was digested during the last four months of his life; but it is my
opinion that it took a much longer time than this for the brain to
absorb more than ninety pounds of the body. That life was shortened by
the more rapid loss of the tissues from the disease is to be taken into
account in estimating time in starvation.
IV.
Feeding the sick! Who that rule in kitchens and feed the well do not
realize with weariness of brain the demands of the stomach that at each
meal there shall be some change in the bill of fare?
The chief reliance of physicians for the maintenance of strength while
sick bodies are being cured is milk. As a food, milk was mainly destined
for the calf, and not for man--certainly not after the coming of the
molars. It is not a food that will start the saliva in case of hunger,
as the odors from the frying-pan or from roasting fowl, yet because it
plays such an important part as a complete food for some months in the
life of the calf, and because it can be taken without especial aversion
when the odors of the cooking-stove are an offence to the nostrils; it
is given by the hour, day after day, and in some cases week after week;
and there are physicians by the thousands who reinforce this inflexible
bill of fare by the strongest alcoholics, whiskey being generally
selected.
In this connection I shall say of alcoholics that they contain not an
atom that can be converted into living atoms; they congest and irritate
the stomach, and hence lessen digestive power; and benumb all the brain
powers and faculties.
As a daily ration without change, this combination, strictly adhered to,
would prostrate the energies of a giant, and he would find himself
mustered out of all active service in less time than the hapless sick
are often compelled to endure such feeding. Does Nature so conveniently
reverse herself to meet an emergency that the sick can be built up and
sustained by such feeding as would debilitate the well?
In the city where I live the physicians average well in learning,
ability, character, and experience. Among them are the extremists in
dosage: those with a hundred remedies for a hundred symptoms; others
with such boluses as would writhe the face of an ox. There are some with
extraordinary force of command in the rooms of the sick, who believe
that whiskey is nourishing and that milk is liquid food; that doses go
into human stomachs to travel the rounds of the circulation, and finally
drop off at the right place for either patchwork or original work.
Whatever there is in drugs to cure disease, whatever in milk and the
strongest alcoholics to sustain the strength, every protracted case has
been made to reveal in their forceful hands. I have no reason to believe
they exceeded authorized treatments. I have no reason to doubt that in
all countries, in all lands, where there are educated physicians, the
same appliances are in common use, appliances that will make the next
short step from the lancet and bolus of a darker age the estimate of the
time to come.
The treatments of the sick are always changing, while the process of
cure remains the same. Only in the case of broken bones are we compelled
to let Nature do all the curing, while we may take pride in some
progress in the mechanical appliances.
As milk and stimulants are a common, authorized means to sustain the
sick, and as they are poured into human stomachs with all the faith with
which lancets were once forced into congested veins, their efficiency
for good or evil must be studied by comparison.
Treatments must lessen both the severity and the duration of disease to
be of permanent benefit. For a study by comparison, this opportunity
came to me. There was a call to attend a case of typhoid fever in a
young girl. In the same vicinity there had been under the care of one of
my forceful brethren a woman in middle life, whose stomach was
habitually rejecting all the milk and alcoholics poured into it, the
doctor having a theory that good would result no matter how brief the
time they were retained.
For a month my patient swallowed only the desired water and doses which
did not corrode, a desire for food coming at the end of the month. The
only day and night nurse was an overwrought mother, who got into bed
with the same disease as soon as the daughter got out of it. There was
another month of severer sickness, when without food and without the
horror of dosage, as before, the call for food marked the close of the
disease. My services ended here some days before the undertaker took
charge of the doctor's case.
A girl in her later teens, with a mild, so-called malarial fever, fell
into the same forceful care. There was a true history in this case of
nearly two gallons of whiskey, and daily milk from the quart at first
down to inability to take the least nourishment at last. Then there were
more than a month of days when vital power sustained itself without the
ways of violence, death occurring during the _nineteenth week_.
The ravenous brain had absorbed the lips to such thinness that the
depressions between the teeth were clearly revealed. From the first dose
to the last breath this was a case of dying, and the most persistent
fight for life against immense odds I have ever become aware of in an
acute case. In this case the stomach had become so seared by the
alcoholic that digestion was impossible, as would have been the case in
a body that was not sick.
Near this home there was a more delicate girl of about the same age
taken with the same fever; but with mild dosage and no food--in Nature's
care--hunger came at the close of the fourth week.
Later on in the same family there was a case of la grippe, in which for
several years there had been chronic, ulcerative bronchitis that bid
defiance to blisters and inhalations, the various specifics of another
forceful predecessor, who also was a believer in large doses and full
rations of alcoholized milk.
The coughing was so persistent, so continuous, that only the hypodermic
needle met the need. To prevent the tearing of a raw surface in the
bronchial tubes by the cough was as necessary as to apply splints to a
broken bone. There was no food for six weeks, and Nature made most of
her opportunity, not only to cure the acute disease, but also the
chronic disease, which for nearly ten years since has remained cured.
I was summoned to Asheville, N. C., to see a young man in the last stage
of consumption. I found him nearly a skeleton, though he had been eating
six times daily for several months by the decree of a really learned
physician. The belchings from gas were loud and frequent; the sputa by
actual measure was about six ounces during every twenty-four hours.
A fast was ordered, and on the third day a mass of undigested food was
thrown up. As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty there was
comfort all along the line, and the cough was so diminished, that less
than an ounce of sputa was raised in twenty-four hours.
After a week of fasting there came a natural desire for food, and thence
on he enjoyed without distress of stomach all he wished to take. Thence
on he lived with only the least discomfort, and with whispering lips he
dictated to me his will, conveying large property. He could look with
meaning when the power to whisper was gone, and life ended as the going
out of a candle.
For months his sufferings had nearly all been due to food masses in a
state of decomposition. He saw clearly and mentioned often that his had
been a case of starvation from overfeeding. Nature finally had to
succumb because she was not also able to deal with a clearly avoidable
disease, indigestion; but she kept up a brave fight until the body was
nearly absorbed.
As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty the friends noticed that
nervousness largely disappeared. His sleeps were much longer, because
not broken by coughing as before; and as the brain was not taxed with
food masses there was an accumulation of power that was clearly revealed
in the cheer of expression and a calmness as if heavenly rest had come
at last.
A few years ago an attorney in this city had to endure a course of fever
to which was added all the known barbarism of the times. Under enforced
food and stimulants his mind at last became so weak that the dosings
were forced down his throat. There were many weeks of life at lowest ebb
before the man of torture (the doctor) was compelled to discontinue his
evil work, and there were then months, extending to years, during which
there appeared a colorless ghost of his former self on the streets--and
this in spite of a wood-chopper's daily eatings, which were far in
excess of power to digest.
At last he was brought to his couch with a mild fever complicated with a
variety of other ailings. Not one of his friends who knew him
intimately expected his recovery, as it was believed by them that there
were chronic conditions that were beyond cure, and this because there
had been death in manner, movements, and looks for months. And yet he
had been able to take a stomach to his office every morning for many
weeks filled with pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, etc., only to
shiver before the stove between his stomach-fillings.
To this possibly hopeless case I was called, and from that time he was
to suffer only from the disease. For nearly three weeks no food was
called for; and yet power so increased that he became able to dress
himself; and on the morning before hunger finally called for food he
came down from his bedroom with a son on his back who weighed not less
than seventy-five pounds. Thence on, life, color, mind, muscle, rapidly
came until there was such regeneration as to reveal a new body and a new
soul.
Some years before this event an only son was taken sick with a mild
fever. A young physician and friend of the patient was called whose
faith in drugs, milk, and whiskey was boundless. He was fresh from his
university, and therefore Nature had no part, through experience at the
sick-bed, in the cure of disease. For many weeks these remedies of
torture were vigorously and persistently enforced. But the time came
when Nature would bear no longer. The father, a personal friend, came to
see me simply to unburden himself, and as he was not able to give me the
case I was unprofessional enough to advise that the attendance should
go on, but that there should be a complete rest the physician should not
know of. This was done, and in a few days there was a call for food, the
first call in more than two months. Of course, there was a recovery,
which was an exceeding victory for Nature against extraordinarily
adverse conditions, but it required many months to restore the wrecked
balance.
As I write this experience the following comes to me as a still stronger
indictment against authorized medical method. A. B., when in the early
maturity of his physical manhood, was stricken with a partial paralysis
that sent him to his bed. It was simply the case of a wound of the brain
requiring rest as the chief condition for cure. But milk, whiskey, and
drugs were used with the greatest persistence, and after three months he
became able to be about, no less feeble in mind than in body, and with
teeth utterly ruined by the dosage. For fully five years he went about
his home and along the streets as one in a dream. For ten years there
was inability to attend to his ordinary business. Life came at last
through the no-breakfast plan.
The most remarkable fight for life on the part of Nature against the
adverse conditions of drugs, alcoholics, and milk I have ever known was
in the following case: A spare woman, of perhaps forty years, came to
her bed the victim of habitual bromidia and chloral, invited by severe
headaches. The treatment of this case was as follows: whiskey every
hour, milk every other hour; corrosive medication and powerful brain
sedative every night, which would have paralyzed digestive energy for
many days. There was not an hour during the twenty-four in which there
was not dosing either to cure the disease or to sustain the system. The
average quantity of whiskey was six ounces daily, and of milk nearly a
quart. This treatment was borne for weeks, merging into months. There
was no disease not caused by the treatments, and the battle went on
until there was only the shadow of a woman left when Nature rebelled
against further violence. A few days of peace were granted because hope
had departed; but it took Nature more than a year to recover from the
damage.
A man of iron and steel, in the early prime of life, was the victim of a
severe injury. With the agony of lacerated nerves and the hypodermic
needle to make the digestion of food impossible, milk and whiskey were
poured into an unwilling stomach from the first, and both were used
until neither could be retained; and then the lower bowel was
extemporized into a stomach. For one hundred and forty-six days, from
three to seven doses of morphine were put into the arm daily; and
morphine dries both mouth and stomach and lessens all energies of the
brain. The body itself was not sick; there was no hint of disease in it;
yet there were drugs prescribed that cost dollars by the score, and
there were alcoholics by the gallon. For months the pain, alcoholics,
and morphine kept the mind in such a daze that there were only the
imbecilic mutterings of a dreamer in trouble.
The only treatment indicated in this case was the best of surgery for
the injury, and some easing doses for a short while at first, to relieve
pain. No food would be desired or digested; so the fast would go on
until there would be a natural hunger, which would only manifest itself
when there would be marked relief from pain. The meals, thence on, would
be so far apart that all would be keenly relished; and there could be no
loss of weight when meals would be so taken.
It is not surprising when I say that a seared stomach and a brain
converted into a whiskey pickle had no part in the digestion of milk:
else why did the weight of one hundred and sixty pounds at the time of
the accident fall to eighty-five at the time of hunger? And all this
drugging and alcoholics for a man who was not really sick! and the bill
of fare that was not changed during one hundred and sixty days! and the
time lost, and the expense entailed, and the anxious, aching hearts that
were nearest the bed of horrors--of horrors, torments clearly invited.
By way of contrast the following case is given. During vacation a lad of
twelve years of one of my families took to his bed with appendicitis in
severe form. A learned physician was called, and there were many days of
morphine, with other medication and all the food that could be coaxed
into an unwilling stomach. Enough morphine was given daily to paralyze
digestive energy for at least two or three days in one in ordinary
health. There was a month of this war against Nature, when the violence
of the acute attack subsided and a partial victory was gained against
great odds.
On my return I found him under heavy dosage for the recovery of strength
and lost appetite. Colorless, anaemic, languid--he was barely able to
walk. He was immediately put under my care, and therefore under a fast
that ended in a few days in such hunger as had not been felt in several
months; and color, cheer, energy, weight evolved in a month. But there
was also a developing abscess deep in the groin, and the time came when
a grave operation was necessary to save life. He was made ready for the
surgeon's knife that cut its way down, down many inches to relieve walls
ready to burst from the tension. The wound remained in the care of the
surgeon, but the life in my care. Who deny that the anaesthetic, the
shock of the operation, and the subsequent pain will not abolish all
power to digest as well as all the desire for food? Here was a patient
waiting for Nature to rally, which she did on the third day in a call
for food; and thence on one daily meal was keenly relished, and the
wound was healed--a wound that was three inches long on the surface and
six inches deep. On the fifteenth day the lad was able to be dressed and
able to walk about his room, and with a freshness of color that was
never observed in him before. What law of body was violated in the
preliminary treatment intended to prepare Nature for the ordeal and to
enable her to rally from it?
This fresh tragedy in one human life has become known to me while I
write. A man, a giant, in his eighty-eighth year, lost his appetite, and
was put to death by the following means: A pint of whiskey and from one
to two quarts of milk daily to keep him nourished. Five months passed
without any change in the bill of fare--five months of delirium, of
imbecilic muttering before the last breath was drawn. These tragedies
are common the world over. Do I cry against them with too loud a voice?
Would that I had a voice of thunder!
I have given a few examples of the crucifixions of the sick and the
afflicted, whereof I have many, and they are the real history of cases
known, and are constantly occurring in every community.
The cure of disease and injury by fasting--the mode of Nature--made the
greatest impression in families in which there was intelligence enough
to comprehend it; but the victories of Nature were complicated by cases
in which death was inevitable. With a feeling that I must give the new
hygiene to the world in printed form, I did not enlarge in public over a
method that would be certain to be suggestive of starvation, where food
was supposed to be of the greatest importance.
My sick-room success failed to enable me to draw larger checks; but the
satisfaction of going into the rooms of the sick and not having to rack
my mind over what medicine to give, what food to be taken, was a great
compensation for the absence of a large bank account. Professional
attainments and abilities play only a small part in the mere business
side of the medical profession. An innocent public believes with intense
convictions in the efficacy of dosage; and with distorted vision, as the
famous knight of La Mancha, sees giants in professional healers who are
really only windmills, with whom personal contact in the sick-room is
only too often a danger measured by its closeness.
Think of the wasting of the body during sickness; of the brain system,
which is life itself, that does not waste: think of the cases of
recovery in which for weeks no food is possible for stomach reasons; of
the more frequent cases in which recoveries take place after weeks of
such scant food as not to be taken into account as a support to vital
power by minds governed by reason. Think how disease, in proportion to
its severity, is a loss of digestive power, and with cure energy
entirely of the brain, how serious a matter it is to lessen it by waste
of energy in forcing decomposing food masses through a digestive channel
nearly two rods long, food masses that the brain will have none of, and
that do not save the fat and muscles; think of all this physiology, and
raise this question: "Is this man alone in his faith and practice, or
is Nature so in line with him that the entire medical profession is
wrong in their dosings and feedings?"
I conclude these cases with an illustration. Think of all this enforced
feeding, of the doses to relieve, of the wasting of brain power, and
compare with the following illustration, in which case no food was taken
for thirty-six days, and yet it was possible for the patient to be about
during the greater part of the time.
NOTE.--In this case severe indigestion and nervous troubles and
almost daily headaches had been a torture for years. On the
morning of the thirty-sixth day, on which the photograph was
taken, a visit to the dentist for the extraction of a tooth
revealed no fear, as had formerly been the case. Eating was
resumed on the thirty-eighth day with no inconvenience. Since
then (over six months ago) no trace of the former troubles has
reappeared. Loss of weight about twenty pounds.
[Illustration: Photograph, by Henry Ritter.
MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN,
THIRTY-SIXTH DAY WITHOUT FOOD.]
V.
"Physician, heal thyself!" There is a world of sarcasm in these three
words; for about the only advantage the physician has over the laity is
that he can do his own dosing. As a general fact, he does no more to
prevent bodily ailings than other people, and is just as liable to
become the victim of bad habits.
It is my impression that, in proportion, as many physicians become the
slaves of tobacco, opium in some form, and alcoholics as are to be found
in any other class of people; they are quite as likely to be the victims
of various chronic ailings as other people, and with equal impotency to
relieve. Every day I see physicians going to the homes of the sick with
cigars on fire, signals of the brain system in distress undergoing the
lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where the purest air of heaven
ought to prevail, as animated tobacco-signs.
Where is there virtue in this world that is of any practical good whose
vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who
has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath,
the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most
radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or
habits that offend and disable, than the physician? Where is the logic
of employing the sick to feed the sick? Is not that a sick doctor whose
nerves are so full of plaints as to need the frequent soothings only
found in a cigar, that also sears the nerves of taste? Is he not very
sick when those nerves require the stronger alcoholic?
There is contagion in good health and sound morals, when daily
illustrated, no less than in courage and fear. No physician can be at
his best in the rooms of the sick if he be under any bondage from
disease or habit.
"Physician, heal thyself!" Physician, how does it happen that you have
need to be healed, and of what worth are you if you can neither prevent
disease nor cure yourself with your dosings? What availeth it to a man
to talk righteously when virtue is not in him?
Ailings, habits blunt all the special senses and the finer instincts and
tastes, and impair the power to reason clearly, to infer correctly, to
conclude wisely. Only the well have that hopefulness that comes from
power in reserve, power that is not wasted through acquired disease and
acquired habits. The contagion of health is a power no less than courage
or fear.
That man, self-poised, void of fear, General Grant, crushed the
Rebellion with a single sentence, "I will fight it out on this line if
it takes all summer." That sentence made every man in his army a Grant
in courage and confidence. Grant in his prime could puff his cigar while
commanding all the armies of his country; but the cigar ultimately
destroyed his life, and there was no physician to interpose to prevent
one of the most torturing of deaths.
Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the sick? This question
will be more frequently asked in that time to come when the drug-store
annex to the sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought
necessary.
Human expression is studied in the rooms of the sick as nowhere else;
and if the lines are not obscured by the fogs and clouds of disease the
signs can be much more clearly distinguished.
A man is now under my care whose soul is of the largest mould, and who
is so supremely endowed by reason of intellect, varied tastes and
acquirements, as to make life on earth well worth living. His long
chronic local ailment has not impaired his power to read me for signs of
hope as it seems to me I have never been read before; and never before
have I so felt the need to enter a room of the sick with a larger stock
of general health. For the time I seem to him to be holding before his
eyes the keys of life or death.
The physician should be able to go into the room of the sick to see with
clearest vision whatever is revealed to the natural eye; and no less to
see with eyes of understanding that he may be an interpreter of
conditions that indicate recovery or death. He is the historian of
disease, and therefore before he can write he must see clearly all that
can be known about the process of cure as revealed by symptoms.
The eye is at its best only in perfect health no less than the reason,
the judgment, and the spirits. A few years ago a drouth of many weeks
occurred; in some meadows and pastures the grass seemed dead, beyond the
possibility of growth. Every shade of the green had departed; but warm
rains came, and in a few days there was a green carpet plush-like in its
softness and delicacy.