eyes, where there are both eyesight and insight to see and to study.
VI.
For many years I entered the rooms of the sick a sick man myself; I was
the victim of that monster of hydraheads, dyspepsia, or, to call it by a
more modern title, indigestion.
In my later teens my stomach began seriously to complain over its tasks,
and a pint of the essence of bitterness was procured to restore it to
power. My mouth was filled with teeth of the sweet kind; hence my horror
for the doses far exceeded the milder protests of the stomach. Not the
slightest benefit came from my medicinal sufferings, and this ended all
routine treatment of my stomach. My intense aversion to the flavor of
strong medicines caused me to inflict them as rarely as possible upon
other mouths during the drug period of my practice.
Mine seemed to be a weary stomach, in which the tired sense was a close
approach to acute pain for hours after each meal. When a medical student
I found nothing in the books, in the advice of my preceptor, nor in the
lectures at the university, but what proposed to cure me through drugs
that were abhorrent. As I never encountered any cures nor received the
slightest benefit from my experiments, I was deterred from injuring
myself through persistent dosage.
In the early part of my student career I was behind a drug-counter,
where I had ample experience in putting up prescriptions, and had an
excellent opportunity to measure medical men as revealed in their
formulas and the results in many cases in which failure was the rule in
chronic ailings; and I was not encouraged to abuse myself through the
results as revealed by any form of medication.
For the benefit of those who suffer from complainings of the stomach I
give a condensed summing-up of myself. I was born with a wiry
constitution, but of the lean kind, and a weak stomach, the chiefest
ancestral legacy. With ability to see with intense sense very much to
enjoy in this world, my resources in this way were boundless, hence I
was always full of hope and cheer.
All the senses of my palate were of the acute kind, and so were a
continual source of the penalties of gluttony. Whatever else there might
be alack with me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able to eat
at each meal food enough which, if fully digested, would have redeemed
the wastes of any day of labor; and not only this, but also enough of
sugar-enticing foods to anticipate the wastes of the following day.
Growing up in the country and with an intense fondness for the tart
sweetness of apples, pears, and peaches, and the harmlessness of eating
them no matter how full the stomach with hearty food, without question
my stomach was never void of pomace during the entire fruit season.
Whenever I sat down to eat there was an onrush of all the senses of the
palate as the outrush of imprisoned children to the ecstatic activities
of the school-yard; hence over-eating always, with never a sense of
satiety. The penalties were realized in painful digestion, with the
duodenum the chiefest of protesting voices.
A time came when gas would so accumulate as to make the heart labor from
mere pressure, the inevitable insufficiency of breath causing a lack of
aeration of the blood. With a constant waste of power in the stomach
there was always a sense of weariness; hence I was never able to know
the luxury of power in reserve. All through life my best efforts were
the result of intellectual inebriation, with always corresponding
exhaustion as the direct result. This weakness compelled me to waste the
least time on people who could not interest me, and to spend much time
alone to recharge my exhausted batteries.
For such a case as mine there is not to-day to be found an intelligent
hint in any medical text-book as to the physiological way to recovery.
The breakfasts in my house were of a character that, without ham,
sausage, eggs, steaks, or chops, they would not have been considered
worth spending time over. I had reached a time when a general collapse
seemed to be impending; but it was stayed for a few years by the new
life that came to me through the evolutions of health in the rooms of
the sick that seemed to portend possible professional glories: but as
the years went on I suffered more and more from nervous prostration
through waste of power in the stomach.
My friends began to enlarge upon my wretched looks, and with no little
concern; but none were wise enough to realize that my need was for words
that reminded of life and not of death.
By chance I met an old friend on the street when he happened to be
thinking about ways in daily food in Europe, from which he had just
returned, and at once he began to talk, not about my wretched looks, but
about the exceedingly light breakfasts customary in all the great
centres where he had been. They consisted only of a roll and a cup of
coffee. I was impressed just enough not to forget the fact, but without
there being a hint in it to set me to thinking.
But the time came, "the fulness of time." There came a morning when for
the first time I remembered that when in ordinary health I had no desire
to breakfast; but there was a sense of such general exhaustion from
power wasted over an unusual food mass not needed at the previous
evening meal that my morning coffee was craved as the morning dram by
the chronic toper. Only this, and a forenoon resulted of such comfort of
body, such cheer, and such mental and physical energy as had never been
realized since my young manhood was happy in the blessed
unconsciousness of having a stomach that, no matter how large or how
numerous the daily meals, never complained.
As for the dinner that followed, it was taken with an acuteness of
relish and was handled with a power of digestion that were also a new,
rich experience; but the afternoon fell far short of the forenoon. The
experience was so remarkable that I at once gave up all eating in the
morning, and with such reviving effects upon all my powers that the
results began to be noticed by all friends.
So originated the no-breakfast plan. Up to this time I had never had a
thought of advising anyone to do without food when desired; much less
that any of the three daily meals should be given up. My war was against
feeding when acute sickness had abolished all desire for food, and this
I had been able to conduct many years without exciting suspicion of a
general practice of homicide.
The improvement in my own case was so instant and so marked that I began
to advise the same to others, and with the result that each would make
known the redeeming work to suffering friends, and so the idea spread in
a friend-to-friend way.
Now the American breakfast, in point of sheer necessity, is believed to
be the most important meal of the day, as the means for strength that is
to be called out for the forenoon of labor, and believed with a force of
insistence that warrants a conclusion that a night of sleep is more
exhausting to all the powers than the day of labor.
To go into the fresh air, to do anything with an empty stomach, is to
invite a fainting by the way, is the general impression; but there were
scarcely any cases in which there was not sufficient improvement to
prevent all possibility of a return to the heavy breakfasts that had
been abandoned.
How did this scheme affect me in a professional way, that is, in the
reputation as a physician of average balance of brain functions? Some of
my professional brethren of strong conviction and ready command of
language began at once to try to abolish the dangerous heresy by
suggesting that on this one subject I was absolutely crazy. Of course,
their patrons took up this idea with avidity; and so there was a babble
of tongues, with myself the central point of attack as crank-in-chief of
all cranks. This is not the language of exaggeration; for whatever the
law and modern civilization permitted to abolish me professionally was
inflicted with tongues by the thousands, the war being made all the more
exciting and interesting by the enthusiasm of new recruits to the heresy
from the professional domains of my medical brethren.
What did I gain by this professionally? Mostly the odium of heresy
during the first few years; but with it was the supreme satisfaction
that came from seeing more additions to bright eyes and happy faces than
medicine ever gave, and in a way that would redound to my own good at
some time. The fact is, that as a means to better health, no matter what
nor where the disease, there is no limit to its application. As a
universal panacea its powers are matchless.
For a time I saw no farther than a cure of stomach condition and
resulting general comfort. That any disease was to be cured otherwhere
than in the stomach by means so simple, did not occur as an original
conception; but the fact that giving up the morning meal was attended
with improvement of all local diseases set me to thinking. Many of my
patients became thin under the regime; but as this was attended by an
increase of strength, not even the alarm of anxious friends without
faith was ever able to induce a return fully to the old ways.
But how explain the loss of weight? A clue came from the following case:
The first-born of a young mother had an habitual diarrhoea from birth
lasting many months; and yet it seemed well nourished, for it was
unusually fat and heavy for its age; but the days and nights were long
in the care of this apparently well-nourished child. The symptoms were
heedless to the every-hour dosing of pellets, or from the tumblers of
apparently purest water.
Now this mother, young as she was, was a woman of convictions, and with
courage to follow each to an ultimate conclusion. She had heard of
miracles resulting from only three feedings per day during the nursing
period; and so, notwithstanding a storm of opposition from a vast
circle of relatives, she put this first-born rigidly on the three-meal
plan, with the result of immediate cessation of the bowel trouble, but
with rapid decline in weight.
This caused anxiety, and I was called upon for advice. In every respect
except the weight-loss the improvement was wonderful. After much thought
there was a sudden flash of the truth: there were an abnormal weight and
bulk, due to the general dropsy of debility, similar in character to the
swelling of the feet and limbs in the old and feeble. The thickened
walls of the bloodvessels, toned with health, caused absorption; but the
eyes of the friends would not open to the miracle for a very long time,
and so render justice to the heroine, the young mother. As an aider and
abettor of such a flagrant system of starvation, I had my full share of
opprobrium; but, aided by the strong-minded, sensible mother, Nature
gained a sweeping victory, and thus this case cleared my mind from
confusion as to the anomaly.
One of my medical friends with whom calomel was as a sheet-anchor often
asserted that babies would actually get fat on it. That bulk would
actually increase by use of the forceful medicine is likely; but that
the increase would be dropsical I think is unquestionable.
The dropsy of debility is due to a loss of tone of the vascular system;
the walls of the vessels become thinner and therefore dilate. In the
feet and limbs of the old and greatly enfeebled by disease the veins
become distended to abnormal size by the force of gravity, resulting in
effusion of water into the cellular tissues, which increases when in the
upright position during the day and decreases when in the horizontal
position at night.
A toning up of the entire vascular system, by which a reverse current
from the tissues into the bloodvessels is made possible, is the only
means for relief.
This flash-light upon the part physics plays in the cure of disease put
me upon the true lines of investigation, and furnished a key for the
solution of many problems. From this time on I was to be kept busy, not
in winning victories, but in studying them.
This new physiology was not fully apprehended until long after the
no-breakfast plan was taken up. It came to me link by link; but the
missing link was the fact that food only restores waste, that lost
strength is only restored by sleep; and it now seems to me that I was
very dull not to have found it out long before I did. It seems to me
that no method of health culture, none in the treatment of disease can
have any physiological basis where these facts are not taken into
account.
For a time I failed to look beyond the ailments of the stomach for
curative results, until really surprising news began to reach me from
many sources. There would come to me those who had to tell about clearer
vision, acuter hearing, a stronger sense of smelling, etc., senses that
were not thought to be affected by disease; or there would be news that
chronic, local ailings, as nasal or bronchial catarrhs, skin diseases,
hemorrhoids, or other intractable disease, in some mysterious manner,
were undergoing a decline under the new regime.
In the domain of drugs we have medicines that vivid imagination has
endowed with presumed affinities for locations that are diseased. They
enter the circulation and happily get off at the right spot, to act
curatively; but no theories are advanced as to how they aid in the
construction of new cells or atoms, or how they aid in the disposal of
the old ones.
Construction, destruction! There is no death of atoms: really nothing is
generated, nothing destroyed: the change is but the rearranging of
ultimate elements; and how is a drug to influence any more than would be
in case of the affinities of chemistry?
Hazy conceptions, crude means! The ultimate cell multiplies by division
to become bone, nails, hair, ligaments, muscles, fat, the brain, the
whole body. Where along the line in the reconstructive work called by a
disease or injury is a medicine to apply with power to aid? In what way
the need to be expressed, in what operative way the helpful assistance
made clear, that faith without works that are seen can be made strong?
The chemist never rushes into print with news that another element has
been discovered until demonstrative evidence has placed the matter
beyond all question. If anything new is discovered in the firmaments,
adequate means to an end will be able to reveal it to all interested
eyes.
The impressions of science are quite different from the impressions of
the materia medica; and the miracles of cure that are displayed by the
column in even the highest class public prints are never in reach of
scientific explanation.
A new element is announced; we know instantly that it has been actually
discovered. A new cure is announced; we instantly may know that the
evidences will never be displayed along the lines of science.
I now unfold a theory of my own of the origin and development of
disease, and the development of cure, in which the physical changes
involved in some of the processes are in reach of the microscope.
It is my impression that, with rare exceptions, people are born with
actual structural weaknesses, local or general, that may be called
ancestral legacies. These are known as constitutional tendencies to
disease.
In parts structurally weak at birth the bloodvessels, because of thin
and weak walls, are larger than in normal parts, and because of
dilatation the blood circulates slower. There is an undue pressure upon
all between-vessel structures, a pressure that must lessen the nutrient
supply more or less, according to its degree. The death of parts in
boils and abscesses is due, I believe, to strangulation of the
nerve-supply. The bloodvessels are elastic, and capable of contraction
and dilatation, a matter regulated by the brain.
Now in these weaknesses always lie the possibilities of disease; they
may be supposed the weak links in the constitutional chain, and can no
more be made stronger than the constitutional design than can the body
as a whole. By whatever means brain power is lessened abnormality is
incited in the weak parts; hence gradually from the original weakness
there is a summing up, as a bronchial or nasal catarrh, or other acute
or chronic local or general disease.
The first step in any disease is the impression that lessens brain
power; the slightest depressing emotion, the slightest sense of
discomfort, lessens brain power, and to a like degree the tone of all
the bloodvessels; hence dilatation in degree. That the stomach, as the
most abused organ of the body, plays the largest part in over-drafts
upon the brain is not a matter of doubt.
Let us develop a chronic disease along these lines, with nasal catarrh
for an illustration. As tone is regulated entirely by the brain system,
all taxing of the brain increases the debility of the nasal structures.
In course of time the debility so increases through whatever also
debilitates the brain, that a stage is reached when water in the blood
begins to escape through the thin walls of the vessels and mingles with
the natural secretion of the membrane, and a catarrhal discharge is the
result. In severe cases a time may be reached when death of parts from
the strangling pressure may occur, and then we have an ulcerative
catarrh.
This evolution will go on as determined by the gravity of the ancestral
weakness, by the natural strength of the dynamo, the brain, and the
severity of the debilitating forces to which it may be subjected.
No one is ever attacked by a nasal or any other catarrh, nor by any
other chronic ailings. They all start from structural weaknesses that
are inherited, and they are the evolutionary results of brain-wearying
forces.
If a specialist were asked to express the actual condition of a diseased
structure that seems to call for medicinal aid, and to tell just how
medicated sprays, washes, and douches are to reach all the parts
involved, with healing power, and in what way that power is
exercised--in other words, what work actually is to be done, and how
medicine is to do it--he would not be able to enlighten his questioner
no matter how fertile his conception, how dexterous his use of language.
In fact, the healing power of drugs exists in fertile imaginations
rather than among those ultimate processes where disease is cured, where
disease destroys.
As the care moves by the power evolved in the dynamo, so do the
bloodvessels contract and relax as determined by brain conditions.
Dilating bloodvessels, effusion of water from thinning walls, the
between-vessels starving pressure, increasing general debility of all
the structures involved--this is the gradual evolution of catarrh and of
all other chronic diseases.
From this it was seen that no form of local treatment can avail to
relieve the operative cause in cases of this kind. Tone must be added to
all the weakened, dilated vessels, in order to contract and thicken
their walls so as to stop the leakage, and to relieve that pressure upon
the between structures that have become anaemic through lack of
nourishment.
That an evolution in reverse is the one need scarcely calls for
argument. It is the brain that needs our attention, and we meet its need
by saving its rare powers from wasting.
We will do this by cutting down, as far as possible, all the activities
for which it furnishes power, even as we would diminish the number of
cars where power in the dynamo had become deficient; we will either
sever the wires that connect with the stomach, or make a marked
reduction in the labor to be performed in the stomach. With power
accumulating in the brain, power will reach the utmost recesses of
debility and disease, with Nature to do all the healing.
To reinforce this physiology, this statement may be made with the
strongest emphasis: the medical treatment of chronic disease fails
inevitably because it fails to consider the vital force involved. The
brain has no part in the treatment of chronic disease by the specialist,
where drugs are a means to an end never reached: there are only a
disappointment and an interchange of pocket-books.
In all parts suffering with pain there is congestion, swelling. The
bloodvessels are distended; hence the nerves suffer violence in
stretching or from pressure. The pain simply adds to the abnormal
conditions by causing an active determination of the blood to the
involved parts. To relieve pain, then, is curative, because it lessens
the abnormal congestion.
The no-breakfast plan with me proved a matter of life unto life. With my
morning coffee there were forenoons of the highest physical energy, the
clearest condition of mind, and the acutest sense of everything
enjoyable.
The afternoons were always in marked sluggishness by contrast, from the
taxing of digestion.
Without realizing that the heavy meals of the day were a tax upon the
brain, I would scarcely get away from the table before I began to feel
more generally tired out than the severest taxing from a long forenoon
of general activity ever made me. With the filled stomach, fatigue,
general exhaustion, came as a sudden attack rather than as an evolution
from labor, and there would be several hours of unfitness for doing any
kind of service well.
In the application of this method to others I had the great satisfaction
of good results without any exceptions; and the missionary work was
begun by friends among friends, fairly spreading better health and
adding thereby more and more disaster to my name.
More and more I became a focus of adverse criticism in all matters where
level-headedness was deemed important. My acute cases began to be
watched with hostile interest, as if homicide from starvation were the
inevitable result in all cases. My country had become the country of an
enemy.
Not being able to give my patients clearly defined reasons for the
general and local improvements resulting from a forenoon fast as a
method in hygiene, it had to be spread from relieved persons to
suffering friends; and according to the need, the sufferers from various
ailings would be willing to try anything new where efforts through the
family physician or patent medicines had completely failed; it was
spread as if by contagion, among the failures of the medical profession.
Among those to become interested at an early date was a prominent
minister who wore the title of D. D., and for a time his interest was
intense. He came to me one day with word that a member of his household,
well known to me as a young woman of unusual ability and culture, had
not been able to take solid food at his table for a year, and he
believed that my treatment would avail in her case. To this she was very
averse, since every treatment her hapless stomach had received had only
added to the debility, until disability had become the result. She
finally came to me to be relieved from the forceful importunity of her
reverend friend, who had excited my eager interest with a prophecy that
unusual literary distinction would follow a cure, as there were
abilities of the very highest order, in his estimation.
She came, and I had no difficulty in securing such a vacation for the
worn-out stomach that it could begin with solid food when the time to
eat arrived. The vacation was so brief and power had accumulated so
rapidly that almost any food could be taken without discomfort, and no
trouble ever came not invited by a relapse from the better way of living
that had really created a new stomach.
This case caused more notoriety over the no-breakfast plan than any that
ever occurred in the city. As a writer of biographies and of articles in
high-class journals and magazines, this talented woman has been a
miracle of patient, persistent study and investigation.
This endorsement in high places greatly added to my reputation as a
physician with distorted mind, for the idea that any good could come
from a short fast, to be followed by the giving up of that needed
morning meal, was too absurd for sober reflection, too violently
revolutionary to be even patiently considered.
The no-breakfast plan was not so very long in becoming known over the
entire city; a bridge had been crossed, and every plank taken up and
destroyed; thence the ways into new families were nearly closed.