CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Thoughts for Consideration--Offering a New Philosophy--Lymphatics
and Fascia--A Satisfactory Experiment--Natural Washing Out.
THOUGHTS FOR CONSIDERATION.
"Let us not forget the assembling of ourselves together." Whether this
quotation applies to us or not, as an Osteopath I will venture to say
that the honored dead, and the honest living intelligent healers of all
schools, and all systems of trying to relieve our race from disease and
suffering, so far as I have been able to ascertain, have been forced to
guess how to proceed when they enter the "sick room" for want of a
philosophical system of procedure. We have collected together many or
few symptoms, named the disease, opened the battle, and on our side have
met the enemy and fought bravely all battles very much the same way. I
have spent one-half of a century in the field trying the many methods of
attacks; and used the best arms and ammunition to date, and designed to
do the greatest good. For twenty years or more I was content to be
governed by the opinions and customs of older and more experienced
physicians. I gave the disease its proper name. I gave the medicine as
taught and practiced, but was not satisfied that the line of procedure
was philosophically correct.
OFFERING A NEW PHILOSOPHY.
I believe at the present time I am fully prepared to say I can offer you
a more rational philosophy of what should be the physician's first
object, when called to repair a vessel that has become unseaworthy by
accumulated barnacles, and is placed upon the dry dock for restoration
to that condition called seaworthy, again. I believe this philosophy
will sustain the strongest minds in the conclusion that our first and
wisest step to successfully combat all diseases would be to inhibit
first the nerves of the lymphatics, then produce muscular constricture
and cause them to unload their diseased contents, and keep them
unloading until renovation is absolutely complete; leaving the
lymphatics in a purely healthy state, and keep them in this condition at
any period of the disease. I have long since been of the opinion that if
we could keep all impurities from accumulating in the lymphatics, and
never allow them to become overloaded, we would have no such diseases as
bilious fever, typhoid, mountain fever, malaria, pneumonia, flux, heart
disease, brain disease, fits, insanity and on to the whole list of
climatic troubles, and the troubles with the changes of winter and
summer.
LYMPHATICS AND FASCIA.
I have thought for many years that the lymphatics and cellular system of
the fascia, of the brain, the lungs, and the heart throughout the whole
system of blood supply, do get filled up with impure and unhealthy
fluids, long before any disease makes its appearance, and that the
procedure of changes known as fermentation, with its electromagnetic
disturbances, were the cause of at least ninety per cent of the diseases
that we labor to relieve by some chemical preparation called drugs. When
I was fully satisfied that we were liable to do more harm than good with
such remedies, I began to hunt for more reasonable methods to relieve
the system of its poisonous gases and fluids, through the excretory
system of the lymphatics and other channels, through which we had hoped
to renovate and purify the system.
A SATISFACTORY EXPERIMENT.
For twenty-five years I have tried to balance myself, divert my mind
from all previous methods and see if I could not get more directly to
the lymphatic system of nerves, and cause the millions of vessels known
to exist in the body to begin to unload their contents and continue
that action until all impurities were discharged by way of the bowels,
lungs, kidneys and porous system.
NATURAL WASHING OUT.
At the conclusion of this philosophy I will endeavor to explain just how
nature has provided to ward off diseases, by washing out before
fermentation should set up in the lymphatics, from being received and
retained the length of time, that destructive chemical changes would
begin its work of converting elements into gas and discharging them from
the system as unsuitable for nutriment. In order to avoid this calamity
we are met with two important thoughts, one of the power of the nerves
of the lymphatics to dilate and contract, also that of fascia and
muscle, to dilate or constrict with great force when necessary to eject
substances from gland, cell, muscle and fascia. Thus we see a cell
loaded to fullness by secretion which it cannot do without; open-mouthed
vessels through which it receives this fluid. Then again the system of
cellular sphincters must dilate and contract in order to retain the
fluids in those cell-like parts of the body. Now we are at the point
when ready for use in other parts of the system, those sphincters must
temporarily give away, that the gland may relax and dilate. Then the
universal principle of constriction throughout the whole body can
discharge the contents of the lymphatics of all divisions of the body,
which is surely the normal condition. Let the lymphatics always receive
and discharge naturally. If so we have no substance detained long enough
to produce fermentation, fever, sickness and death.
I think this thought has been presented plainly enough to be fully
understood and practiced by the reader, if an Osteopath.