When our neighbors desire to account for there being a black sheep in
the family, having charity towards all, they immediately state that
he inherited it—whatever that may mean. They travel back generation
through generation and if they go _far_ enough they can always
find what they want, and claim that this taint came from a forefather.
For Heaven’s sake, if we are the epitome or digest of all the good and
ill that our forefathers have been doing, clear from the time they were
monkeys, what a conglomeration we should be at the present time.
According to our alienists; a very good word, it always reminds me
of foreign—strange, I don’t know—and they are strong on heredity,
we inherit (?) insanity, ill health, goodness, badness, et cetera.
Heredity is a word that means nothing, therefore explains nothing, and
is a very good word to use by our scientific (?) friends when somebody
asks a pertinent question.
The Abdominal Brain of the child learns from the same brain (mind) of
the mother to reproduce as of the mother, modified by the material out
of which to build (condition of the mother’s blood), and the present
external environment (suggestion) of the mother.
[Sidenote: Cerebral impressions]
[Sidenote: As to features]
As is proven by birthmarks, cerebral impressions have a positive effect
on the Abdominal Brain action. A child looks like its father simply
through the sense-impression on the mother. A mother may bear a child
having the features of her husband’s dearest friend and yet be a
physically pure woman. A child having the features of a woman’s husband
is not proof that he is its father. I would go even a step farther,
and say if I were on a jury to pass judgment on a white woman who gave
birth to a black child, and it was shown that the woman was of proper
moral character, et cetera, I would unhesitatingly believe and decide
in favor of the woman being physically pure, although the child was
black.
[Sidenote: Produce life (?)]
The story of Jacob illustrates this, and breeders of animals prove it,
year after year. If I dared, here, to discuss this subject properly,
I could quote instances without number all tending to prove my claim.
The element of the male is only a fertilizer, nothing more, and nothing
is inherited from the father, _per se_. The egg of the mother
contains a memory (mind) of building the Abdominal Brain, which action
is aroused by the element of the male. The moment the Abdominal Brain
(Sympathetic System) is built, _it acquires its intelligence direct
from the Sympathetic brain centers of the mother_, tempered by
cerebral impressions. It is for this reason that our alleged scientists
fail to “produce” life.
Why is it that two children of the same mother possess absolutely
different traits? They both have the same (?) environment? How is
this possible? The environment is not the same. First, the external
environment is always changing, if in nothing else, there is the change
of the seasons. The food differs, the mental state of the mother
differs, etc. In fact, at no time are we the same, we are always
changing, moving on, nillynally, reflecting the constant change of our
suggestion.
[Sidenote: The same impossible]
In a piano factory one hundred pianos are turned out, seemingly built
of the same material, by the same hands, and yet no two are identically
the same in value or quality. How is this? No two things are the same.
After the pianos are completed a man assorts them, then a more skillful
one; and last, the expert comes in and decides on the relative value
of the instruments. So it is with children born, each varying and
time assorts them. Those born with superfine feeling nerve-ends will
quickly learn to withdraw from coarse wraps, while those born with
dulled nerve-ends will be attracted to the contact of the rough wraps,
each through its natural state (mind) responding positively to the
suggestion.
[Sidenote: Musicians]
A child born with the nerves of hearing super-sensitive, will gather
more ideas as to sound and develop itself into a musician; the same
with sight, a child super-acute as to distinguishing form and color,
is certain to develop into a painter, draftsman, or enter some pursuit
that will give expression to his superabundance of ideas of this one
sense.
[Sidenote: Here is the heredity]
A mother possessed of a certain sexual irritation will produce a
child having a redundant, superfluous, or abnormal condition, which,
in time, will result through its irritation into a condition similar
to the mother’s. Or, if the father be in a condition to impress the
mother, in ninety times out of a hundred, the impression so produced
on the mother will be reproduced in the child, physically. Here is the
heredity. But a surgeon knowing (?) what is “normal,” has it in his
power to remove the irritation or redundant tissue, and thereby put the
child in a “normal” condition. How many male Jews do we find suffering
from consumption? Not because their mothers did not have consumption,
but as the cause of the consumption is removed from them.
[Sidenote: Inherit disease (?)]
A child, being born with a sound pair of lungs, could not possibly have
inherited consumption, as the mind has but the one memory. To have
inherited consumption would have meant to inherit a memory of building
an imperfect pair of lungs. But the child did inherit a genital
irritation which would result, in later years, in worrying the ganglia
and cause (force) them to build an imperfect lung. Thanks to the
discovery of orificial surgeons, many of these irritations are known,
which, if removed at birth, will destroy the alleged inheritance.
A mother has astigmatism; baby is born with good eyes, and, mind
you, that babe is getting a new pair of eyes every six months. It is
strange that the ganglia which, according to the theory of our alleged
scientists, should have inherited a memory of building bad eyes,
should, after building thirty or forty pairs of good ones, suddenly
recollect that it has forgotten to do what it inherited, and start in
building bad eyes. The truth of the matter is this: The irritation that
was inherited had not, until after a number of years, grown to be of
sufficient importance as to disarrange the rhythm or memory action of
the ganglia (mind) that build the eyes.
[Sidenote: Syphilis]
So it is with every one of the alleged inherited diseases. I do not
believe that a mother, living on pure food, could transmit syphilis
to her child. It is simply the furnishing of the mind of the child
improper material out of which to build its body. A child born with a
deformity, no mind treatment will cure; because the “normal” memory is
not there to be re-established, for in hypnosis, or through what they
call suggestive treatment, only memories can be revived. Where there is
no memory there is nothing to revive.
[Sidenote: The beginning]
A child is born into the world with its cerebrum inactive. In a short
time consciousness, or registration of ideas through the cerebrum,
begins, and the child now must respond to external suggestion as well
as internal (physical). The child, being born into a new environment,
must learn through suggestion to adapt itself to (become part of) that
environment. If it succeeds in doing so, it will be the survival of the
fittest, and live. If it fails it will die. The environment by which
it is surrounded is the environment of the mother; the habits (manner
of responding) of the mother are now being transferred to the child.
As the child progresses in life, its accumulation of associated ideas
are in response to its environment, and are but the gathering together
of the reproduction of the mother, subject to changes or modifications
of the present external environment, called the advancement of
“civilization.”
[Sidenote: Responsibility of marriage]
When the girl reaches womanhood she marries, which is the beginning of
new creatures. Ah, if our women could only appreciate the magnitude
of the responsibility that they take on their shoulders when they
get married, if they could but learn that marriage is not for the
gratification of sensuality, brutality and puppy-dog love; but the
beginning, the starting point, the sending forth into the world of
beings who will carry on the good or ill that this young mother
suggests to them (surrounds them with). Is it not a sin, a shame,
that women, not understanding themselves, lacking in knowledge that
is unmistakably possessed by animals, are allowed to marry? No woman
should bear children until she has learned as to _how to bear
them_. A dog is her own midwife, as is also a squaw; but civilized
(?) woman, being unprepared, has to send for a doctor. Truly, this
is proof positive of the advancement (?) of man. The young mother,
differing from the lower (?) animals, does not know what to do with the
child, now she has it.
[Sidenote: Nurses]
The ignorant bring forth the most young. The rich place the child in
the inexperienced hands of an ignorant nurse. Nurses for new born
babes should be thoroughly schooled, and be the highest paid of all
employés, for they can make or damn the future of the child, inasmuch
as the first response to its environment are, and should be, under the
guidance of the nurse. Give me a child until it is eight years of age,
and I will promise much for its future.
[Sidenote: Inheritance of environment]
[Sidenote: To banish an inheritance]
The wife carries into her new home the same environment that her
mother was possessed of, because she had no means of learning other.
Mother’s sanitation, mother’s style of cooking, mother’s mode of
abusing her neighbors, of having two manners in the family—one for
company, all are hers and in the new home. If that environment resulted
in certain moral traits in her brothers and sisters, why will not this
environment repeated produce the same result in her children? It will,
and the inheritance is not in the blood, but in the environment. This
you may rest assured of, that where the father dictates the environment
of the home, or his mother comes and does so, the inheritance will be
entirely on the side of the father, and _vice versa_. But, if
you wish to be rid of the inheritance, send for the old lady who has
reared a family of children lacking in all the disagreeable attributes
which are creeping into your family. Allow her to have full sway in
the household, and see how quickly the heredity will disappear, and
how uncomfortable you will all be for the time being. She will turn
the house topsy-turvy, thereby forcing laws of sanitation which you
declared you could never endure; she will change the entire regimen
of the table, cause you to eat food that you affirmed you could never
eat, and will throw out the food which you were certain you could not
exist without. In fact, everything that you avoided she will bring into
the house, and those things to which you were most partial, will be
immediately eliminated.
Let us build a story. Let us follow a young man from the country
through a generation and see the effects.
[Sidenote: John and Mary]
John Smith is a farmer, and, being like most farmers, dislikes manual
labor, not so much as his father, who is a very hard-working man, and
desires that John will not have to work as he has. So he sends John to
a business college and gives him a thorough (?) course in business (?).
And now John becomes imbued with the thought that he should not soil
his hands, that he must go to the city and be a “real fellow.” John’s
mother—good woman—has told John that he should not steal, that he
should go to church, has taught him his prayers; hence, John is a good
boy, having been surrounded with a healthy environment. He goes to the
city and takes a job of keeping books in a store.
Probably, in a week or ten days, the well-meaning minister comes around
and invites John to attend services, which he does, and ninety-nine
times out of a hundred, John sits in a back pew, awfully lonely,
thinking of mother and, perhaps, paying but little attention to the
sermon.
The trouble lies here: The stores close early, and John, not working
hard now, and being full of energy which he cannot give vent to in
his present occupation, does not respond to sleep until ten or eleven
o’clock at night, and does not know what to do during the hours between
the closing of the store and the time that sleep gathers around him.
Some of the other clerks invite him to play pool and billiards, which
games of themselves are perfectly harmless; but as a rule, the only
place that you can find the appliances for the game is connected with
a bar room. John, being ruled as all men, animals and plants are, by
suggestion, goes, watches the game, and, in time, learns to play it.
The saloon is warm, no one interferes with him, he has money, his
companions drink, John drinks soda-water. In a little while his stomach
rebels at the “soft stuff,” his curiosity is aroused and he takes a
drink.
[Sidenote: The Y. M. C. A.]
We will assume that John is a reader; he is anxious for knowledge and
is willing to read. He is a member of the Y. M. C. A., but those good
people, so afraid that the secretary will fail to get sleep enough,
insist on his closing their establishment at nine or nine-thirty, and
poor John, having an hour and a half on his hands knows where he can
go to find warmth, good-fellowship, and perhaps congeniality; although
he does not drink while there. On Sundays, when time hangs heavily,
the good Y. M. C. A. people, so afraid of the soul of their secretary,
close the place and turn their fellowmen adrift, feeling that it is
much better to save the soul of _one_ secretary than those of
a thousand of their fellowmen, forgetting that the good that one
secretary can do would make a great big mark in favor of both himself
and the Y. M. C. A. with the Supreme Ruler (?).
[Sidenote: The devil knows how to cater]
But the devil and his followers are wise. They know how to cater to
man, and at the times when all other places are closed, the side door
of the saloon is always open, and in there is warmth, and reading
matter, and enjoyment, and poison.
[Sidenote: Oppose the saloons]
I remember my experience in New York City. I had no love for liquor,
was wildly desirous of reading, found that the Y. M. C. A. on
Twenty-third street was a very congenial place. My time was my own;
I slept late mornings and, consequently, remained up late nights.
Every night, at nine-thirty or ten o’clock, the bell rang and I was
sent into the street. As it was cold, and damp, and uncomfortable,
I was naturally forced to go where there was warmth, and in the
saloons I found all comforts for physical man, and the only thing
expected of me was that I spend a reasonable amount at the bar, so
that the landlord could pay rent, pay for the gas, pay his employés
and buy diamonds. Many is the drink, many the glass of beer I drank,
not because I desired it, but to make a return for the environment
furnished me. If the Y. M. C. A.’s would only learn, taking lesson from
the saloon-keepers, to run their association rooms in opposition, by
offering all physical comforts with the mental food, and keeping their
establishments open at the time all others are closed, allowing the
wanderers—those without homes—a refuge, they would accomplish more good
in one year than they are accomplishing now in one hundred, with their
strict adherence to antediluvian rules.
[Sidenote: First place your man]
Idleness is the workshop of the devil. When a time of idleness is,
give the people something to do, but the first thing they must have
is a place—“first place your subject, then give him his attributes.”
If you would make converts, if you would lead man into the pathway of
goodness, give him a place (environment). But if a man is accustomed
to a homely place, a “swell” place of meeting is always a suggestion
against you, forcing him to feel uncomfortable. Give him an environment
which will be _his_ ideal and at the same time not above him.
After you have caught your bird by giving him a place, you may cause
him to do many things, but it is impossible to catch him without a
proper “cage.”
[Sidenote: Pure food law]
John is thus forced to visit the saloons, and he drinks whisky. Now,
whisky is one of “nature’s” gifts. If our temperance advocates would
only force the lawmakers at Washington to enact a pure food law
compelling all saloon people to sell _pure_ liquor, our insane
asylums and penitentiaries would be plenty large enough to supply the
demand. The adulteration of food, and lack of knowledge to prepare
it, is doing more to fill our insane asylums and penitentiaries than
all the “bugs” in Christendom. The taking into our stomachs of impure
liquors and adulterated foods produces irritations that result in
insanity and crime.
John takes into his stomach an irritant called whisky. In the course
of time he takes enough of it to produce a reaction, and some morning
wakes up lacking an appetite. He goes to the store. One of his fellow
clerks says, “Old man, what is the matter? You look broke-up.”
“Yes, I am; I couldn’t eat any breakfast.”
The fellow clerk, meaning well, asks, “Why not take a cocktail?” and
John now takes a cocktail, a combination of two poisons, the whisky
plus the bitters, which, being an irritant, stimulates the secretions,
and the nerve-ends begin reaching forth for food upon which to do their
natural work. In a little while John gets into such a condition that he
cannot do without his cocktail.
[Sidenote: Marrying a drinker]
About this time, John, being frugal and of gentlemanly demeanor, meets
a fool girl, who marries him. Any woman who marries a man who drinks
intoxicants is a fool, and I say it unreservedly. John and Mary get
married and start a home of their own in a small town where they can
be closer to “nature” than in the large cities, which are entirely
artificial.
[Sidenote: Counter-irritants]
Mary, having a clever mother, has learned to cook and knows how to
do her own housework; but, strange to say, for some reason, her
cooking does not suit John. Why, Mary often wonders and talks with
her mother. After some six months, when Mary and John have become
thoroughly acquainted, he informs Mary that she does not know how to
cook; that every time he eats one of her meals he is subject to a
fit of indigestion, which is true. Mary learned to cook for people
with “normal” digestions, but John, having an “abnormal” digestive
apparatus, so induced by the liquor, cannot digest the plain food of
his wife’s cooking. He prefers to eat in a night restaurant, which
caters only to the drinking element, and, obeying the law that “like
cures like,” or _similia similibus curantur_, the food is highly
seasoned, and on the table are all kinds of condiments; or, in other
words, John, to digest his food, must partake of such food as is full
of counter-irritants.
Mary, being a dutiful wife, and grieving because John cannot digest
meals prepared by her, has a long consultation with her mother. For the
sake of novelty, we will assume that this mother-in-law, differing from
the others, is a good, rational, sensible woman, who informs Mary that
the best thing she can do is to visit this night-lunch establishment
and discover, if possible, why it is that the food cooked there is more
digestible than hers. Mary does so, and the first thing she finds,
ninety-five times out of a hundred, is that the place is what she calls
filthy, and wonders how food prepared in such a kitchen is digestible.
Assuming that the proprietor of this night-lunch is a man who means
well, he imparts to Mary the information that he is very liberal with
all kinds of spices in the seasoning of his food; that on his table are
nothing but the hottest of pepper sauces; that his biggest expense is
for condiments, and that all of his customers use them freely. So Mary
goes home, has a long “think,” goes to her grocer and says, “Send me
every condiment in the place that is hot.” He does so and Mary prepares
on a certain Sunday—which is generally the feast day—a dinner full of
spices, places the bottles of condiments on the table, and begs John to
dine at home once more. John does so, uses freely of the condiments,
smacks his lips, and for the first time in several months kisses his
wife, saying, “Mary, you have hit the scheme.”
[Sidenote: “Hot stuff”]
Mary, like a good and loving wife, continues to fill John’s food
full of “hot stuff,” and the “hot stuff,” being a counter-irritant,
stimulates the secretions and digests John’s food, keeping him in
good humor, and Mary believes she has entered her Elysium. At first
Mary cannot partake of the food she cooks for John; but, as constant
association will reconcile one to anything, in time she learns to
partake of this food, with the result that she becomes an invalid. The
irritations produce an abnormal condition that may be noticed in many
ways, ill-temper, nervousness, a desire for something which is not
gratified until some fool doctor first administers a drug to her. The
moment she has learned of the counter action she becomes a drug fiend.
If this fool doctor fails to be the family physician, she is saved from
that, yet is nervous, irritable and sickly.
[Sidenote: A child born]
A child is now born into the family. The father, being full of
counter-irritants, digests his dinners in _good humor_; the
mother, being full of irritants, is in _bad humor_, and baby
is attracted to the caresses and expressions of good-will on the
father’s face. Father takes a spoonful of soup so hot with condiments
that it would make a salamander wince, and gives baby a taste; this
continues until in a short time baby is sickly, and a demand is made
for a doctor, whom they expect, with drugs far more vicious than the
condiments, to re-establish a healthy condition in baby that has been
destroyed through the use of food prepared for a drunkard father,
instead of for a child just learning to digest and assimilate food.
Time goes on; the sickly wife, the undeveloped child—perhaps more
children—all drain on the purse, keeping the doctor in wealth and
affluence. No! because the poor doctor rarely gets bills paid in full;
but, at any rate, the drain is such that John, seeing nothing but bills
payable in front of him, drinks the harder.
[Sidenote: The boy becomes a drunkard]
The first child which, perhaps, is a boy, at the age of fifteen,
being irritated and desiring something that he cannot explain or
gratify, takes a drink of liquor, and behold, a change takes place.
The counter-irritant soothes and quiets that hitherto unsatisfied
longing. Having once acquired the knowledge through the proper sense,
that a drink of liquor will produce a quieting effect, it is not long
before the boy becomes a drunkard, and the good kind neighbors and the
all-wise (?) scientists claim that he inherited it from father. No!
He inherited the _environment_ of a drunkard father, which was
certain to produce by reaction the cause that made his father’s present
environment.
[Sidenote: Heredity is of environment]
A daughter born into the family, acquiring the surroundings and
attributes of a drunkard father, marries and carries into her home the
same environment. Why, then, will not her family respond in the same
way? Or, if the husband’s desires are gratified, why will not that
environment, which the father carries from his home, produce on his
children the same result as it produced on him. Therefore, our heredity
is one of environment.
I have spoken of the external environment, environment proper, of the
body. As our body is our closest environment, the state in which our
body is, is the state of our mind, _i. e._, our actions.
[Sidenote: Latent tendencies]
In looking over the paper this evening I see that some great (?) French
scientist has made a record of a large number of criminal children,
and traces back (?) and lays the entire fault—the cause of their
criminality—to inherited alcoholism, their fathers and forefathers were
drunkards. It is strange, if that were the case, that the children did
not refuse the breast and make a demand for gin. A milk punch would
have been refused by them. The child is satisfied with the breast until
it is placed in the same physical condition as explained in the story
of John and Mary. The philosophy of latent tendencies, of the desire
for the unknown, laying dormant in the cerebrum for years and all at
once asserting themselves, is rot.
[Sidenote: All is good]
Study environment; learn the Law of Suggestion, the suggestions that
force results; learn cause; learn how to respond properly to cause,
and effect will take care of itself. All is good, all is consistent,
results are always in accordance with the suggestions; therefore,
nothing is “abnormal.” Study the suggestions (cause), and you will find
that the result is good, correct, as to the positive forced either for
or against.
[Sidenote: Sex]
Sex is entirely the result of the mental condition of the mother.
Breeders of animals seem to show that it is during the latter part of
the menstrual period, when, through the physical irritations, a desire
for the male is dominant in the mind of the female, that she conceives
a male offspring. A couple of years ago a great (?) French scientist
claimed it was the food that decided the sex of a child. That was
simply suggestion, a prospective mother eating a special food trying
to bring forth a male; the constant suggestion was what did it, not the
food. You will find, as a rule, the exceptions easily explained, but
not here, that the “nervous, irritated” women have families of boys,
while the lymphatic and phlegmatic women have families of girls.
[Sidenote: Birthmarks, etc.]
A thought constantly in the “mind” is either from a rational external
suggestion or a mind suggestion. The idiosyncrasies shown in a child
as birthmarks, monstrosities, are from _instantaneous_, severe
stimulus, causing the cerebral impression to dominate and disarrange
the proper mind action.
[Sidenote: Degeneracy]
Degeneracy I will define to mean other than the general acceptance of
“normal.”
A degenerate can be plus or minus, or of each; both being the result of
a mal-condition of the body.
[Sidenote: Degenerates plus]
If the nerve-ends of an organ are irritated, the corresponding orifices
to these irritated nerve-ends may be super-sensitive, hence up to
a certain point will be super-acute as to sight, hearing, smell,
tasting or feeling. I class them as degenerates plus, and include all
genius, poets, painters, musicians and phenomenal freaks; otherwise as
possessing an orificial lesion. Of all so-called genius, the history
and lives of these men demonstrate them to be physically unsound,
producing thereby a super-sensitive perceiving condition. This accounts
for all of them having “failings,” many of which, perhaps, are not
known to the public until after their death. The treatment of Oscar
Wilde was an outrage. He was a sick man, a _curable_ man, and one
of the brightest minds of the day.
[Sidenote: Why is man cruel?]
We will now speak of the degenerate minus, one whose nerve-end
irritations has dulled his senses. Why is a man cruel? Because the
act which we call cruelty does not arouse in his mind a memory of
the suffering inflicted upon the object of his torture. That man’s
sensibilities, through proper orificial work, can be restored, and
he will lose his seemingly brutal nature. Putting the man in the
penitentiary will not make his nerve-ends any more sensitive.
The same with children who do not object to being whipped; their
nerve-ends are dull, they cannot comprehend or appreciate pain the same
as the alleged normal mind.
[Sidenote: Degenerate minus]
Degeneracy minus is really due to the physical condition of man, _the
nerve-ends of his senses being so dulled that he fails to properly or
normally receive impressions_.
In a store window across the street is the lithograph of a blind
violinist who is to appear here this week. The paper last evening
stated that his hearing is so sensitive that if he hears a discord
he immediately faints, (lucky for him that he is not rooming in this
house; he would be in a constant faint). In the previous pages I told
you that all orifices are connected; that two in the head always
respond to the irritation of the other end of the nerve. In this
case the eye is inactive, dead, the ear super-sensitive. ’Tis very
plain. These two extreme responses are daily demonstrated, with your
“real nice” person, and the gross. Same cause, practically the same
thought, only “extra fine” instead of “extra coarse.” You get either
of two positives from every suggestion, positive for—plus; positive
against—minus.
[Sidenote: Positive, for or against]
Every suggestion forces either one or the other of these positives. We
will assume that there are two men standing on the street corner, one
whose ideas are so associated with everything connected with drinking,
that it is abhorrent to him; with the other everything is congenial. A
third party approaches and says, “Let’s have a drink,” which arouses
in the “mind” of the first party all of his ideas contrary to drinking
and he refuses, not of his own choice, but because the ideas associated
in his mind are forced into play. The second man immediately accepts,
because his ideas associated are all positive for and in favor of such
an act.
The same lesion will result in either a prude, a masturbator, or a
prostitute; different modifications forced by external environment.
Cesare Lombroso tells us much as to statistics, but offers no cure. I
have but little use for that kind of science.
[Sidenote: Degeneracy curable]
If the reader will comprehend the foregoing, he will readily see that
degeneracy is simply physical, as I have just described. My experience
with orificial surgery has proven to me that these conditions can be
changed.
[Sidenote: Inheritance only physical]
That man inherits aught else than a physical condition is false, and he
can inherit that only directly from his mother; the male ancestors are
eliminated.
[Sidenote: Cleanliness]
[Sidenote: To lessen crime and insanity]
Degenerates breed degenerates in several ways. The degenerate mother
passes the degeneracy or mal-transformation and also her environment
to the daughter. The degenerate is forced to the gross, the coarse,
responding naturally and readily to a coarse environment; in fact,
everything affecting the senses that is repulsive to the refined,
is attractive to this coarse nature. Taste is vitiated; coarse,
decayed, cheap food is palatable. He lives in a foul atmosphere, and,
consequently, builds his house out of the “foul,” and as the body, so
is the mind, foul from environment. Clean your cities, “cleanliness is
Godliness”; it is of God,—good. Instead of for penitentiaries, spend
the taxes on clean environment and food for the poor, thus lessening
crime and insanity. Putting a man in a penitentiary results in nothing
but an expense to the state. If this man was sent to a hospital and
he was put in a proper physical condition, his new body and mind (he
gets one every six months) would be built out of better material; in a
few years the rebuilding out of good material, with pure food and good
sanitation, the degenerate would be in a fair way to become a moral man.
I feel as certain as that I am sitting here, and hope ere long to
prove, that I can take a young child of the most degenerate parentage,
showing a vicious and degenerate nature, and in five years make a
reputable being of him.
[Sidenote: A New York “authority”]
[Sidenote: Breaking up habits]
A writer in one of the New York evening papers, who professes to
be a hypnotist, has written many words concerning the cures he has
made on some degenerates. I deny them to be cures, inasmuch as the
cause was never removed. An alleged hypnotic cure, the removal of the
cause through hypnosis, I doubt. You may break up the habit, but my
experience has proven to me that some new habit replaces it. All cause
must give voice in effect, remove one effect and another will appear. I
have cured hundreds of people of stuttering through hypnosis alone, but
have always found that a new nervous trouble appeared. To-day, I will
treat no stutterer by personal suggestion until he has submitted to an
orificial operation.
[Sidenote: Can drunkenness be cured through hypnosis?]
I doubt if drunkenness or morphinism has ever been permanently cured
through hypnosis. These diseases are of the secretive nerve-centers.
Telling the subject that he will not desire these things, or
substituting some other desire in their place, will not deceive the
Abdominal Brain (mind) when it wants something and knows what. If,
through hypnosis, an operator can learn of an inspiration that will
stimulate the proper secretions, the patient can be very readily cured.
Taking morphine or liquor from a man does not cure him; stimulate the
secretions and he will be freed from the desire or need for the poisons.
[Sidenote: Hospitals needed]
[Sidenote: A healthy man gained]
The criminal, being a sick man, should be sent to a hospital. If a man
suffering from delirium tremens be brought before a judge, he should be
sentenced to the hospital until pronounced able to work, then put to
work for a period decided by the _physician_. The patient should
first rest in the hospital for a week, then be put on the operating
table and the cause of his disease removed; then, two weeks later,
when he has recovered from the operation, be put at some light work
and given _proper_ food and work until he is re-established. From
the day he goes to work his family should weekly be paid by the state
for the work done. Thus no one would suffer and all gain. A healthy
man would be gained both to the state and to his family. So with
all criminals, remove the cause and surround them with a _healthy
body_ and external surrounding of “normal” work, not iron bars and
walls, but freedom of health.
NOTE.—My experience with the deaf, dumb, and blind,
particularly where the cause was given as resulting from scarlet fever,
measles, et cetera, is that the so-called cause was based only upon
the assumption of a follower of an ignorant philosophy. I challenge
those in charge of institutions for the deaf, dumb and blind to produce
an inmate that has no orificial lesion, providing the result was not
caused by a direct lesion in the organ affected.
[Sidenote: Not a creature of choice]
If our all-wise legislators would pass a law imposing a fine and
punishment on anyone who had diphtheria, typhoid fever, or consumption,
would that lessen the extent of disease? Penitentiaries do not lessen
crime. Man is not a creature of choice, but of environment. When he
responds opposite to what we call normal, it is because his machinery
is working wrongly; he is sick, and instead of penitentiaries we should
have hospitals. Our thoughts are forced on us through our environment;
and our bodies are our closest environment; as our body is, so are our
thoughts (actions).
[Sidenote: Prostitution a disease]
Prostitution is a disease. If a person has a sexual irritation what
thought will always be dominant, what ideas will permeate every
thought? That of sexuality. Remove the irritation and we will have a
person “normal” to external environment, barring for a short time the
recurrence of the old associated ideas (nerve habit). By orificial
operations, I have also cured young men of blackguarding, smutty
story telling, swearing; they making no effort to be cured, after the
operations they ceased to give voice to these expressions.
A few weeks ago I visited a family in which was a child some eight
years of age, showing in her face perfect health, hence purity, the
father and mother carrying in their faces every sign of degeneracy
(minus). The more I studied the child, the more I became satisfied
that she was not of her seeming parentage. By the time dinner was
finished, I had firmly concluded that either that child was not theirs,
or my philosophy was an entire failure. A half-hour later, the father,
through a series of questions forced upon him, remarked that the child
was not theirs, that it had been adopted when it was a few weeks old.
Dear reader, I have proven comprehensively to myself _all_ that
is written in this book; it may not be perfect, but it is on the right
track.
[Sidenote: Crime an attribute of disease]
All confirmed criminals, if they live long enough, go insane, become
cripples or pronounced invalids, showing that their criminality was
only one of the early attributes of a physical disease. Lombroso tries
to show that epilepsy is the ultimate development of a criminal, but
I cannot accept that. I unhesitatingly affirm that cigarettes, grief,
anger, disgrace, et cetera, never were the cause of insanity; the body
was ill and the so-called cause, at most, only hurried the result. The
“excessiveness” is a demonstration of the disease. (No well being has
an excessive temper, et cetera.)