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DR. DEWEY'S BOOKS.
=The True Science of Living; or, The New Gospel of Health.= $2.25, sent
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[Illustration: (signed) E. H. Dewey.]
THE
NO-BREAKFAST PLAN
AND
THE FASTING-CURE.
BY
EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M. D.
MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
1900.
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY.
REGISTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON, ENGLAND.
_All Rights Reserved._
TO
GEORGE S. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.E., SCOTLAND,
A. RABAGLIATI, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., EDINBURGH,
AND
ALEXANDER HAIG, M.A., M.D., OXON., F.R.C.P., LONDON, ENGLAND,
WHO HAVE COMMENDED THE WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR IN THEIR
OWN PUBLISHED WORKS,
THIS BOOK IS
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution in the
professional care of the sick. It begins in inexperience and in a haze
of medical superstition, and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in
all in the cure of disease. The hygiene unfolded is both original and
revolutionary: its practicality is of the largest, and its physiology
beyond any possible question. The reader is assured in advance that
every line of this volume has been written with conviction at white
heat, that enforced food in sickness and the drug that corrodes are
professional barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.
E. H. DEWEY.
MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.,
_November, 1900_.
CONTENTS.
THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
I.
PAGE
Introduction--Army experiences in the Civil War--Early years in
general practice--Difficulties encountered--Medicinal treatment
found wanting as a means to superior professional success 13
II.
A case of typhoid fever that revolutionized the Author's faith
and practice--A cure without drugs, without food--Resulting
studies of Nature in disease--Illustrative cases--A crucial
experience in a case of diphtheria in the Author's family 26
III.
A study of the brain from a new point of view--Some new
physiology evolved illustrated by severe cases of acute disease 34
IV.
The error of enforced food in cases of severe injuries and diseases
illustrated by several striking examples 42
V.
An apostrophe to physicians 56
VI.
The origin of the No-breakfast Plan--Personal experience of the
Author as a dyspeptic--His first experience without a
breakfast--Physiological questions considered--A new theory of
the origin and development of disease and its cure--The spread of
the No-breakfast Plan--Interesting cases 60
VII.
Digestive conditions--Taste relish--Hunger relish--The moral
science involved in digestion as a new study--Cheer as a
digestive power--Its contagiousness--The need of higher life in
the home as a matter of better health--Cheer as a duty 81
VIII.
The No-breakfast Plan among farmers and other laborers--A series
of voluntary letters to an eminent divine, and the writer put
down as a crank--The origin of the Author's first book--How the
eminent Rev. Dr. George N. Pentecost was secured to write the
introduction--His no-breakfast experience--The publisher converts
a prominent editor--The case of Rev. W. E. Rambo, a returned
missionary--The publishers' missionary work among missionaries--
The utility of the morning fast--Its unquestionable physiology--
Why the hardest labor is more easily performed and for more hours
without a breakfast 85
IX.
The utility of slow eating and thorough mastication unusually
illustrated by Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author--What should we
eat?--The use of fruit from a physiological standpoint 105
X.
Landscape-gardening upon the human face--A pen-picture--
Unrecognized suicide--Absurdity of the use of drugs to cure
diseases--A case of blood-letting--Mission of homoeopathy--
Predigested foods 110
THE FASTING-CURE.
XI.
The forty-two day fast of Mr. W. W. C. Cowen, of Warrensburg,
Ill., and its successful end--Press account--The twenty-eight day
fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of New York, and its successful
end--Press account--A second fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of
thirty-five days, in the interest of science, and its successful
end--Press account--Adverse comments of Dr. George N. Shrady, an
eminent New York physician 117
XII.
The remarkable fast of forty-five days of Miss Estella Kuenzel,
of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a case of
melancholia--Press accounts--A still more remarkable fast, of
fifty days, of Mr. Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, resulting in
a complete cure of a bad case of general dropsy--Press
accounts--General dropsy in a woman of seventy-six relieved by a
fifteen-day fast, with the cure permanent--Rev. Dalrymple's fast
of thirty-nine and one-half days without interruption of pastoral
duties 136
XIII.
Insanity--A study from a new point of view--Its radical cure
deemed probable in most cases by protracted fasts--Feeding the
insane as practised in the hospitals sharply criticised--Some
direct words to physicians in charge 157
XIV.
The evolution of obesity, and its easy relief by fasting--
Overweight prevented by a limitation of the daily food
and without lessening any of the powers or energies--The
evolution and prevention of apoplexy 177
XV.
Chronic alcoholism--The evolution of the drunkard--His complete,
easy, rational cure by fasting--No case so grave as to be beyond
cure by this means--Asthma; Its cure through dietary means--A
railroad tragedy--The need of railroad men to save their brains
from needless waste of energy in their stomachs--An illustrative
case--Some of the Author's troubles from the ignorance of the
people--The death of Mrs. Myers, of Philadelphia, on the
thirty-fifth day of her fast--Adverse press accounts and
comments--Adverse comments of Prof. H. C. Wood, M. D., L. L. D.,
on fasting and fasters 183
XVI.
A successful sixty-day fast under the Author's care--More about
predigested foods--Bathing from a physiological standpoint--The
error of drinking water without thirst--Some earnest words to the
mothers of this land--What the No-breakfast Plan means for them
and their children--Concluding words 199
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece._
MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN, THIRTY-SIXTH DAY
WITHOUT FOOD Opposite p. 54
REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS " 94
MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE " 104
MR. MILTON RATHBUN SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST " 132
MISS E. F. KUENZEL, FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST " 146
MR. LEONARD THRESS, FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST " 152
MISS E. W. A. WESTING, FORTIETH DAY OF FAST " 154
THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
I.
A hygiene that claims to be new and of the greatest practicality, and
certainly revolutionary in its application, would seem to require
something of its origin and development to excite the interest of the
intelligent reader. Methods in health culture are about as numerous as
the individuals who find some method necessary for the health: taking
something, doing something for the health is the burden of lives almost
innumerable. Very few people are so well that some improvement is not
desirable.
The literature on what to eat and not to eat, what to do and not to do,
on medicines that convert human stomachs into drug-stores, is simply
boundless. If we believe all we read, we must consider the location we
are in before we can safely draw the breath of life; we must not cool
our parched throats without the certificate of the microscope. We must
not eat without an ultimate analysis of each item of the bill of fare,
as we would take an account of stock before ordering fresh goods; and
this without ever knowing how much lime we need for the bones, iron for
the blood, phosphorus for the brain, or nitrogen for the muscles. In
short, there is death in the air we breathe, death in the food we eat,
death in the water we drink, until, verily, we seem to walk our ways of
life in the very valley and shadow of death, ever subject to the attack
of hobgoblins of disease.
How many lives would go down in despair but for the miracles of cure
promised in the public prints, even in our best journals and monthlies,
we cannot know. It is the hope for better things that sustains our
lives; suicide never occurs until all hope has departed. Even our
medical journals are heavily padded with pages of new remedies whose use
involves the most amazing credulity. Perhaps it is well, in the absence
of a sound physiological hygiene, that the people who are sick and
afflicted shall be buoyed up by fresh, printed promises. Perhaps it is
also well for the physician to be able to go into the rooms of the sick
inspired from the advertising pages of his favorite medical journals.
Are they not new stars of hope to both physician and the people? Why
should we not hope when new remedies are multiplying in such infinite
excess over newly discovered diseases? _New diseases?_ What is there
essentially new that can be treated with remedies, in the coated
tongues, foul mouths, high temperature and pulse, pain, discomfort, and
acute aversion to food, that is to be found in the rooms of the sick?
Are there really specifics for these conditions?
The hygiene to be unfolded in these pages is so new, so revolutionary,
that its first impress has never failed to excite every form of
opposition known to language, and yet its practicality is so great that
it is rarely questioned by those who fairly test it. It has not been
found wanting in its physiology, nor has it failed to grow wherever it
has found lodgement.
The origin and development of this new way in health culture seem to
require something of professional autobiography, that it may be seen
that it is a matter of evolution and not of chance, not a fad that has
only its passing hour.
After receiving my medical degree from the University of Michigan, and
serving a term as house physician to the U. S. Marine Hospital at
Detroit, Michigan, I entered one of the large army hospitals at
Chattanooga, Tenn., at the beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia,
where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the
battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so
large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the
least overestimate it.
It had not escaped my notice, even before I began the study of medicine,
that whether disease were coaxed with doses too small for mathematical
estimate, or whether blown out with solid shot or blown up with shells,
the percentage of recoveries seemed to be about the same regardless of
the form of treatment.
I was reared in a large family in a country home, several miles from a
physician, where all but the severest sicknesses were treated with
herb-tea dosage, and this was true of all other country homes. With all
this in mind I had begun the study of medicine with a good deal less
than the average faith in the utility of dosage, and it was not enlarged
by my professor of materia medica.
I entered upon my serious duties as did good, rare, old Bunyan into his
pulpit, with a feeling fairly oppressive that I was "the least of all
the saints." My materia medica was in my vest pocket; my small library
in my head, with its contents in a very hazy condition. With a weak
memory for details, and marked inability to possess truth except by the
slow process of digestion and assimilation, my brain was more a
machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of
the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large
wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most
needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have
ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of
time to endure a hailstorm of details.
That I did not become a danger to the hapless sick and wounded only less
than their diseases and wounds, was wholly due to my small materia
medica, to utter lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power
with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional success which moved
me to seize aid from no matter where or whom, as the drowning man a
straw.
It was my great professional fortune that the medical staff of this
hospital of more than a thousand cots was of a very high order of
ability and experience, and that I entered at the beginning of a
campaign in which for more than three months there was a fitful roar of
artillery and rattle of musketry every day; hence a continuous influx to
cots vacated by deaths or recoveries.
In all respects it was the best equipped hospital for professional
experience of any that I knew anything about. There was one rigid rule
that I believe was not carried out in any other hospital: post-mortems
in all cases, numbering from one to a dozen daily, and all made with a
thoroughness I have never seen in private practice.
The features of my hospital service that impressed me most were the
post-mortem revelations and the diverse treatments for the same disease.
I soon found that, no matter what the disease, every surgeon was a law
to himself as to the quality, quantity, and times of his doses, with the
mortality in the wards apparently about the same.
Post-mortem examinations often revealed chronic diseases whose existence
could not have been suspected during life, and yet had made death
inevitable.
Another advantage in army hospital practice was the stability of the
position and the absence of the harassing anxiety of friends, thus
affording the highest possibilities of the judgment and reason. And
still another advantage was the high social relations existing between
the medical officers, due to the absence of all causes for jealousy,
neither the position nor salary depending on superior endowments or
professional success.
I was aware that, in spite of my lack of experience and the presence of
a most painful sense of general insufficiency, my sick and wounded were
about as safe in my hands from professional harm, even from the first,
as the patients of the most experienced medical officer in the hospital.
With high professional ideals, with no ability to make use of hazy
conceptions or ideas, having no pride in knowledge that had not become
my own, I began at once to reinforce myself from the experience and
wisdom of my brother officers, whose advisory services were always
readily and kindly rendered.
From the first and all through my military service my severely sick had
the advantage of all the borrowed skill and experience I could command.
As for surgical operations, they were all performed in the presence of
most of the medical staff, some of whom were of great experience.
The surgery of the army hospitals of 1864 was of the highest character
in skill and in careful attention to all the details involved, and the
fatalities were generally due to the gravity of the wounds requiring
operations and lack of constitutional power for recovery, rather than to
the absence of the germ-killer. At that time the microbe was not a
factor in the probabilities of life or death. In all else the care of
the wounds could hardly be surpassed.
As for the medicinal treatment of my sick, it was unsatisfactory from
first to last. After all the years since I cannot believe that, except
for the relief of pain, any patient was made better by my dosage; and in
all fatalities the post-mortem revealed the fact that the wisest dosage
would have been without avail.
But in the study of the history of disease as revealed by symptoms my
hospital experience was invaluable. I have since found that my greatest
service at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms rather
than a vender of drugs. The friends of the sick read indications for
good or bad with wonderful acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found
myself mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients in the
faces of the friends, even before I enter the rooms of the sick.
As my experience enlarged so did my faith in Nature; and, since there
was no similarity in the quality, sizes, and times of the doses for like
diseases, my faith in mere remedies gradually declined.
After a year and a half of large opportunities to study the diseases of
men in the early prime of life, in the care of the simple surgery of
shot and shell, I left the army with such familiarity with grave
diseases and death in various forms as to enable me ever after to retain
complete self-possession in the presence of dying beds in private
practice.
I began the general practice of medicine in Meadville in the autumn of
1866. Among the many physicians located in the city at that time were
men of ability and large experience. There were those who administered
with sublime faith doses too small for mathematical estimate; those who
with equal faith administered boluses to the throat's capacity for
deglutition; those who fully believed in whiskey as nourishment, that
milk is liquid food, and who with tremendous faith and forceful hands
administered both until human stomachs were reduced to barren wastes and
death would result from starvation aggravated by disease.
Most of the cases of disease that fall to the care of the physician are
trivial, self-limited, and rapidly recover under even the most
crucifying dosages; Nature really winning the victories, the physician
carrying off the honors.
This is so nearly true that it may be stated that, aside from the domain
of surgery, professional success in the general sense depends upon the
personal qualities and character of the physician rather than the
achievements of the materia medica.
People have a confidence in the power of medicine to cure disease
scarcely less than the dusky warrior has in the Indian medicine-lodge of
the Western wilderness, and a confidence about as void of reason.
The physician goes into the rooms of the sick held to the severest
accountability in the matter of dosage; and the larger his own faith in
medicines the greater his task; and, if he is of my own, the so-called
"old school," or Allopathic, the more dangerous he is to the curing
efforts of Nature.
With the people the disease is simply an attack, and not the summing up
of the results of violated laws going on perhaps from birth. With the
people the symptoms are merely evidences of destruction, and not the
visible efforts to restore the normal condition. Hence the failures to
relieve always raise more or less questioning, among friends in painful
concern, as to the ability of the physician to discharge his grave
duties.
This unreasoning, unreasonable "blind faith" in remedial means is as
strong in the most intelligent as in the most ignorant, and it has ever
given me more trouble than the care of the sick. Another serious
complication of the sick-room arises from near-by friends who are very
certain that their own physicians are better fitted by far for the
serious work of prescribing for the sick.
In addition to the serious work of attacking the symptoms of disease as
so many foes to life, there is also a care as to what unbidden food
shall go into unbidden stomachs, that the system shall be supported
while life seems to be in the hands of its greatest enemy.
The universal conception of disease as a foe to life, and not as a
rational process of cure; the boundless faith in remedies as means to
resist the attack, revealed by symptoms, makes the professional care of
the sick the gravest of all human occupations, and the most trying to
both head and heart.
With all these taxing conditions confronting me, I opened an office in a
field which seemed to be more than occupied by men of large experience.
With all my army experience I still had a hazy conception as to Nature
in disease. That the vital forces needed the support of all the food the
stomach of the sick could dispose of, was not a question of the remotest
consideration. That medicine did in some way act to cure disease I could
not fully question.
I was now to enter a service in which, from the care of infancy in its
first breathings to old age in its last, every resource of the materia
medica, of the reason, judgment, and of the soul itself, was to be
called in in every grave case, and to be held to a responsibility
measured by preposterous faith in medicines.
I entered upon my duties with a determination to win professional
success by the most thorough attention to all the details of service
upon the sick and their friends, and I confined my efforts almost wholly
to acute cases. None of my professional colleagues were winning laurels
by the treatment of chronic diseases, and not having faith in drugs for
such I had my scruples about fees for failures that seemed inevitable.
And yet with the most painstaking service fortune would play with me at
times in the most heartless manner. At one time four of my adult
patients were awaiting burial within the radius of a half mile. As they
were all physical wrecks, and died after short illnesses, there could be
no question raised in any just sense as to the character of my services,
but the fatalities were scored against me. Such fortune would be
annihilating but for the fatalities inevitable with all practitioners.
For full ten years I visited the sick and dosed them according to the
books, but with far less force of hands and faith than any of my
brethren, and all were enjoined to take nourishment to keep up the
strength for the combat with disease.
My doses were confined to only a few Sampsons of the materia medica, and
these were administered with a watching for favorable results that could
hardly be surpassed, and yet always with disappointment.
I was innocent enough to believe that a large practice could only be
built up by the most painstaking and persistent effort; later on I found
that a large practice was but little dependent upon the skill and
learning displayed in the sick-room. One physician could immediately
secure a large patronage because she was a woman; another, because he
belonged to this or that nationality, or there was something in the
personal outfit rather than in the professional that incited large hopes
for the ailing.
In all my cases of acute sickness there was always a wasting of the body
no matter how much they were fed; a like increase of general strength
when a normal desire for food occurred no matter how little they were
fed. I saw this with eyesight only; but I saw with insight that a large
practice could be carried on by doctors too ignorant to know that there
was an alphabet in medical science.
I was not then so fully aware of the depths of ignorance among the
people as to what cures disease, did not know that faith in doses was so
large, as child-like even with the most cultured as with the ignorant. I
was not so well aware, as I became later, that the physician himself
must have such energy of faith in the materia medica as to reveal it in
every line of his countenance when in the rooms of the sick.
As the years went on, my faith in remedies did not increase; but I had
to dose to meet the superstitious needs of the people. My practice,
though far short of what it seemed to merit from the pains bestowed upon
it, was large enough for all the needs of profitable study had I been in
a condition for thought and reflection. It was not to my encouragement
that there were those doing a far larger business with doses simply
crucifying, and because crucifying, a far larger attendance was the
direct result.
I now see, as I did not then so clearly, that Nature's victories are
often won against the desperate odds of treatments that are simply
barbarous; and yet Nature is so powerful, so persistent in the attempts
to right all her wrongs, that she wins the victory in the great
majority of cases no matter how severely she may be taxed with means
that hinder. The great majority of the severely sick of a hundred years
ago recovered in spite of the bloody lancet and treatments that are the
barbarism of to-day.
II.
I was called one day to one of the families of the poorest of the poor,
where I found a sick case that for once in my life set me to thinking.
The patient was a sallow, overgrown girl in early maturity, with a
history of several months of digestive and other troubles. I found a
very sick patient, so sick that for a period of three weeks not even one
drink of water was retained, not one dose of medicine, and it was not
until several more days that water could be borne. When finally water
could be retained my patient seemed brighter in mind, the complexion was
clearer, and she seemed actually stronger. As for the tongue, which at
first was heavily coated, the improvement was striking; while the
breath, utterly foul at first, was strikingly less offensive. In every
way the patient was very much better.
I was so surprised at this that I determined at once to let the good
work go on on Nature's own terms, and so it did until about the
thirty-fifth day, when there was a call, not for the undertaker, but for
food, a call that marked the close of the disease. The pulse and
temperature had become normal, and there was a tongue as clean as the
tongue of a nursing infant.
Up to this time this was the most severely sick case I ever had that
recovered, and yet with not apparently more wasting of the body than
with other cases of as protracted sickness in which more or less food
was given and retained. And all this with only water for thirst until
hunger came and a _complete cure_!
Such ignoring of medical faith and practice, of the accumulated wisdom
and experience of all medical history, I had never seen before. Had the
patient been able to take both food and medicine, and I had prohibited,
and by chance death had occurred, I would have been held guilty of
actually putting the patient to death--death from starvation. Feed, feed
the sick whether or not, say all the doctors, say all the books, to
support strength or to keep life in the body, and yet Nature was absurd
enough to ignore all human practice evolved from experience, and in her
own way to support vital power while curing the disease.
I could recall a great many cases in which because of intense aversion
to food patients had been sick for many days, and even weeks, with not
enough nourishment taken to account for the support of vital power; but
the fact did not raise a question with me.
The effect of this case upon my mind was so profound that I began to
apply the same methods in Nature to other patients, and with the same
general results. The body, of course, would waste during the time of
sickness; but so did the bodies of sick that were fed. As for medicines,
they were utterly ignored except where pain was to be relieved, though
unmedicated doses were alike a necessity with all. Not a single
medicine was given except for pain, and occasionally in cases in which I
had reason to think the entire digestive tract needed a general clearing
of foul sewage. Thence on, that supreme work, the cure of disease, in my
hands became the work of Nature only.
In a general practice I was able to carry out the non-feeding plan by
permitting the various meat teas or the cereal broths, none of which can
be taken by the severely sick in quantities to do harm. By withholding
milk I was enabled to secure all the fasting Nature required, while
satisfying the ever-anxious friends with tea and broth diversions.
This was a line of investigation that I felt ought to be of the deepest
interest to every thinking, high-minded physician, to every intelligent
layman; and very early the evidences of the utility of withholding food
from the sick during the entire time of absence of desire for it, its
absolute safety, were beyond any questioning.
I had no fatalities that were apparently in any way due to the enforced
lack of food. In cases of chronic disease in which death was inevitable,
such as cancer, consumption, etc., patients were permitted to take what
they could with the least offence to the sense of relish. In every case
of recovery there was a history of increasing general strength as the
disease declined, of an actual increase of vital power without the
support of food that had no more relish than the dose that crucified
the nerves of taste.
In all America milk is the chief reliance to support vital power when no
other food can be taken. Milk in one stage of normal digestion gets into
the form of tough curds ready for the press, and curds should always be
thoroughly masticated before swallowing.
Sir William Roberts, of England, in his exhaustive work on _Digestion
and Diet_, asserts that milk-curds are not digested in the stomach
during sickness, but are forced into the duodenum, where, he asserts,
they are digested, but he gives no reason for his faith that there is
power to digest in the duodenum where there is none in the stomach.
It was not difficult to make the mothers in the homes understand that
taking milk by the drink was equivalent to swallowing green cheese-curds
without due mastication.
With these hygienic conceptions and methods I continued to visit the
sick as a mere witness of Nature's power in disease rather than as an
investigator, yet without being able to understand the secret of the
support of vital power without food. But whatever risk there might be,
or how strong my faith when my patrons were the subjects of what might
be called foolhardy experiments, there came a time when this faith was
to have the severest of all tests.
An epidemic of diphtheria broke out among my nearest neighbors, and
after four deaths in as many families within a stone's throw of my
residence a son of mine aged three years was taken. I had never given
him in all his life even a cross look, and whatever sin there was in
making idols of children in this I was the worst of all sinners, and I
did not quite believe, as some Christian folks would have me, that my
happiness through him was not the very incense of gratitude to the great
Author for the gift of such a treasure of the heart.
In my hour of trial two of my ablest and most experienced medical
friends came to me. Quinine and iron in solution were their verdict--and
the little throat was not copper-lined; and, in addition, all the strong
whiskey possible to force into the stomach: all this would have required
manacled wrists and the prying apart of set jaws. He had never received
anything from me more violent than caresses, and this abomination of
dosage was to be sent down a bleeding, ulcerated way, over raw surfaces
that would writhe and quiver under the added torture. This would not be
rational treatment for ulcerations on the body, and the loss of strength
through resistance and structural injury to the throat had no promise of
redemption except in the minds of my medical friends.
It happened that I left home without getting the prescription filled,
and, not getting back as soon as expected, the anxious wife procured the
medicines and succeeded in getting one dose into the stomach, and also
in raising a nervous hurricane that took an hour to allay. She was then
informed that such a dose would be cruel even to a horse. Thence on he
took nothing into his stomach but the water that thirst compelled, and a
little dosage with it to meet the mother's need; and so I stood beside
the suffering idol of my heart, with the entire medical world against
me--strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to defend him against
the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his
time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death
must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable
cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add
comfort to the suffering body, won the victory.
Since then the medical world has advanced to antitoxin as a specific,
leaving me nearly alone to plodding ways that are by sight and not by
faith. That the treatment of my sick son in the absence of the only
supposed specific was in advance of my time, the medical world cannot
now question.
As the months and years went on, it so happened that all my fatalities
were of a character as not to involve in the least suggestions of
starvation, while the recoveries were a series of demonstrations as
clear as anything in mathematics, of evolving strength of all the
muscles, of all the senses and faculties, as the disease declined. No
physician whose practice has been extensive has failed to have had cases
in which the same changes occurred, and in which the amount of food
taken did not explain this general increase of strength.
Believing I had made a most important discovery in physiology, one that
would revolutionize the dietetic treatment of the sick, if not
ultimately abolish it, my visits to the sick became of unsurpassed
interest, I watched every possible change as an unfolding of new life,
seeing the physical changes only as I would see the swelling buds evolve
into the leaves or flowers, reading the soul- and mind-changes in the
more radiant lines of expression.
I saw all these things with the naked eye, and more and more marvelled
at the bulk of our materia medicas, the size of our drug-stores, and the
space given to healing powers in all public and medical prints.
For years I saw my patients grow into the strength of health without the
slightest clue to the mystery, until I chanced to open a new edition of
Yeo's _Physiology_ at the page where I found this table of the estimated
losses that occur in death after starvation:
Fat 97 per cent.
Muscle 30 "
Liver 56 "
Spleen 63 "
Blood 17 "
Nerve-centres 0
And light came as if the sun had suddenly appeared in the zenith at
midnight. Instantly I saw in human bodies a vast reserve of predigested
food, with the brain in possession of power so to absorb as to maintain
structural integrity in the absence of food or power to digest it. This
eliminated the brain entirely as an organ that needs to be fed or that
can be fed from light-diet kitchens in times of acute sickness. Only in
this self-feeding power of the brain is found the explanation of its
functional clearness where bodies have become skeletons.
I could now go into the rooms of the sick with a formula that explained
all the mysteries of the maintenance and support of vital power and cure
of disease, and that was of practical avail. I now knew that there could
be no death from starvation until the body was reduced to the skeleton
condition; that therefore for structural integrity, for functional
clearness, the brain has no need of food when disease has abolished the
desire for it. Is there any other way to explain the power to make wills
with whispering lips in the very hour of death, even in the last moments
of life, that the law recognizes as valid?
I could now know that to die of starvation is a matter not of days, but
of weeks and months; certainly a period far beyond the average time of
recovery from acute disease.
III.
There fell to my care a very much worn-out mother, who took to her bed
with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, with the joints so involved
as to require the handling of a trained nurse. The agony was such that
the hypodermic needle was required to make existence endurable, and it
was used with the idea that the brain would be less injured by the
remedy than by the agony with its inevitable loss of sleep.
I know of no disease in which treatment has been more savage than in
this. The remedies in common use at that time were mainly new and of
supposed specific powers; but they were so violent, and proved to be so
futile, that they have all been given up since by the majority of the
profession.
As the days went on the disease declined in spite of the enforced
comfort through the needle; there were easier movements, a clearing of
the skin from sallow to a tint of redness, and finally, after a month,
the armchair could be used for a change.
On the morning of the forty-sixth day there was revealed in the face the
perfect color of health, and happiness marked every line of the
expression. There was ability to walk through several rooms of her home.
But it was not until the afternoon that the first food was desired and
taken, and never before was plain bread and butter, the supreme objects
of desire, so relished. In the following few months there was an actual
gain of forty pounds.
My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of the self-feeding
power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the
possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a
frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a
drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water
could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with
the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body
left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost
neither weight nor functional clearness.
In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same
age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the
available body-food.
I will now enter upon a study of the brain and its powers along these
lines, to be enlivened by illustrative evidence. What reason and
physiology had I with me that I should use methods in the sick-room
wherein the entire medical world was against me, and with severest
condemnation?
The head is the power-house of the human plant, with the brain the
dynamo as the source of every possible human energy. We think, love,
hate, admire, labor with our hands, taste, hear, smell, see, and feel
through the brain. Broken bones and wounds heal, diseases are cured
through energy evolved in the brain or the brain system as a whole. The
other so-called vital organs and the muscles are only as so many
machines that are run by the brain power, with the stomach an
exceedingly important machine. That powers so rare do not originate in
the bones, ligaments, muscles, or fats, does not need argument; that
when the nerve-trunks that supply the arm or leg are severed power of
movement and feeling is lost, is known to all; and equally would the
power of the stomach be abolished were the nerve-trunks cut off. In a
general way, then, it may be stated that the strength of the body is
directly as the strength of the brain.
With this physiology, who in or out of the medical profession can fail
to see clearly that the digestion of even an atom of food is a tax upon
the strength of the brain for whatever of power needed by the stomach,
the machine, for this purpose? Unless it can be proved that the stomach
has powers not derived from the brain system, this will have to be
admitted.
How is the strength kept up in the light of this physiology? The
universal belief is that it is kept up by the daily food. In proportion
to the prostration of sickness, so are physicians anxious to conserve
the energies by working the stomach to the limit of its powers.
The impression that there must be something digested to support the
vitality of the system is a belief, a conviction that has always been
too self-evident to suggest a doubt.
If the well need food to keep up the strength, the sick need it all the
more; this is the logic that has been displayed upon this question. Let
us keep it clear in mind that, if the nerves going to the stomach are
severed, paralysis will result as in the case of the arm, in order more
definitely to conceive the stomach as a _machine_ that requires power to
run it even to a tiringout degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the
exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which,
however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain
gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition
than of digestion.
If food really has power to keep up the strength, there should not be so
much strength lost by the general activities--indeed, it would seem that
fatigue should be impossible. But the fact remains that from the first
wink in the morning to the last at night there is a gradual decline of
strength no matter how much food is taken, nor how ample the powers of
digestion; and that there comes a time with all when they must go to
bed, and not to the dining-room, to recover lost strength. The loss of a
night of sleep is never made up by any kind of care in eating on the
following day, and none are so stupid as not to know that rest is the
only means to recover from the exhaustion of excessive physical
activity.
The brain is not only a self-feeding organ when necessary, but it is
also a self-charging dynamo, regaining its exhausted energies entirely
through rest and sleep. There is no movement so light, no thought or
motion so trivial, that it does not cost brain power in its action--and
this is true of even the slightest exercise of energy evolved in
digestion.
Why, then, do we eat?
For two reasons, or perhaps three: we eat because we are hungry. We
rarely fail to eat excessively to satisfy the sense of relish after the
normal hunger sense has been dissipated; we may eat to satisfy relish as
we eat ice cream, fruits, and the enticing extras that beguile us to put
more food into the stomach after it is already overfilled for its
working capacity. But our actual need of food, the best reason for
taking it, is to make up for the wastes from the general activities; and
this is a process in the order of Nature that actually tires the entire
brain system, or, in the common phrase, the whole body, unless the
stomach has powers not derived from the brain system.
Now as we need not, cannot feed the brain in time of sickness, what can
we feed? In all diseases in which there are a high pulse and
temperature, pain or discomfort, aversion to food, a foul, dry mouth and
tongue, thirst, etc., wasting of the body goes on, no matter what the
feeding, until a clean, moist tongue and mouth and hunger mark the close
of the disease, when food can be taken with relish and digested. This
makes it clearly evident that we cannot save the muscles and fat by
feeding under these adverse conditions.
Another very important, unquestioned fact is that disease in proportion
to its severity means a loss of digestive conditions and of digestive
power.
Cheer is to digestion what the breeze is to the fire. It may well be
conceived that there are electric nerve wires extending from the depths
of the soul itself to each individual gland of the stomach, with the
highest cheer or ecstacy to stimulate the highest functional activity,
or the shock of bad news to paralyze. From cheer to despair, from the
slightest sense of discomfort to the agony of lacerated nerves,
digestive power goes down. Affected thus, digestive power wanes or
increases, goes down or up, as mercury in a barometer from weather
conditions.
Digestive conditions in their maximum are revealed in the school-yard
during recess, when Nature seems busy recovering lost time.
How compares the ramble of a June morning, with the blue and sunshine
all above, the matchless green of the trees, and all the air fragrant
with the perfume of flowers and alive with music from the winged singer,
in digestive conditions, with those in the rooms of the sick, where
there is only distress felt in the body and seen in the faces of the
friends?
In time of health, if we eat when we are not hungry, or when very tired,
or in any mental worriment, we find that we suffer a loss of vital
power, of both physical and mental energy. How, then, can food be a
support to vital power when the brain is more gravely depressed by
disease? Yet from the morning of medical history the question of how
vital power is supported in time of sickness has never been considered,
because there has never been any doubt as to the support coming from
food. I assume this to be a fact, since all works on the practice of
medicine of to-day enjoin the need to feed the sick to sustain their
depressed energies--all this without a question as to whether there is
not a possibility of adding indigestion to disease when food is enforced
against Nature's fiat.
Since vital power is centred in the brain, do we need to feed, can we
feed, for other than brain reasons? This physiology admitted, there is
no other conclusion possible than that feeding the sick is a tax on
vital power when we need all that power to cure disease.
With all this physiology behind me, for more than a score of years I
have been going into the rooms of the sick to see the evolutions of
health from disease, as I see the evolutions from the dead wastes of
March to the affluence of June, and from the first I had the exceeding
advantage of being able to study the natural history of disease, a
history in which none of the symptoms were aggravated by digestive
disturbances.
As there was no wasting of vital power in the hopeless effort to save
the body from wasting, I had a clear right to presume that my patients
recovered more rapidly and with less suffering. With no perplexing
study over what foods and what medicines to give, I could devote my
entire attention to the study of symptoms as evidences of progress
toward recovery or death; and in addition to all this there was the
great satisfaction of being strictly in line with Nature as to when and
what to eat.
As to the danger of death from mere starvation, the following remarkable
case reveals how remote it is in the ordinary history of acute diseases.
The late Rev. Dr. Merchant, of Meadville, Pa., a short time before his
death, which occurred some months ago, informed me that a brother
entered the army during the War of the Rebellion with a weight of one
hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was sent home so wasted from
ulceration of stomach and bowels that he actually spanned his thigh with
thumb and finger. He lived ten days only, to astonish all by the
clearness of his mind even on the last day of his life, when he could
think on abstruse questions as he had never been known to do in health.
At death his body weighed only sixty pounds.