materia medica. This process goes on, and when nature
finally sinks, not under the disease, but under the added
exhaustion of a vile and torturing medication, everybody
consoles himself with the idea that, "everything was done that
could be done"; it should be added, "to kill the patient"; and if
you add "scientifically," you are not far from the truth.

Napoleon, a man of grand intuitions, once said to the

Italian physician, Antonomarchi: "Believe me, we had better
leave off all these remedies. Life is a fortress which neither
you nor I know anything about. Why throw obstacles in the
way of its defense? Its own means are superior to all the
apparatus of your laboratories. Covisart candidly agreed with
me that all your filthy mixtures are good for nothing.
Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the result
of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to
mankind. Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in
my pharmacopoeia."

Thus spoke the intelligence of a great soul, and this is what

everybody ought to learn. Napoleon had a true reverence for
nature.

If medicine were only as wise as surgery! When a man has

a broken bone, the surgeon is content to put it in its place,
prescribe rest, and a moderate diet, and leave nature to mend
it. But when it is the liver or lungs that are disordered, the
doctor bleeds, and blisters, and doses, gives alterative,
cathartic, opiate, and does more mischief in a week than
nature can remedy in a year. I confess that I have no patience
with the folly of patients, or the ignorance, to call it no worse,
of physicians. But when I see how the latter are educated, and
the former deceived, I cannot wonder at the result. I have seen
hundreds of medical students; I have attended the lectures of
two medical colleges of the first class in this country; "I speak
what I know, and testify what I have seen." What Napoleon
says is true of the highest and most enlightened. What, then,
must be the truth respecting the great mass of medical
practitioners? Of some of their practices I shall have occasion
to speak more particularly, when considering Diseases and
Treatment.

But there are things that we may do, wisely, safely, and
with good results. To know these, is the true science of
medicine. To do nothing, is better than to do mischief; but it
is not so well as to do something that should be done. When a
man has fallen into a ditch, we had better do nothing than to
jump upon him, and bury him deeper; but it is much better to
carefully pull him out, cleanse him of the mud, put him in the
right path, and send him on his way rejoicing. Some of our
means of cure may seem unnatural; but they are only so as
they are adapted to an unnatural condition, like the process of
pulling the man out of the ditch, and cleansing his garments.

We can do all that is practicable to remove the causes of

disease, which must be ascertained by a thorough and
searching examination. Patients cheat physicians and even
themselves, as to the causes of disease. How seldom will a
woman confess to tight lacing, or a man to gluttony. We must
not expect confessions of secret licentiousness. But we must
do all in our power, and admonish the patient as to the
existence of hidden causes of evil.

There are potent causes of disease that are not easy to

remove. When a feeble, nervous woman is crushed, soul and
body, by a brutal husband — I beg pardon of all honest
brutes, but there is no other word — it is not so easy to take
her away from, or to send him away from her, and such cases
are generally hopeless. The husband may be the only real
cause of disease; and without a separation, there can be no
cure. So of many false and oppressive social conditions.
Children are oppressed by unsympathizing parents; parents
have their lives cursed by unloving children; vast numbers
suffer from relatives on whom they are dependent. Some of
the benefits which patients receive at hygienic establishments
come from their having left such causes of disease behind
them; but when they go back, they are too apt to relapse, and
Hygiene is blamed, because its effects are not permanent.
There are thousands of victims to matrimony of both sexes,
for whom a divorce would be the best possible prescription.

The common causes of exhaustion may generally be

removed, unless they belong to the condition of the patient,
such as his necessary avocations, care, trouble, etc.; or unless
the disease itself is of an exhausting character, as leucorrhoea
in women, and involuntary seminal emissions in men. We
may change the diet, or interdict food entirely; we may
remove the patient from bad air, or secure him ventilation; we
may attend to external cleanliness.

In short, we may safely and rightly, as far as possible, give

to the sick one the conditions of health; and in this we have
done much for his restoration. I mean, of course, such
conditions as apply to a sick person; for in this, as in all other
things, there is one grand rule for practice: that we adapt our
measures to the condition of the patient.

"Cease to do evil, learn to do well," applies to sins bodily

as well as sins spiritual. But what is well for the well man is
not always well for the sick. It is well for the well man to eat,
drink, take exercise, labor, and partake of all enjoyments. But
the best thing for the sick man may be to entirely stop eating,
and to rest, mind and body. The effort to digest food, to take
exercise, and to "keep up," is a cause of exhaustion. Many
patients at hygienic establishments are injured by long walks,
as well as by too much treatment. They are ambitious to cope
with others in exercise; they want to get their money's worth
of hygiene; exhausted by both, they eat to get strength, and
overtask again the digestive powers; finally they sink under
this triple mischief, and go away worse than they came.
Fasting, or absolute rest to the stomach, is one of the simplest
means of cure, in both acute and dyspeptic diseases. No food,
not one atom of any kind, should ever be taken in any case of
acute disease, until it is cured. Fast and drink water is all that
is needed for the digestive apparatus.

And in all chronic diseases, which are dependent upon or

complicated with dyspepsia, the whole digestive system
needs rest, absolute rest, more than anything else. Let such a
patient resolutely starve, not live on slops, but eat nothing,
and drink water for three weeks; and it will go farther to
secure a cure than months of the most active treatment, when
this is neglected. I have seen this tried, and know its efficacy.
When the patient begins to eat, it should be the smallest
amount of food, and of the simplest quality.

Light can never be neglected as a curative agent, or a

condition of health. The sick are often shut up in darkness. On
the contrary, they should have an extra share of light, and, if
possible, bask in the direct rays of the sun.

Congeniality, friendship, love, faith or trust, hope, and joy,

in all their expressions, should never be lost sight of as
remedial agents, giving vigor to the soul, and influencing
every bodily function.

This is the materia medica of nature.

GEORGE H. TAYLOR, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

GEORGE H. TAYLOR WAS BORN ABOUT 1810. Through his

writings and lecturing, he did much to help establish the
Hygiene movement in this country. His forceful style and
logical presentation of facts relating to human physiology and
anatomy did a great deal to advance the care of individuals
sick with paralysis or disorders of motion. In this
understanding of functional anatomy he had no peer and was
the forerunner of those who have made a specialty of
muscular development and body moulding. But Dr. Taylor
differed from them in a fundamental way. Body improvement
through strengthening of muscular tissue, though emphasized
by him, was only one factor in his work. All other essentials
had to be considered and properly related to insure normal
body functioning.

Doctors of other schools of medicine saw the great value of

Dr. Taylor's approach to structural disorders and often invited
him to address them. In 1884 Dr. Taylor attended the 37th
session of the American Institute of Homeopathy, and in his
paper on "History and Therapeutics of Pelvic and Hernial
Affections" he demonstrated the insight that he had
concerning structural disorders and the physiological
requirements of the human being. He emphasized the fact that
"symptoms are not causes" and that to understand diseases of
the body one must look behind "subjective phenomena and
symptoms that are secondary in their nature. They do not
deserve to usurp, much less to displace the attention that is
due to the primary element, which precedes and dominates
these. The local symptoms are forever hoodwinking and
leading astray both the sufferer and the medical adviser, and
stealing the attention from their origin and source."

The locale of a structural anomaly, though important, was

not, to Dr. Taylor, the source from which it arose. He sought
to dispel the errors that arise from subjective evaluation. He
said concerning this, "This is largely accomplished under the
inspiration of the sufferer herself whose judgment is always
limited to data which include the feelings and exclude the
facts of a physical and mechanical-physiological nature on
which these, at the last analysis, utterly depend. These are
apt, therefore, to be also neglected by the physician, much to
the derogation of medical science in its progress in
connection with natural science to which it should always be
subordinate."
HYGIENIC AND DRUG PRACTICES
OF MEDICINE CONTRASTED
By GEORGE H. TAYLOR, M.D.

The terms "medicine" and "medical" as used by the

early Hygienists are not in any way related to drugs or
the giving of medicine. As Doctors of Medicine they
were simply teachers of hygienic principles to those
who were either in a state of health or illness.

Whoever contemplates the present state of medical practice,

will be convinced that the traditions upon which the old drug
system is founded are fast being displaced by more consistent
and practical ideas. The common sense and science of the
present day are proving an antidote for the errors of the past
to just the extent to which they can be brought to bear.
Improvement in medical practice is not so much the result of
any tendency thereto in the old schools as of the extending
and deepening of common science among the common
people, who, in consequence, demand a more rational and
effective practice of the medical art. At the head and front in
the ranks of the opposition to the timeworn errors of the drug
practice are the advocates of the Movement-Cure, and other
hygienic devices. The ideas embraced in these forms of
practice must extend far and wide, because based in truth —
but not without the opposition of ignorance and its powerful
ally, prejudice. Hence it is important that these principles
should be widely sown and deeply rooted in order to afford
timid thinkers that whole-souled self-reliance that mocks at
the opposition coming chiefly from the antique prejudices of
majorities.

In order that the reader may more readily and thoroughly

compare the principles, practice, and effects of the drug and
the hygienic modes of practice, it may be useful to place them
in such juxtaposition as will afford him a bird's eye view of
the whole subject. To this end, there follows a general
programme pursued by each method in a few forms of
disease. The disparity would appear still greater if the details
of treatment were carried out, as they are in practice, under
the eye of the physician.
FEVER. — Drug Treatment: poison the blood with
chemicals of various kinds, so as to reduce the fever and the
power of recovery together. Niter, antimony, opium, spirits,
mercury, bleeding. Result: death, or a prolonged
convalescence.

— Hygienic Treatment: The symptom, if undisturbed, soon

cures itself. The quick pulse and respiration are efforts for air,
or rather, its oxygen, which soon relieves the blood of its
noxious matters. The coated tongue is Nature's peremptory
method of refusing food, which indication must be respected.
Regulate the temperature by baths; give small and oft-
repeated doses of water. Results: rapid recovery, and the
quick attainment of the normal strength.

HEADACHE. — Drugs: cologne; camphor; strong, hot tea;

pills. The information tending to obviate a future recurrence
of the affection, is never even hinted at. Result: frequent
paroxysms of the malady.

— Hygiene. — Pure air; more ventilation; abstinence, till

the proximate elements of bile are cleared from the blood;
movements to convey the surplus blood from the head.
Result: permanent relief.

CONSTIPATION. — Drugs: physic, with the certain

necessity for its frequent repetition.

— Hygiene. — Correct food; plenty of exercise applied to

the lower portion of the trunk. Effect: radical and complete
cure.

DYSPEPSIA. — Drugs: bitters; physic; beef and brandy;

porter and other decoctions of hops. Effect: continued
treatment.

— Hygiene. — Good food, and not too much of it; renovate

the secretions by temporary abstinence; increase the
respiration through both skin and lungs, and remove the
blood of the internal congested parts of the skin by means of
cold exercise. Effect: cure, speedy and permanent.

CONSUMPTION. - Drugs: cod-liver oil; whisky; iodine;

phosphates and other earths. Result: temporary, pleasing
deception, but ultimately certain death.

— Hygiene. — The size and the mobility of the chest is

increased by movements, while its congestion is removed by
the same means, so that several cubic inches more of air is
changed at each respiratory act; the wear of the system is
lessened and the pulse reduced and the bodily forces
husbanded, by the same means; husband the bodily forces;
use proper food. Effect: all that could be desired in many
cases, and far better in all, than by any other treatment.

SCROFULA. — Drugs: iodine, chlorine, mercury, fish oil,

beef. Effect: continuous treatment; good to escape from.

— Hygiene. — Oxygen, by natural respiration; glandular

swellings removed by movements; nutrition perfected by
same means; constant exposure to light. Effect: radical and
permanent cure.

ERUPTIONS. — Drugs: physic, mercurials, and grease upon

the skin. Effect: internal disorders.

— Hygiene. — More contact with water and air; good

food. Result: temporary increase of affection; permanent
cure.

WEAKNESS. — Drugs: Brandy, rum, wine, bitters, iron,

sedentary habits. Result: continued weakness.

— Hygiene. — Afford the circulation, while necessary,

mechanical aid; employ the powers in a limited but
prescribed manner; remove impediments to digestion. Effect:
restoration.

NERVOUSNESS. — Drugs: opium asafoetida, valerian,

chloroform, spirits. Effect: more nervousness.

— Hygiene. — Oppose the morbid nerve irritation by

increasing the muscular nutrition; keep a clean stomach.
Effect: certain benefit.

PARALYSIS. — Drugs: Strychnine, electricity. Effect: no

benefit.

— Hygiene. — Direct the will into the defective channels

by movements; increase the nutrition of the defective parts;
husband the general forces of the system; abstemiousness and
correct habits. Result: cure in a majority of cases.

PROLAPSUS. — Drugs: caustics, resolvents, internal and

external supporters. Result: continued disease and increase of
the nervous symptoms.

- Hygiene. - Change the shape of the trunk by movements;

restore the power of the natural support; remove hyper-
nutrition to contiguous parts; proper food. Result: radical,
rapid, and certain restoration.

CURVATURES OF THE SPINE. - Drugs: iodine, iron,

supports, braces. Result: deformity is increased and becomes
irremediable.

— Hygiene. — Mold the vertebral bones to a correct shape

by movements; increase the power of specially weak parts,
and so restore the harmony of nervous and muscular action;
anti-scrofulous treatment. Effect: complete and permanent
obliteration of the deformity and restoration of the general
health.

The comparison might be extended in the same way to all

the diseases and symptoms of disease with which humanity is
afflicted; but this is enough. Those who are unable to see the
infinite superiority of the one set of measures over the other
must themselves suffer the ill consequences of their defective
judgment, and serve as a warning for others.

A HEALTH ITEM FROM ILLINOIS

THAT APPEARED IN 1860
For years I have been expecting vegetarians would form some
kind of community or association where the flesh as well as
the services of brutes would be dispensed with. But could we
live and thrive without the beasts? In other words, are their
carcasses, products, or services absolutely necessary for the
highest development of humanity? I have long thought not.
This idea of the flesh of dead animals giving strength or more
muscular fiber is another piece of scientific foolery. Where is
the flesh-eating animal that possesses more muscular power,
according to size, than the rabbit, squirrel, deer, or bear?

The truth is, the world over, flesh eaters, whether among
men or other animals, are not only proverbial for savagism,
but equally so for dullness or stupidity. I think man is
naturally no more a flesh-eating than he is a tobacco-chewing
or whisky-drinking animal.

Now, vegetarian and medical reformers, let us get up a

community on the individual or joint-stock plan, where no
brutes will be admitted.
 Must we have oil as a substitute for butter and lard? Seeds,
nuts, etc., yield it in abundance. The elements and combined
human power are all that we need where great power may be
wanted. Here, on this rich, mellow soil, near the rapids of the
Missouri River, is a good place to try the experiment of
producing human food by human labor only, and here, too,
this same company could erect a magnificent water or
nature's cure, with water power and fulling or • swashing
machines to wash and knead the lazy ones.

It is high time that we had a better world, and the way to

get it is not so much by trying to cure ills or evils as it is by
preventing them. We can't cure anything. There is no
atonement for the violation of physical or physiological law
but only through suffering. Are you sick? Cease to do wrong,
and heed the demands of nature, and you will get well if there
is only vitality enough left to react; and if there is not, you
will have to go to your long home in spite of quinine, water,
or the jumping-up-and-down-cure.

We do need a home of health, in this vicinity. I know of

none nearer than Moline, Galesburg, or Peoria.

HEALTH
By SOLOMON FREASE, M.D.

How excellent is health — how expressive of power and

capability to do — how suggestive of hope and joy and
kindly feeling! What a harmonious outline does it give —
what cheeks or rosy hue, beautiful to look upon — what
gracefulness of action — what an air of comfort in every
lineament does it impart! It is a boon worth all worldly
wealth, whether of gold or silver, whether of houses or lands
or costly fabrics. But how lightly we seem to regard it after
all, and how freely we squander it! Judging by our actions it
would seem as if nearly all the world were running a
headlong race to waste it with greatest prodigality — that
when lost the loss would be of no moment — that no
sleepless nights and days of weariness, of quiet suffering or
of racking pains, would be of consequence. Men and women
are continually complaining of ill health — of dyspepsia and
piles and constipations, or rheumatism and gout, or coughs
and consumption, of headaches and fevers, of spinal disease
and palsies — and yet each one seems to act as if he or she
were trying to bring about the very condition of things
complained of. And any suggestion as to a proper mode of
action to prevent these ailments is commonly regarded as
evidence of folly or fanaticism.

Men's appetites and passions are usually stronger than their

reason, and the latter is in subjection to the former to a greater
degree than is generally supposed. It is the easiest thing in the
world to convince us that a substance we like to eat or drink
is conducive to our health. Prescribe something for us that
runs in the line of our inclinations, and how quickly we see
the reasonableness of it. Recommend tobacco to a lover of the
weed for the cure of toothache, and tell him that the aching of
the tooth was cured by the beneficial effects of the tobacco on
the nervous system, and how soon he sees the force of your
statement. Prescribe brandy to a devotee of Bacchus for
dyspepsis, brought on by its continued use, and the next time
he meets you his countenance will beam with smiles — he
will hasten to tell you how much good the brandy did him,
and how reasonable it is that brandy should cure dyspepsia. A
gentleman of my acquaintance, who is a great lover of the
best liquors, and has freely indulged in them till his health is
broken down, and pains, distress, and despondency are his
constant companions, is diligent in his endeavors to persuade
all his friends who are not well that stumulants are what is
needed to cure them. He knows the good effects of them from
experience in his own case, for how often has he been unwell
and been made to feel better by their use. I have frequently
endeavored to convince him that the stimulants to which he
has indulged himself are the cause of all his sufferings; that if
he would cease to use them, Nature would resume her sway,
and in time would restore the equilibrium of the functions,
and permanent health would result; that by his present course
he is only "piling up wrath against the day of wrath"; that
each additional potion only creates a necessity for a larger
one, and that the temporary relief succeeding is derived at the
expense of the general health; that his conduct is like that of a
man in debt for more than he has means to pay, and yet
refuses to go to work to increase his capital stock, but relies
upon borrowing. He borrows of A to pay B, paying A interest
for the use of his money. B soon wants his money, and he
borrows of C to pay him, interest and principal, and so he
goes on getting more and more in debt, yet at each turn
feeling a sensible relief. At last all his original capital has
been exhausted in paying interest, and he finds himself a
bankrupt. He can see no force in the comparison. It is not in
the line of his tastes. He knows that, after taking a liberal
drink of brandy, he feels a present relief, and he never can be
persuaded that he is daily drawing upon his capital stock, and
that at no distant day he will be an utter bankrupt in health.
Death will claim him as his own.

Persuade a German admirer of lager beer that ten or twenty

glasses of it in twenty-four hours will injure his health, if you
can. The attempt to do so will satisfy him that you are an
ignoramus, unacquainted with what most pertains to the
enjoyments of life.

I have stated that men and women generally act as if health

were of no value — that they squander it with utter
recklessness. But, after all, this is only seemingly so, and
results from ignorance combined with causes mentioned
hereafter, for everyone does value health, and values it
highly, too, and there are times when the accumulated wealth
of years would be freely given to obtain it. But men and
women follow their perverted inclinations, and their reason
too often yields obedience to their inclination. Even where
there is knowledge it is often exceedingly hard, and not
unfrequently impossible, to break the strong chain of
circumstances that binds men to erroneous habits. Perverted
tastes, pride of opinion, prejudice and passion, all raise their
voices against reform, and fortunate indeed is that man or
woman who is able successfully to overcome them.

It will thus be seen that health reformers have a great work

before them. They have not only the ignorance, the
prejudices, the perverted appetites and passions and pride of
opinion to overcome, but the self-interest of some powerful
classes of society as well, before their work will be complete.
But let the facts and the principles of the hydropathic system
be iterated and reiterated till they sink deep into the minds of
men. Let them be proclaimed in the streets, published on the
house tops, scattered over the land, by writing and by speech,
till all the people are made familiar with them. Then will
come a revolution widespread and beneficent in effect, the
forerunner of numberless blessings — the harbinger of the
physical redemption of the race.
JAMES CALEB JACKSON, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

IF A HISTORY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOR WERE to be written

that encompasses all of the great constructive deeds
performed by men as they travelled the course of life, a
prominent place would have to be given to Dr. James Caleb
Jackson. But few today are aware of the value of the thoughts
and work of this great health and medical reformer.

He was born in Manlius, New York, on March 28, 1811,

and early in his life developed into a fighter for truth and
freedom. He entered the lecture field as an agent of the New
York Anti-Slavery Society and became a prominent speaker.
For ten years he held positions of eminence in this social
reform and was a powerful force as editor and proprietor of
the newspaper, the Albany Patriot.

Paradoxically, fortune befell James C. Jackson and

humanity when he was taken ill in 1846. He became so
seriously afflicted that he had to discontinue all activity. His
efforts to recover his health proved futile, and in the course of
a few years was pronounced incurable by two hundred
doctors. This only served to goad him on, and in his search
for health he gradually evolved in health knowledge. He
finally became aware of the basic principles of Hygiene
Science that he passionately and unremittingly advocated for
over half a century. His restoration to a state of health was
complete in that every aspect of his being became vitally
alive. His heart became filled with the great desire to inspire
others toward health and contentment through an
understanding of the laws of life.

Though a reformer in every way, social, political, and

religious, he realized that the basis for all personal and social
change was the improvement of the human organism.

To Dr. Jackson the sub-strata of life was an understanding

of its laws and their application in everyday living. On
October 1st, 1858, the ideals of Dr. James C. Jackson
crystalized into a great psycho-hygienic workshop, "Our
Home on the Hillside," in Dansville, New York, that became
beyond doubt the greatest refuge the world has ever known
for helping the sick and the suffering through attunement to
the laws of nature.

On February 15, 1858, a magazine called the Letter Box

appeared, in which Dr. Jackson and his old patients were able
to converse. A few words contained in the first number
showed the great depth of feeling that he carried for those
who were in need of help. Therein he said, "Each of you
knows that I pitied you, felt for you, loved you like a brother,
and went side by side with you into the strife, aiding you by
advice, by counsel, by reproof when you faltered or fell back,
by words of high and holy cheer as you pressed onward to the
goal, the recovery of your health, till the time came, when the
strife ceased, and the triumph was yours. And then I enrolled
you anew. No longer on the invalid list, you went back to
active service. The duties which each man and woman owes
to society, by you long performed, were taken up afresh, and
filled to the full with manly vigor and womanly earnestness.
You went forth from under my care not only with restored
health, but also with more intelligence and much more
comprehensive ideas of what appertains to man in the
maintenance of health."

A few statements taken from the Laws of Life, a periodical

which began as the Letter Box and which preached the gospel
of health from 1858 until 1893, mirror, to a great extent, the
motivation of Dr. Jackson. He said in 1860, "Man is so
constituted and organized and so related to the external
world, that if he will obey the laws of his being, he may live
free from sickness and the fear of premature death and attain,
to a higher degree, a physical strength and beauty. But there
can be no law without penalty; and pain, sickness, sorrow,
deformity, decrepitude, and untimely death are the direct and
legitimate results of the violation of physical law. Yet men
are so stupid and blind, as to sit down meekly and quietly
under these, in the superstitious belief that they are the means
which God employs for their spiritual purification. We have
great desire to rouse the people from this stupidity, to induce
them to think and investigate and to turn the habits that are
undermining their strength, ruining their constitutions and
fastening a curse upon the earthly lives of their future
offspring. This is the object of our labors."

The following platform later appeared in each issue of the

Laws of Life, "God has so created man and related him to life
on earth — casualties aside — that in order to live free from
sickness, he needs only to understand and obey the laws upon
his life and health depend. Therefore, as advocates of a new
medical philosophy, we insist

1. That sickness is no more necessary than sin.

2. That the gospel demands that human beings should
live healthfully as well as righteously.
3. That within the sphere in which they are designed to
 operate, physiological laws are as sacred as mortal
laws, and that mankind are as truly bound to obey
them.
4. That obedience to physiological laws would afford
security against the innumerable ailments which smite
mankind, from infancy to old age, and thus would do
away with disease.
5. That in order to recover from any curable disease, one
needs simply to be brought under the control of the
laws of the organism.
6. Therefore, that the most sensible and scientific
method of treating the sick is to bring to bear upon
them, the hygienic and sanitary laws, as well as the
mental, moral, and spiritual influences suitable to each
case. Such are our principles and we respectfully
commend them to the consideration of the people."

James C. Jackson's ideas are being heralded today in other

forms as modern medical discoveries. He, perhaps more than
anyone, emphasized the relating of man to all of the things
normal to his existence. His view of the mind, the spirit and
physical side of man was truly a total one. He, in considering
one aspect of man, considered every other.

Dr. Jackson called his work psycho-hygiene. Though it has

a few things in common with psychosomatic medicine, it is
so all-embracing that it has a distinct and different approach
to the problems of health. To Dr. Jackson an understanding of
the laws of life meant growth and development after the
recovery of health. The laws of health are absolutely essential
for the maintenance of normal function, but when normal
activity has been established, or recovery occurs, there are
certain conditions that a human being must meet as a social
being. The creativeness of man, as demonstrated in art,
literature, music, agriculture, etc., are attributes that are
normal and healthful. An organism that is in a state of health
continues to enlarge as it expresses itself constructively in
living. To properly relate himself to laws of his being and his
environment, man must not only be aware of the basic law of
life but must be motivated by love in his living.

Dr. James C. Jackson had a faculty that is absolutely

essential in every human being who takes up the cause of
human redemption. He was so aware of the health truths and
so compassionately motivated that his words and actions at
the bedside of the sick uplifted and filled the sick one with
hope and joy. Tens of thousands were influenced by him
through his lectures. His words, crystal clear and rhythmic
with life, were a verbal symphony. Fifty years after his death,
those who had heard him in the Chapel on the Hillside, spoke
of him, still inspired by his words, as though they had been
heard yesterday.

THE GLUTTONY PLAGUE —

or —HOW PERSONS KILL
THEMSELVES BY EATING
By JAMES C. JACKSON, M.D.

There is no better portion of the earth's surface on which to

support human life to old age than that which lies within the
boundaries of the United States. It is sufficiently varied and
undulating, giving mountain and glen, valley and hill, and its
products usable for food are ample. The sun shines over its
larger portions abundantly, its air is purer than can be found
elsewhere on the globe in the same number of square miles,
its climate is temperate, and in much of it the water is soft
and fit to drink. And what we call the changes of the Seasons,
are not by any means unfriendly; but on the other hand,
favorable to the health of human beings living in natural
conditions. Yet of civilized peoples having distinct
nationalities and numberings as largely as we do, there is
none that has as much sickness as we have. For this, there
must be artificial causes at work, inasmuch as natural causes
are favorable to health.

Of these artificial causes which are numerous, bad eating

habits stand prominent. I know that to these, all the ill health
which our people show, cannot be ascribed, for in almost
every direction we live falsely. We work too hard, we sleep
insufficiently, we dress unphysiologically and void of true
taste and in defiance of Art; we know little or nothing of
recreation, except in the way of excess; we understand very
poorly the intimate relation existing between body and mind,
and how the expenditure of mental force debilitates the body;
while over and beyond all these we are related to bodily life
falsely, from causes that are altogether spiritual. Thus, in a
great variety of ways there are at work a combination of
forces that fritter away, or at least cheapen our hold on
whatever of life we constitutionally possess. It would take a
course of lectures to give you even a birds-eye view of them.
So I shall let them pass, confining myself at this time to the
theme I have selected, which is

GLUTTONY, AND ITS EFFECTS ON US AS A PEOPLE

One may be a glutton in any of three ways.

1. By eating food which is unhealthy in itself or from

being badly cooked.
2. By eating too much.
3. By eating at improper times.

Let us consider these specifications in their order and then

we will look at the effects.

Till close attention is given to the subject you will not

readily perceive how extended the use of unhealthy food is
with our people. Scarcely an article can be found which is not
defective, and so in greater or lesser degree unfit to be used
for sustenance. Let me begin with raw materials. We pay high
prices for a method of introducing deadly poison into our life-
currents easier by far than that which vaccination offers.
Terrible as it is to contemplate the loss of human life which
has resulted from the adoption by civilized nations of the
discovery of Dr. Jenner, and sure as his name is yet to be
mentioned with cursing and bitterness compared to which the
reverence now garlanded about it will be as nothing, when
men shall see that the ravages of the Smallpox would have
been under correct habits of life quite inconsiderable to the
sufferings which vaccination has induced; even then shall
they find that scrofula introduced into human bodies through
the use of sty-fed and stall-fed flesh has crowned itself the
destroyer. It overtops them all, and reigns as King. Very few
families are now to be found, into the veins of whose
members this poison has not already made its way,
establishing such abnormal conditions of their nutritive
systems, as to make every one of them a gluttonous appetite,
for by all physicians who have had to do with scrofulous
habit of body, it has come to be known that their patients
have inordinate craving for food and are good examples of
the Voracious Glutton.

GRINDING GRAIN

It would be an interesting fact to be stated how and by

what means wheat first came to have its coarser parts
separated from its finer, in order the better to prepare it for
being made into bread. I do not know how greater departure
from the true method of preparing wheat into material for the
cook, could have well been devised. If there is any article of
which food in various forms can be made, that is unhealthy,
and directly productive of a large class of diseases, it is wheat
ground and bolted of its bran. I care not how careful a people
may be in all other respects of the rules of Hygiene, it is
utterly impossible that for years they should enjoy individual
or collective health, if fine flour bread is a staple article of
food. Nature cannot protect the organisms of those who eat it
against derangement for any length of time — unless they are
exceedingly robust and vigorous, and then such break down
early. The reason is, that whereas wheat when ground into
meal and eaten in whatever form one pleases to cook it which
is simple, is by far the best article for human food known,
better than flesh of animals — a hundred per cent better than
the best beefsteak in the quantity of nutriment it contains, and
fourfold its superior in the quality of its nutriment, when it is
made into superfine flour, degenerates into one of the most
objectionable materials for food our people use, and when
made into bread, puddings, or cakes should never be eaten. It
is only safe to eat this grain as a staple — as the main article
of food — when it is ground into meal instead of flour, then,
in the whole range of edible substances it has no rival. The
strongest can gather strength from it, the most delicate can
digest it with impunity. In proportion to its nutrient qualities,
it will make more muscle than any other substance known.

"LET THOSE LAUGH WHO WIN"

Your "withers" (bowels) will be "unwrung." If you wish to

eat pastries, rich cakes, puddings, knickknacks, in the shape
of "Dessert" use Superfine flour. It will assist in making your
bowels costive, your stomach dyspeptic, your head ache, your
heart palpitate, your nerves neuralgic, your kidneys
excessively active, your skin rough, rashy, and insensitive,
and partially dead. It will also assist in making your mind
dowdy, your moral sense obtuse, and aid to drive you over to
the drug-doctor who will "set you all right" by giving you
cathartics one day, and stimulants the next day only to have
you in his hands again, after you shall have pursued for a
while the same silly course as formerly.

VEGETABLES

There is a great lack of thought in the raising of vegetables.

Considered by most persons who use them to serve a very
inferior purpose in the dietetic programme — a purpose of
filling up simply — little care is taken in raising them of the
best quality. Potatoes, which are of prime consideration with
us, are oftener than otherwise of inferior quality. They are
coarse in pulp and from this cause are less nutritive.
 SWEETNESS

When once the nerves of taste are relieved from their

slavery, by abstinence on the part of the eater from depraving
substances, they begin to take on healthy action. The appetite
becomes normal. Nature asserts her sway, and instinct rises to
its true level. That which is sweet, then tastes sweet, and that
which is sour tastes sour. The bitter is distinguishable and the
acrid leaves its effect behind. Under such conditions there is
no preparation of wheat that for deliciousness can compare
with unleavened bread. This is not my testimony alone. It is
that of our tobacco-chewers, rum-drinkers, tea-sipping,
coffee-swilling, salted-down, meat-stuffed, drug-poisoned
patients and guests. Their voices are universally in favor of it
as a bread preparation over fine-flour-raised-bread, whose
chief merit in the estimation of those who eat it is, that it
ranges alongside of their other articles of diet by having been
pretty much spoiled in the process of cooking.

FRUITS

I have as yet said nothing about fruits. Of them I have a

high value, preferring them to vegetables. In fact, I have a
choice of articles — whether fruit or vegetables — in such as
grow above ground, and of such, whether growing above or
under ground as grow on upland. This, in part, may be a
fancy of mine, but in part too, I think it involves a principle,
for I have noticed that potatoes grown on hilly land and wheat
grown on upland serve the nutrient purposes of the human
system better than when they are grown on intervale. The
same may be said of the pulpy fruits having seeds and not
stones. Apples, which with us are on our table at each meal,
just as long as we can get them, have our preference if grown
on high land and in exposed situations. To show you the
extent to which we eat fruit, I may say, that besides all the
ripe sub-acid fruits, such as berries fresh and dried, cherries,
peaches, pears, plums, fresh and dried, which we wanted, we
have in the last fourteen months at our Home, eaten nearly
1500 bushes of green Apples, and a ton of dried apples. It is
not uncommon to have our patients on their arrival tell us,
that they have not for years been able to eat any fruit — it
disturbs them so. They can eat beefsteak, mutton steak, a little
broiled mackerel, or shad with a bit of toast and a little weak
tea — laying emphasis on the "weak," but an apple, it sours
and inflates, and distends and disturbs stomach, head, heart,
and heels. And their kind of diet which their doctors have
denominated "tonic," and the conditions of their systems
begotten under its use, which their doctors have designated
"bracing" — the poor sufferers have been led to believe till
the delusion died by its own demerits — to be approximative
to health. Three months residence with us changes this state
of things entirely. They can eat with impunity any article put
on the table, provided they do not eat too much. And this
brings me to my second general head.

WE EAT TOO MUCH

When it is remembered what kinds of food our people eat,

and one observes how much they eat, he will have no reason
to question their gluttony from this point of view. Honeyed
words will not answer here. The evil is too great for care
unless a shock can be given to the moral sense. Men of the
world are too far gone already, for you or me to hope for their
recovery by any uprising sense of the degradation which is
theirs from their gluttonous habits. This morning as I sat in
my room writing I heard one of our carpenters say, "I suppose
I could eat twelve meals a day." "So could I," replied another,
"I could eat all the time if I had a mind to." "How often do
you eat?" "Oh, three or four times a day, but I eat too much."
"So do I, and I believe that nine-tenths of the people eat more
than is good for them. I know I do, but how can I help it? One
does not like to quit till he is full."

This colloquy tells the whole story, and its truth embraces a
very great majority of our entire population. They are
gluttons, living to eat. — Eating is an end, not a means of
Life. Around the table they circulate like satellites around the
sun. The morning, midday, and evening meals are occasions
in which pure animalism is indulged. The opportunities
presented at these hours for interchange of the affections and
such comparisons of thought as would result in mutual good,
are not prized for such uses. They have and hold significance
only because they offer facilities for gluttonous eating. Said a
distinguished allopathic physician to me, "I am 66 years old, I
have eaten food enough to have answered my wants for 100
years, I have been a glutton all my days, and yet I am called a
small eater, and compared with most persons I am. 'Tis a
fearful sin — this overeating. I can easily see why Paul
included it among the vices or sinful habits which keep us
from inhabiting the Kingdom of God." What this gentleman
said of himself is, without doubt, true of most of us — we eat
at least one-third more than is needful, and in the case of
many of us, more than our stomachs can digest, or our
assimilative organs can appropriate. A frightful brood of
diseases is therefore not only consequence of overeating, but
also, our appetites grow by what they feed on, till at last
gluttony, or morbid desire for food, comes to take possession
of us, and eating is the object of life. I can think of no person
more needing pity, than he is, who can set about no work,
address himself to no great achievement, without associating
in his own mind with its rewards the delights which the
glutton prizes. It is a sad drawback on one's usefulness,
dignity of character, and humanity, leaving out of the
question altogether his piety.

WE EAT AT IMPROPER TIMES

Society with us has decided that the body uses up its

particles of matter so frequently and efficiently, that supplies
or relays of food are needed every six hours during the day.
Thus we breakfast at 6 A.M., dine at 12 N., and sup at 6 P.M.
There can be no doubt that this is quite as often as persons
ought to eat, and I am of opinion that with most persons it is
oftener, having satisfied myself that two meals a day is
promotive of thorougher assimilation and greater strength
than more frequent introductions of food into the stomach.
But as I have given my views more at length on this point in
my tract on Dyspepsia, I leave it to say, that the habit of

EATING BETWEEN MEALS

so common to our people is calculated to add largely to the

bringing of gluttons to birth. Outside of that class of
population called Health Reformers, I do not know where
those are to be found who do not indulge — and if they have
children allow them to indulge in this very censurable
practice. I say censurable, for it should not be forgotten, that
the stomach has to go through all the vital actions to digest a
small bulk of food that it has to dispose of a full meal. And,
that as it is a muscular viscus, it gets tired as any other
muscular portion of the body does. Besides, by frequently
partaking of food, one's desire comes to be in a ratio
disproportionate to the necessities of the system for it, and
thus an abnormal relation is established, the appetite
clamoring for gratification all the while, and the stomach
protesting against the outrage, till at length, the latter gives
way, and the wretched debauchee finds himself walking
about, the victim of his own folly - a person with hunger
knawing incessantly at his vitals, crying "give! give!" and his
stomach as vociferously shouting out its inability to dispose
of food if eaten. "Tis then, that Hell is lifted up to meet him at
his coming and becomes incarnate in him. 'Tis then, that the
lusts of the flesh run riotous races in his veins. 'Tis then, that
his nerves become telegraphic lines for the use of the
passions, and with eyes that are bloodshot he sees why a
glutton can no more than a drunkard hold communion with
God.
 THE EFFECTS OF GLUTTONY

In considering the effects of the almost universal

debauchery of our people in the matter of eating, I propose to
consider: 1. Its effects on the body. 2. On the mind. 3. On the
Heart.

ITS BODILY EFFECTS

It destroys Health. In the case of the glutton, this results

from the obstructions which his overeating has thrown in the
way of Nature in her management of his physical structure,
thus compelling her to abnormal manifestations. Now, under
this view, let us see how many diseases may be directly
chargeable to gluttony.

I will begin with the Head: Nervous headache, sick

headache, sun headache, sunstroke — there never was a man
who had sunstroke who was not a glutton; rush of blood to
the head — apoplexy — there never was a man who had a
stroke of apoplexy who was not a debauchee in his diet,
unless such person had received contusion; sore eyes —
oftener than otherwise originating in errors of diet; deafness;
neuralgia of the face originating in nine times out of ten in
chronic inflammation of the nerves of the stomach; decayed
teeth; catarrh of the nostrils, of the back passages of the nose,
and top of the throat.

THROAT, LUNGS, CHEST AND ABDOMEN

Bronchitis, enlargement of the tonsils, ulceration of the

back passages of the throat, asthma, dry hacking cough,
humid cough, pain between the shoulders, pain under the
right shoulder, under the left shoulder, difficult respiration yet
not asthmatic, casting up of food, sense of faintness,
"goneness," nausea, vomiting and common colic, congestion
of the liver, induration and enlargement of the liver,
inflammation of the liver ending in abscess, engorgement of
the spleen with enlargement of it, costiveness, piles, diarrhea,
dysentery, excessive secretion of urine, inflammation of the
kidneys, irritation of the neck of the bladder, voiding of
bloody urine, stricture of the bladder and urethra,
spermatorrhea, leucor-rhea, rheumatism, skin diseases of all
kinds, cold hands, cold feet, ulcers on the legs, fever sores,
hip disease, gout, marasmus, billions fever, remittent fever,
spotted fever, typhus fever, typhoid fever, and ague and fever,
which no doctor living can tell why a human being should
have any more than a horse, except for causes in his methods
of living that predispose him thereto, while in the case of the
horse they are wanting. Under such a statement as this, can
any of you see a natural connection between dietetics,
disease, drug shops, doctors and death? If he cannot, he needs
to have spiritual sight quickened. If he can, he gets a faint
glimpse of the havoc that gluttony makes.

IT DESTROYS THE STRENGTH OF THE BODY

A legitimate effect of gluttony in man is, as it is in a beast,

to be seen in increase of adipose or fatty tissue. By the
million, this is taken as proof positive of strength and health,
and the want of it as evidence of illness or feebleness of body.
The converse of this is true. — Fat humans, like very fat
horses, are inferior where strength and endurance are
required. It is muscle that gives strength, and muscle is lean.
When you hear a gross, fat, bull-dog-cheeked man talking to
a lean, spare man about his wanting strength, you may rest
assured that, other things being equal, the difference in their
fatness is in the lean man's favor. It is one — and not a slight
one — of the evidences of the superiority of wheat meal over
any articles commonly used as food, that it makes, when
eaten, more muscle than fat. In this respect it is far better than
Indian corn and greatly superior to flesh meat for food to all
animals to which size and vigor of muscle are essential. Prize
fighters are slowly coming to understand this view, and more
bread and less meat is eaten by their champions. Gluttony
defeats all this for,

1. its votaries eat largely of oily food,

2. They eat too much and expend vital force uselessly or
wastefully.
3. They grow lazy, and so lack strength,
4. They are proverbial for a silly sort of good nature, for
stupidity, and sloth.

IT RUINS THE SPECIAL SENSES

The wickedness of being a glutton is nowhere more

manifest than in the depravation of the special senses, which
gluttony insures. In their original purity and acuteness they
are wonderful means of enlightenment, as well as of
enjoyment to man.

The Eye — what a window to let in Heaven's light and the

beauties of Nature. Yet the glutton spoils it. The partially
blind are almost all of them made so by gluttonous eating and
drinking.

The Ear — how God has connected Himself with the soul
by means of it. Melodies that melt the heart and make it throb
to truth are ours by the ear. Yet a majority of the deaf are so
by reason of their gluttony.

The Nose — what delicate sensibilities it has. Odors that

come from "beds of scented violets," the perfume of the made
hay, the aroma of spices, the thousand and one "sweets" that
come to us as if they were borne on the gales of "Araby the
blest" — all are ours only through the nostrils; yet the glutton
has a cold, or catarrh, or polypus, or has killed his sense of
smell by snuff, or the smoke of tobacco, and so lives for years
bereft of one of the means of pleasure and improvement.

The Tongue — in it, and the cavity in which it lies, resides

the sense of Taste; but how few are in possession of this
sense in an unperverted degree. Its strength lies in its
simplicity and directness of action, and as the glutton
educates it, it is as false and depraved as one can well
imagine a special sense can become.

The Sense of Touch — As a means of improvement and

cultivation it is wonderful. Yet the glutton deadens it, till it is
of little use, and as almost all the cases of paralysis are the
result of dietetic debauch, in such instances he has deprived
himself of all use of this magnificent gift of God to man.

Now, if perversion of any of the senses places the loser in

undesirable conditions, what must be said of him who
degrades them all, as is largely done with our people in and
through their gastronomic propensities? The simplest
statement involves so heavy censure as to make one hesitate
to utter it.

IT CREATES AN APPETITE FOR ALCOHOLIC DRINKS,

TOBACCO, AND NARCOTIC DRUGS AND
BEVERAGES

I have been long impressed with the view, that in

endeavoring to check drunkenness, the Temperance
Reformers were working unphilosophically and so
unsuccessfully. For drunkenness with all peoples — and with
us especially — is a secondary evil. It is born of gluttony.
There is more than haphazard allocation in the way in which
Christ brings out the charges which the Pharisees preferred
against him. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking and
they say behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber." The
Pharisees understood the matter. They saw that overeating
gave rise to overdrinking, and so they categorically placed
them. And this is their natural relation. The bars in our
taverns and hotels are fed from their tables. Their boarders
and guests eat stimulating food in excess, and in
consequence, drink stimulating drinks. The drinking
underground saloon always has its forerunner and aid — the
eating "Restaurant." And if philanthropists, Christians, and
Temperance Men will only give the matter proper thought,
they will find that in 995 cases out of 1000, those who
habitually frequent both, drink after they have eaten.

They always have their riot after their feast. This is clear
enough in respect to the habits of English and German
gluttons. From time immemorial the English have drunk their
liquors after the dinner has been served and the ladies have
arisen. The same is true of the Germans who drink their beer.
And in the United States, at our private parties, "St. George,"
"St. Andrew," "St. Patrick," and "New England Societies,"
the wine cup passes only after the gluttons gathered together
have eaten all they can. And at the ministration of the
Sacrament, — I cite this only to show the natural relation
which eating and drinking hold to each other, — the bread is
uniformly distributed first. The reversal of this order of
procedure cannot be witnessed in Christendom. It is safe to
say then, that we make our drunkards by first making them
gluttons. Yet how few think of it. The question is like a
sealed book to Christians. Ministers of the Gospel are not
awake to the universal subjection of the people to debauches
daily made at their tables, nor to the horrible enormity of the
sin committed by invoking the Divine blessing on such
swinish orgies as our people commit at their meals.

Along with the appetite for drinking created by the passive

inflammation of the mucous membranes of the stomach by
gluttonous indulgence comes the desire for narcotics. The
thing stands thus.

1. Highly seasoned food and condiments create a morbid

appetite for food.
2. This, when gratified, calls for alcoholic stimuli.
3. The reaction from these sets the nerves of taste all in a
thrill of excitement that demands a sedative. This is
found under various forms — with our male
population chiefly in tobacco, tea, and coffee; with
our female population, in opium in its various
preparations and tea and coffee. After thirty years of
unparallelled labor by the friends of Temperance, the
nation has not made a perceptible progress. Nor will it
in time to come, till Christianity shall have a revival
of her ancient simplicities and insist that human
beings shall eat as well as drink to the glory of God.
 ITS EFFECTS ON THE MENTAL FACULTIES

The deterioration and depravation of Mind which we suffer

from our eating and drinking habits, are not easily measured.
I propose to consider this point under two aspects.

1. The quality of our mental power.

2. The degree or extent to which we possess it.

There is such a thing as a perverse mind — and for my

purpose it matters much how it comes to exist. — I do not
deny (for I do not know to the contrary) that in and of itself, it
may be perverse. This much I do know and to this point I call
your attention that ill, sickly, diseased, or depraved conditions
of body do, in a large measure, effect and determine our
quality of blood. This determines our quality of thought, and
our quality of thought determines our quality of character.
Now, I am prepared to maintain that, while mind may exist
independently of the body, while in the body, it is subject on
general principles to the laws which establish the connection,
and of these there is no one more exact or of greater
significance than this, which asserts that the mental faculties
shall feel the reflex influence of the conditions of the body.

Admitting this, the quality of thought one shows will be

usually measured, without difficulty, by getting at his bodily
state. Abnormal conditions of body type out corresponding
mental states. One could have well determined a priori what
poetry Byron would write could he have been familiar with
the fact that as soon as weaning was over, he was begun to be
educated a glutton. And so conversely: one can readily see by
reading him that he must have been gluttonous and a wine
bibber, a heathen man and a publican. Dietetics then have
much to do with the character of the thoughts born within us.
If you wish to become familiar with men and women whose
minds are filled with thoughts that are low, impure, or
obscene or, that having in them the qualities of brilliancy and
depth, are tainted so with selfishness and intolerance as to
smell putrescent — if you wish to find philosophy which is
narrow, ideas that are mingled with passion, actions whose
vigor is spoiled by indecision and uncertainty of aim, lives
whose whole course have been barren of Divine illumination,
you have but to pass into Society, and from its members
whose staples of food and drinks and medicines are flesh
meats and their condiments, tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages,
tobacco, opium, and drug poisons, select those whose
experience has been the most opportune, and you will find
them loyal subjects to the glutton-god — ripe scholars in the
Devil's school.
 IT BENUMBS THE HEART

Of all the causes that enslave our spiritual sensibilities, and

deaden the affections, none is more powerful than gluttony.
And none is more active with our people. It is not surprising
to me that Christians are so cold, formal as they are. It is
obvious why they should be so. They are so gross in bodily
appetite, and so indulgent in the sphere of the passions, that
the descent of the Holy Spirit is impossible under its ordinary
plan of approach to the human soul. A vast majority of
Christians, simply because of bad habits in physical life, go
for years with no glowing light from the Divine finding its
way into their souls. They live in the shadow of that light
altogether. Its rays reach them when their healing is spent.
They are conscious of this, and they seek relief in rites and
observances and a quarterly recast of their theological belief.
Some of them get so far away as to mistake their creed for
their God, and to rest their hope that their correctness of
belief will answer in lieu of purity of life. But their efforts are
of no avail. They are dying at the heart. And while the Lord
pities, He is powerless. They have a darling habit which they
kept back — a part of them which they have not made over,
and this it is which eats like canker into their souls, and
makes them spiritually impotent. For myself I would rather
be the agent by whom the religious of the United States
should be induced to eat and drink to the Glory of God, than
to set in motion any plan for the world's redemption, of which
I can now imagine. It is a settled point with me, that the great
indifference to physical law, or as we term it

the LAWS OF LIFE

which the redeemed show, the impunity with which they are
violated, the almost universal substitution of holy desires and
pious aims in the future, for consecrated life in the present, is
a mighty obstacle in His way who is yet to be King of
Nations as He is King of Saints.
HARRIET N. AUSTIN. M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

HARRIET N. AUSTIN, M.D., WAS BORN August 31, 1826 in

Moravia, New York. She was one of the first students to
graduate from Dr. R. T. Trall's School in New York City.
She, as far as I can learn, was the first female professional
practitioner in Hygiene. She was also among the first women
to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In this respect she
was among the first four. After her graduation she became
associated with Dr. James C. Jackson and became an active
practitioner of Hygiene Science in his institution. Her talent
and superior character were such that she had a tremendous
influence on the sick, some of whom were prominent
Americans who had gone to Dr. James C. Jackson's
institution in Dansville, New York. She was adopted by Dr.
Jackson and was truly, during the trying times in his life, his
chief support in keeping his great work alive.

Her influence as editor of the Laws of Life, a magazine that

existed for almost thirty years, was tremendous. One of the
noted individuals who came under her care and to whom she
was a great inspirational force was Clara Barton, the founder
of the Red Cross.

Any biography of Clara Barton would be incomplete

without an account of the influence that Harriet Austin and
Dr. J. C. Jackson had in her remarkable recovery from
disease. In Washington, D. C., a manuscript of historic
interest, in the Hygiene movement, contains much material
attesting to the values of Hygiene as illustrated by the
testimony of Clara Barton's recovery.

Dr. Harriet N. Austin was one of the few prominent

Doctors of Hygiene who were females. She, along with
Susanna Way Dodds, did much to reform women's dress.
Even before the Civil War they were advocating and wearing
slacks. They were consistent in their advocacy of health
principles, and in their own lives would do nothing that was
contrary to physiological laws. The clothes worn by women
of that period were barbaric, unesthetic, and a factor in
crippling the female body. Without fear Harriet Austin broke
loose from style and custom and helped to initiate the great
revolution in women's wear. She walked the streets of
Dansville wearing slacks; she was one of the "bold" women,
and a pin-point description of her by the proprietor of a store
was, "I could not believe what I saw; she bartered like a man
and dressed like one." Harriet Austin was an inspiration in her
work because of her humaneness. She was a great doctor, and
one of the very few who was also a great nurse. In this
respect she ranks with Florence Nightingale.

SICKNESS IS ALWAYS CAUSED

BY WRONG DOING
By HARRIET N. AUSTIN, M.D.

If we expect the time will come when sickness and early

death will be uncommon, we must have in view some means
by which this end is to be brought about; for now there is not
a neighborhood, and scarcely a family, which has not its
invalid, or a hearth without its empty chair. The first thing to
be done is to teach the people that their life and health are put
in their own keeping, — and that sickness never comes
without a cause, but is always the consequence of violation of
the laws which regulate the human constitution. To some
extent, and in some directions, this truth is coming to be
recognized. Men are beginning to understand that the great
mortality which prevails in some of our large cities, is caused
in great measure by the unhealthy food, inadequate clothing,
uncomfortable dwellings, and overwork of the poor
population, and the foul air which all are made to breathe
from the accumulation of impurities. But when, among the
more favored in cities, and in the country and villages where
all are more favored, the strong man is prostrated and carried
off by fever, or the blooming girl passes in a few months into
the fading consumptive, or the child dies of dysentery, these
are ascribed to the providence of God, and no man learns
wisdom therefrom, or asks whether such afflictions might be
avoided in the future. — When women lose their vigor and
elasticity in their early years, and thence onward, drag out
feeble suffering lives, this state of things is ascribed to the
poor constitution of the sex, and all that it attempted to be
learned from it, is patience and fortitude.

The people need to learn that the natural condition of

human beings is one of health; and that every instance of
sickness and suffering, unless caused by accident, is caused
by some wrong doing, either on the part of the sufferer or
others; that never a child cries with colic, or a man groans
with it; that there is no neuralgia, or sick headache, or
palpitation of the heart, which has not sin back of it. And
generally the sin is physical. I know that sorrows,
disappointment, and heartache make persons sick; but the
health resists the influence of these a long time, if the
physical habits are not wrong. And how many of the troubles
which sadden the heart, and so injure the health, grow,
directly or indirectly, out of false habits of life on the part of
some person! It is of no use to argue as some do, that it is
only a waste of time and breath to attempt to teach people
how to live without being sick — that sickness and death are
the result of moral transgression, and as long as sin is in the
world, these must be also. Christians themselves need to learn
that sickness is a great wrong, and to them, a great shame.
They have learned this about drunkenness. The time has been,
within fifty years, that the most pious and devoted members
of churches, and the most eminent ministers, could take their
daily drams of wine, rum, gin, or brandy, and not suffer at all
in their reputation as worthy examples of piety. Now the
professor of religion who does this, has to do it stealthily.
Fifty years ago, no clergyman was thought less of, because he
went into the pulpit with his cheek filled with tobacco. Now
this habit is acknowledged to be so filthy and injurious, that
the clergyman who practices it, is considered boorish, if not
deserving of censure.

The time is coming (and if it shall be within the next half

century, happy will it be for the world), when the sick
professor of religion will be regarded as a very poor exponent
of a pure religious life; when the religious person, whose
children drop into their graves in infancy and childhood, as
unripe fruit drops from the tree, as he sits by their coffins,
shall not simply have resignation and faith preached to him,
but repentance, also, for his own instrumentality in the
matter; when transgression of physical law shall be thought as
inconsistent with true religion, as transgression of any law
which God has established; when men shall feel bound by as
sacred obligations to obey God in their bodies, as in their
spirits.

EASIER TO DO RIGHT THAN WRONG.

The habits of the people are subversive of health in almost

every respect. They work, they rest, they play, they eat, they
drink, they sleep, they dress, they marry, they bear children,
they go wherever their propensities, their appetites, their
passions lead them, without any reference to the laws of the
human constitution. These are exact, and not hard to be
understood or obeyed. Indeed, it is much easier to live in
accordance with them than otherwise; because all our
instincts, and all our relations to external nature, are arranged
with reference to their authority. For instance, all nature
indicates that night is the time for sleep. Then weariness and
a desire for repose come upon man, and darkness spreads
over the earth. Yet he disregards reason and instinct, and
turns night into day, and day into night. His relations to the
earth would teach him that he should live upon the vegetation
that grows on its surface. Yet, at the expense of great
additional toil, and of pain to his finer feelings, he feeds the
products of his labor to animals, and then butchers them to
get food for himself. And thus, in whatever he does contrary
to the laws of his constitution, he loses a large degree of
power, as well as injures his health.

WORK.

Perhaps in no way do those persons who work at all, waste

more power and health, than by the manner in which they
work. This may be in part owing to the fact that work is
considered to be a virtue. Many a man and woman who
would be very much ashamed if they had made themselves
sick by overeating consider themselves to be very brave and
praiseworthy if they get sick by overworking. But work in
itself is not a virtue; and it may very easily become a vice. It
is only valuable as a means of human growth and
development. When it is made an end, it degrades whoever
devotes himself to it. How many, many of our business men
become mere business machines. They think of nothing, they
know nothing, from Monday morning till Sunday night, the
year round, but business. They cannot conceive anything to
be worthy, or beautiful, or good, that is not connected with
business. And men who till the soil, or work in shops, labor
till they come to, think this is what life is for. They drudge
day after day, supposing they are fulfilling the destiny of
intelligent creatures, when their intelligence is all the time
dying out of them. No person can work unremittingly,
whether he does it from choice or necessity, without suffering
ill health. There must be relaxation for the body, and a change
of occupation for the mind. I suppose the number of persons
in this country who suffer in health because they have
nothing to do, is comparatively small. There are not many
who have not some employment for some portion of their
time. But often the kind of employment tends quite as much
to destroy, as to promote health. Setting aside that class of
poor women who are necessitated to pursue sedentary
occupations as a means of support, all our women have a
great propensity to engage in those kinds which require
activity or use of the organs of locomotion, or other portions
of the body. Hence, we see that while the sewing machine is
relieving woman from the task of devoting a large proportion
of her time to necessary needlework, she uses that time to do
such as is unnecessary. So much so, that the woman or young
girl who has not her hands filled with embroidery, or crochet
work, or something of the sort, is quite unfashionable. Yet,
active exercise of all the muscles of the body is essential to
the maintenance of health. And here, as elsewhere, our
instincts are on the side of the right; for every person
naturally longs for activity.

EXERCISE - WOMAN'S DRESS.

Woman's dress is a point at which I never fail to arrive in

my discussion of the principles of health; for, in my
estimation, there is nothing which, in all its bearings and
relations to society and to posterity, outweighs this in
importance. Active exercise of all the muscles of the body,
habitually, is necessary to the maintenance of good health,
whether in man or woman. It is only needful to revert to this
well established truth in the presence of a fashionably dressed
woman, to be convinced how incompatible such a style of
dress is with health.

If some tyrant had set about devising a costume which

should fasten upon its wearers perpetual inefficiency and
helplessness, I do not see how he could have fitted anything
better adapted to his purpose than just such a dress as all the
women wear, who are seen daily in the streets of Boston. It is
well calculated for a state of perfect repose; but interferes
with every form of activity. It is impossible for a woman
wearing it to have the proper use of her lower limbs. She
cannot take one natural step. In her house every movement is
made with a fourfold expenditure of strength, and in the
streets or fields, she might as well have been made on the
four-footed principle. She does not put her hands upon the
ground, 'tis true, but they can be used only as appendages to
her feet, to assist in walking. I would not speak too harshly of
the present long-skirted dress. — Indeed, when considered
with reference to the health of woman and her offspring, I do
not think it can be too strongly condemned.

The male sex would not tolerate for an hour a costume so

opposed to common sense and reason as is that generally
worn by women. When men come to acknowledge that
sickness is the result of wrong doing, and that to be well, and
capable of bearing an active part in the labors and
responsibilities of life is a human's duty, we hope they will
insist that woman shall apparel herself in such a manner that
she shall have the use of her powers.
 PURE AIR.

People do not understand the value of pure air. It is spread

out forty-five miles deep over the surface of the earth, and the
finest processes are constantly at work to relieve it from the
impurities breathed into it. And yet, even in the country,
where it is abundant and as free as the sunlight, families shut
themselves up in air-tight houses, and take into their lungs,
over and over again, the unhealthy gasses which they have
generated.

SUNLIGHT.

People do not properly value sunlight. — Why does God

pour down this beautiful gift so abundantly, if he did not
mean it should ever touch a human being? Yet, many women
— men do not act so foolishly in this — use every possible
precaution to prevent a ray of sunshine from touching their
skins. They would no sooner go out of doors without wearing
a deep sunbonnet, than they would break the first
commandment. Yet there is no material condition more
essential to a healthful tone of mind than an abundance of
sunlight. It is indispensable to all forms of organized life. —
Plants cannot be healthy without it. Human beings cannot be
healthy without it.

LIFE DIFFICULT TO BE DESTROYED.

But notwithstanding all these and many other means which

men devise to destroy their vigor, and shorten their lives,
many live in tolerable health to forty, fifty, or sixty years.
This alone is sufficient evidence of the high estimate which
the Creator places upon human life. — He has made it very
difficult to be extinguished. It is wonderful how it resists the
outrages done to it! How the vital powers rally against the
false conditions in which men place themselves, and fight
every inch of ground! For all the forces of the system
invariably tend toward health. We are so constituted that we
cannot be sick without we do violence to our natures.

"All that God owns He constantly is healing

Quietly, gently, softly, but more surely.
He helps the lowliest herb with wounded stalk
To rise again. See! from the Heavens fly down
All gentle powers to cure the blinded lamb! —
Deep in the treasure house of wealthy Nature,
A ready instinct works and moves
To clothe the naked sparrow in its nest
Or trim the plumage of an aged raven."
 Our very diseases are but the energies of the system
opposing abnormal conditions. Pain is one of our most
faithful friends. We do wrong — we eat unhealthy food —
we chew a poison, like tobacco — we breathe a fetid
atmosphere — we expose ourselves unduly to cold; — the
natural operation of the functions of the body is checked;
immediately the vital powers are brought to bear to correct
the difficulty; and in accomplishing this, pain, or sickness, or
fever is produced. But the process is strictly curative, and if
the vitality is not too far exhausted, and the wrong is not
repeated, or other hindrances placed in the way, health will
assuredly be reestablished. Properly speaking, we should not
complain of disease, but of the habits which provoke disease.

THE DOCTOR'S WORK.

Hard as it is to go against established habits and

accustomed indulgences, there are yet many who are ready to
listen to, and follow whatever is right. And we are
exceedingly happy to be among the few who are endeavoring
to instruct them in physiological truths. This is the doctor's
most grateful, as well as noblest work. It is pleasant to receive
thanks for suffering relieved. But how much more pleasant to
receive such words as these, as we have received from
hundreds of families: "Since you taught us how to live, six,
eight, or ten years ago, sickness has been a stranger in our
house, and we have no fear that it will come. Our children are
healthy, blooming, and happy. They never have an ache or
pain, and seem to be free from the fretfulness and troubles
which most children have. We work hard, and our sleep is
like that of the infant. We never knew before how to enjoy
life."

Our principles of care can be readily comprehended, I

think, by any person who understands our theory of disease.
The first thing to be done, always, is to remove the cause —
to put the patient in natural relations to himself and the
world. This, as a matter of course, in most instances, is to
change all his habits. But even this must be done with the
most careful regard to his constitution and strength. The
object is not to waste power, but to hoard it. Just so far as we
are able to find out what should be the natural and proper
habits of human beings in a state of perfect health, we
regulate and arrange our Institution with reference to such
habits; arguing that just those conditions which are calculated
to contribute to the well-being of a healthy person, are those
best adapted to the restoration to health of one who is sick;
and that whatever will injure a well man, will injure a sick
one.
 Many invalids have become so feeble in will and power of
self-control, that they must have help and encouragement to
change their habits. Besides, it often requires a large degree
of skill and experience to know just how to adapt and
measure the different hygienic agents in delicate cases, for
each case has its own peculiarities.

ASSISTING NATURE.

We do what the doctors talk so much about doing but never

do, — assist Nature. But we go about it on quite a different
principle from what they do. The difference is this — the
object of their medication is to arrest or hinder the action of
the vital powers in their efforts to accomplish a certain end.
Our object is to be sure to understand what the vital powers
would have done, and then to direct whatever efforts we
make to the accomplishment of that end.

A simple life is full of pleasure, entirely unknown to an

artificial, irregular life. At our table the other day, a lady near
me said, "Dr. Jackson is all the time telling us we must not
live to eat, but I am sure I never enjoyed eating so much in
my life before."
ROBERT WALTER, M.D.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

ROBERT WALTER WAS BORN FEB. 14, 1841 in Ontario,

Canada. We have here a man who, through a very serious
illness, reached a high level of realization attained by few in
medical reform. His suffering was a powerful force that led to
an understanding of the laws of life. His concepts exert today
a great influence in modern health and medical reform.

In 1864, at the age of 23, he was so ill with heart trouble

that he was put in the death room of a famous health
institution. Dr. Walter was the only one to ever come out of it
alive, and the fact that he lived to a ripe old age after being
called "hopeless," shows not only how tenacious the life
principle is, but what can be done, with discipline, to get
maximum return in activity, or work, with a minimum of
expenditure of energy.

Dr. Walter's recovery, after years of invalidism, should

inspire all who are ill. It is not only proof of the healing
power of nature, but also shows what the human will can do
when used to overcome disorders considered, medically, as
incurable. His basic concept in the recovery of health is the
systematic use of fasting, sleep, rest, and nutrition for the
restoration of energy.

Today there is much information available that verifies

what was advanced by Robert Walter. His books, "The
Nutritive Cure," "Life's Great Law," and "Vital Science," are
so basic that they could be reprinted today and command
attention and respect from any open-minded thinker in
medicine.

Dr. Walter's writings were inspirational to the thousands

who came to him for the recovery of their health. They would
prove even more valuable today because man is in greater
need of help. This pioneer health reformer showed that much
can be accomplished if one has faith and perseverance.
Through right living — supplying the body with the elements
of health, and removing from it what is of low grade or of no
value, health recovery is insured. Vital power is needed to
accomplish recovery. Dr. Walter showed this can be done.

Robert Walter lived through the first two decades of the

twentieth century. His lifetime spanned an era when Hygiene
went into a decline, but was kept alive by Dr. Charles Page,
Susanna Way Dodds, and Dr. Robert Walter.
NUTRITION: WHAT IT IS AND
HOW PROMOTED
By ROBERT WALTER, M.D.

Properly speaking, nutrition is the process of growth, the

means by which structure is produced and power involved. It
is not a substance, but a function, not matter, but motion. It is
a process of work, and like all other work, nutrition involves
both the power to perform and the conditions for the
operation of the power.

Nutrition being a function of life, occurring only in living

things, is a product of the power of life, properly called vital
force, while the conditions for the operation of this power are,
first, — a machinery or organism through which it may work;
and second — the materials needed to build and repair the
organism. The power is first, always has been first, with the
machinery or organism as its product and nutrition as its
process.

And as all organisms are products of nutrition, carried

forward by the power of life, so every process of repair is
effected by the same nutrition induced by the operations of
the same power. The power that made, and makes is that
which preserves, and repairs in order that it may preserve. It
is the same that heals all lesions, repairs all injuries and cures
all diseases that are cured.

The rapidity and certainty of this cure correspond primarily

to the amount of the power, to secure which in abundant
measure becomes, therefore, the first step toward improved
nutrition and restored health. The inquiry at once presents
itself: Whence the power? Is it a product or an inheritance; is
it manufactured or derived?

Life, only life, is a fact of universal observation, against

which the armies of materialism have for generations hurled
their serried ranks without avail. Life is first, always has been
first, with organization as its product and nutrition as its
process. To assert the contrary, as some do, that life is the
result of organization betrays an incomparable perversion of
logical acumen.

Heredity is the one fact of existence which stands forth in

bold relief to the utter dismay of the self-styled philosophers
who shut their eyes in presence of the facts and loudly
proclaim their inability to see them. Life is an inheritance and
not a product; men, like poets, are born not made. The power
of life and growth comes only from preceding life, and the
process is truly reproduction — the reproduction of the cell,
the segmentation and proliferation of which constitute the
essential process of all growth, nutrition, and development.

Whence the original life, from which all life proceeds?

You naturally inquire: If you will tell me whence the gravity
that revolves the worlds in space, making them to be spheres
and determining their orbits; if you will show me whence or
how are produced the affinities of element for element to the
production of infinitely varied compounds, I will by that fact
be enabled to expose for your contemplation the origin of the
power of life. The power of mind over matter is an oft-told
tale: its ability to mould matter into wondrous forms of use
and beauty, is a fact of every day observation, but human
intelligence can go no further than to make use of what
creative genius supplies.

To all matter the Creator has given a great fundamental

force called gravity; and equally fundamental power called
chemical affinity, the production of either being absolutely
beyond human genius or skill. Why then should we doubt that
"He giveth to all life and breath and all things"? Why assert
that life is a product if it has never been produced? Why not
living existence be as fundamental to creation as is mechanics
or chemistry; and if we must credit the one department to
creative genius, why not the other? We might as well
undertake to create out of an imaginary nothing an explosive
having power sufficient to shatter an Earth, a Venus, or a
Jupiter as to manufacture life out of things which have no
life.

The origin or source of life need not, therefore, be further

considered. Life is; we all possess it, — a rich and valuable
inheritance; it behooves us to make good use of what we
have, and cease our vain endeavors to uncover to unholy gaze
the inscrutable things of an invisible Creator.

But while life, like gravity, has never been, and we

reasonably infer, never can be manufactured, it can be
accumulated to the production at times of wonderful results,
to accomplish which becomes a subject of unrivalled
importance.
 " 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant,
Our life, not death, for which we pant,
More life and fuller that we want."

— as Tennyson puts it.

How to secure this power of life in abundant measure is a

subject of never-ending significance, notwithstanding it has
been so poorly appreciated and sadly neglected. We store
water for the gravity in it, why not equally hoard vital power
for the wondrous achievements of which it is capable? Nearly
thirty years ago when we first advocated the storage of vital
power as a means of protection against disease as well as
means of cure, we were laughed at for our ignorance, it being
said we might as well undertake to store electricity. The
electric storage battery is today an accomplished fact. Why
should not the vital storage battery be equally recognized?
Every living thing is such a battery, and like its electric
compeer, may be full, half- or quarter-full of power or any
degree between. In either case the power is wholly invisible;
its presence is determined only by the power it receives or the
work it does. The relation between receipts and expenditure is
the true measure of the amount of power possessed in any
case; and the only plan of securing more is to increase
receipts, if that be possible, and reduce expenditures.

To force an increase in receipts in the living organism is,

however, impossible. The claims of the Christian Scientist
who tells us of an inexhaustible fountain of life to draw upon,
are as irrational as those of the materialist who would
manufacture vitality. Life is an inheritance, and not a product,
and to every man according to his capacity is the Divine plan.
And capacities are limited as well as variable. We cannot
increase or even change them; the best we can do is to hoard
what we get, and so accumulate our powers until all
obstructions are overcome and health and vigor are restored.
All of which may be accomplished by stopping the leaks,
reducing expenditures, and ceasing the "riotous living" that is
so natural to thriftless prodigals.

The reasonableness of this plan is commended by the

experience of all ages, so rendering easy that burlesque
imitation of it, called sustaining the vital forces by the use of
tonics, stimulants, and even food. It is more than fifty years
since this unfortunate theory was obtruded upon the
profession, causing them to abandon all previous practice and
adopt the stimulating and stuffing methods which have
proved as disastrous to human well-being as did the previous
bleeding and purging, the truth of which it is high time for the
profession to realize. The sustaining theory would have
proved, we believe, a great success, had it not been for a
woeful error thoughtlessly injected into it, viz., that of
confounding the appearance or manifestation of vitality with
its possession, causing the presumption that increase of the
one would be synonymous with increase of the other. The
exact opposite is the truth. The manifestation of vitality due
to any violence always means expenditure and consequent
depletion of the very power which it seems to yield. The tonic
gives an appearance of strength, and so does the cry of fire at
midnight, especially when you are in the tenth story of a
hotel; but we properly inquire, Whence the strength? Does it
come out of the man or out of the tonic? The man had vital
power to give, which neither tonic nor cry of fire possessed,
so that we are compelled to conclude that the man loses what
he thinks he gains by the use of tonics and stimulants.

The correctness of this position is shown by the fact that

the more he gets of tonic or stimulant the more he wants; his
needs always increase with the supply; weakness and not
strength result from continued indulgence.

An equally potent illustration of the principle underlying

this subject is the fact that "Tired nature's sweet restorer,
balmly sleep," recuperates power for us by first making us
helpless and unconscious, while tonics exhaust us by
appearing to give us strength. It is the law of Nature that the
real result shall be inversely, not directly, as the apparent
cause. Action and reaction are opposite as well as equal in
every department.* Sleep hoards what the activities and vigor
of the day expend; it is weakness that recuperates, strength
and vigor exhaust, because in any case the power exhibited is
always the patient's vital power and not the power of any
drug. The weakness of invalidism is Nature's plan of saving
power whereby the vigor of health may be secured on the
reaction, just as disease, which often renders us helpless, is
Nature's process of cure, as eminent authority, if authority in
medicine may be admitted, has shown.

* Dr. Walter states here a basic law of life: that

energy expenditure and energy reserve or recuperation
are inversely related. To state it simply: the more power
expended through stimulation of any kind, the less
power the body contains or is able to recuperate. When
power is being gained or increased through rest,
relaxation, or sleep, the expenditure of vital energy is
decreased. Action and reaction being opposite and equal
is a biological paradox. But its truth becomes easily
apparent when stated in different terms. Repletion leads
to depletion. Hyperactivity of muscles, glands, and
nerves leads to inaction, stimulation to devitalization.
When there is immobilization, volitional or autonomic,
as the result of fatigue, the opposite future result is
 mobilization in the form of muscular activity or any
body function. Their being equal means that the amount
of inaction is determined by the amount of action or loss
of power, and the amount of activity is determined by
the amount of rest or inactivity. The equality that Walter
speaks of is in the quantum. — EDITOR.

In place, therefore, of the stimulating and stuffing methods

so much in vogue in our day, we propose the theory of health
by nutrition, a subject which leads us to the consideration of
the processes by which nutrition is effected and improved
nutrition may be secured.

All building operations are effected by the cell. Life on

earth first appears in the cell; with the cell all organization
begins! The cell is to the living organism what the individual
is to society; it is the one of millions which make up the
whole, and is, therefore, the source of all function of body
and brain. Every organism is, therefore, an organized
community, its wealth and power being the product of the
individuals constituting it.

These principles apply to every activity of a man's life.

Development comes to us corresponding to the vigor of our
work provided that the rest is commensurate with it. A
dawdling life, in which neither exercise nor rest is fully
secured, promotes feebleness, a fact that applies to digestion
quite as fully as to mental and physical labor. The little-and-
often plan of feeding is utterly destructive to digestive power
in that it allows to the organs no proper amount of either rest
or exercise. All work has properly a double object, viz., to
develop the capacity of the worker as well as to secure the
material rewards of the work. Eating so as to develop
digestion is as important as eating for any other purpose. It is
the vigor of our digestion, not the amount of food we
consume, that gives strength and courage, just as it is want of
digestive power, not want of food, that causes us to feel faint
with hunger, as is improperly claimed. Plain, wholesome food
which is difficult rather than easy of digestion, provided it
can be digested, is the ideal plan. Hearty meals and infrequent
eating has been our habit for forty years, ten of which, at two
different periods, we ate but once a day and gained much
flesh as well as strength and health.

The relation of food to nutrition is at length properly before

us. They are not the same, no matter how generally
confounded. Nutrition is the process of building and repairing
while food is simply the material to be used. Life, called also
vital force, does all the work while the preparation and use of
the food is the chief work done. When, for any reason, the
functions are inefficiently performed, shall we increase the
work, that is eat more food, or reduce it? When the power is
deficient shall we still further deplete it by increasing its
manifestations, as with tonics and stimulants, or shall we
reduce these manifestations by rest and sleep?

There is one more thought in this connection which we

shall barely mention and close. As is well known all the real
work of life, all nutrition, is performed in the cells in
immediate connection with the capillary circulation. Virchow
well says: "The absorption of matter into the interior of the
cells is unquestionably an act of the cells themselves." In this
act the whole process of nutrition is involved. But what if the
cells for any reason refuse or fail to perform this act of
absorption? If, for illustration, a process of breaking down
structure has begun, as in fever, in order to get rid of
poisoned tissues, how long may we expect the fever to last if
we continue to introduce new materials to be also
contaminated. On the contrary, how long will it last if no new
material is introduced until purification is complete, while
every facility is supplied to wash out whatever impurity
remains. The feeding of patients during the progress of acute
diseases is a monstrous anachronism in these initial years of
the twentieth century after the dependence of man's life upon
daily food has been so thoroughly disproved.

But even in chronic or long standing diseases, in which the

nutritive powers are reduced to the lowest point, will feeding
beyond the capacity of the cells to appropriate improve
nutrition or obstruct it? Nutrition involves the conversion of
arterial blood into venous just as oxygenation converts
venous blood into arterial. If now for any reason this
conversion does not take place — if the lungs do not
oxygenate or the cells do not appropriate, what must occur
but retention of blood, obstruction of circulation and
exhaustion of the heart's power? Forced feeding is as
destructive to the health and life of the invalid as is the rope
around the neck of the criminal. Obstruction of circulation
from the presence of material that cannot be appropriated
means strangulation of nutrition as certainly as does the
presence of materials which liver, lungs, kidneys, and bowels
cannot eliminate. No wonder in the light of present day
practice that heart failure is becoming so common,
pneumonia so fatal, Bright's disease our next door neighbor,
while neurasthenia and insanity continue to be the bete noir
of medical empiricism.

The theories which I have here advanced are not new to me

for I have studied and applied them for more than thirty
years. In acute diseases abstinence from all food is sine qual
non to success in most cases. One case after five weeks of
total abstinence from all food, — a case of phlegmonous
erysipelas at that — looked fairer and fuller in the face at the
end of the time than when she began her fast.

In typhoid fever I have had invariable success, abstinence

from all food being continued generally three weeks, though
one case who had been sick two weeks before coming to me,
abstained five weeks from food and is today a splendid
specimen of vigorous manhood. Another who ate nothing for
about the same time weighed, three months after his fever
ceased, 180 pounds and was and is in splendid health thirty-
three years afterward.

The little-and-often theory of eating is also one of the most

destructive habits of our time. When a man eats he should eat
a good square meal, and then allow his stomach and liver a
most complete rest for long hours. Strength and vigor
correspond to the vigor of man's digestion, rather than to the
amount of food he eats, and vigor of digestion is secured by
vigorous work followed by abundant rest of the digestive
system, and not by keeping the organism always at work
doing nothing.

I wish to say that most mothers teach their babies to cry.

The baby is lactated too frequently. Often when her baby
cries, a nipple is put into its mouth, and the result is that the
child becomes a misery to its parents. Many babies are
brought out of serious difficulties by stopping the frequent
feeding and giving the correct nourishment only about three
times a day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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