Transcriber’s notes:
The text of this e-book has been preserved in its original form apart
from correction of several typographic errors (listed at the end).
Inconsistent spelling, punctuation and chapter numbering (mixed
Arabic/Roman numerals) remain as in the original. Some illustrations
have been moved nearer to the relevant text. Italic text is denoted by
_underscores_ and bold text by *asterisks*.
ZONE THERAPY
OR
RELIEVING PAIN AT HOME
BY
WM. H. FITZGERALD, M. D.
AND
EDWIN F. BOWERS, M. D.
Author of “Side Stepping Ill Health”
“Alcohol--Its Influence on Mind and Body,” etc.
COLUMBUS, OHIO:
I. W. LONG, Publisher
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY
I. W. LONG
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Relieving Pain by Pressure 15
CHAPTER II.
That Aching Head 24
CHAPTER III.
Curing Goitre With a Probe 32
CHAPTER IV.
Finger Squeezing for Eye Troubles 43
CHAPTER V.
Making the Deaf Hear 50
CHAPTER VI.
Painless Child Birth 61
CHAPTER VII.
Zone Therapy for Women 76
CHAPTER VIII.
Relaxing Nervous Tension 84
CHAPTER IX.
Curing Lumbago with a Comb 93
CHAPTER X.
Scratching the Hand for Sick Stomach 104
CHAPTER XI.
Hay Fever, Asthma and Tonsillitis 111
CHAPTER XII.
Curing a Sick Voice 120
CHAPTER XIII.
A Specific for Whooping and Other Coughs 129
CHAPTER XIV.
How a Phantom Tumor was Dissipated 138
CHAPTER XV.
Dr. White’s Experience 142
CHAPTER XVI.
Zone Therapy--for Dentists Only 148
CHAPTER XVII.
Zone Therapy--for Doctors Only 171
CHAPTER XVIII.
Food for Thought 186
INTRODUCTION
Thousands of lives are lost annually from diseases which could have
been prevented. Hundreds of thousands, because of some preventable
ailment, which partially or totally incapacitates them, are today
living only a small part of their lives. Millions of dollars yearly are
squandered on medicines, doctors and undertakers--much of which might
have been saved by a right knowledge of the laws of health and hygiene.
Even among the comfortably situated, or even well-to-do, robust,
vigorous health is the rarest of possessions. The most rugged-looking,
on being closely and sympathetically catechised, will admit to a
“touch of rheumatism”; a chronic stomach, liver, or kidney trouble;
nervousness, headaches, neuralgia, constipation, or something that
tends to prevent his attaining completest physical power and mental
efficiency. And the weaker sex more than justify their descriptive
adjective. For 80% of those not directly under a physician’s care, or
taking some medicine or form of treatment for something, should be.
Conditions are improving, however. There is a dawn of hope for
humanity. For good health is being made a fetish. It is becoming a
gospel--a gospel preached in schools, newspapers, magazines, churches
and theatres. Accurate knowledge concerning sanitation, sexology, food,
clothing, exercise, sleeping, resting, and all hygienic measures, is
becoming more and more widely disseminated.
Humanity is awakening to the fact that sickness, in a large percentage
of cases, is an error--of body and mind. Ignorance of the injurious
effects of wrong foods, drinks, habits and methods is gradually being
overcome.
Foremost among those engaged in educating the public away from paths of
ignorance, and the disastrous consequences of this ignorance, is the
medical fraternity. The noblest and most self-sacrificing profession
on earth is the one most industriously engaged in sawing the branch
between itself and the tree of Financial Gain. The doctor is the
philanthropist most impressively employed in killing the geese that lay
his golden eggs with one hand, while he cuts his pocket-book’s jugular
vein with the other.
For he catches and segregates--constructing prisons for them, if
necessary--all cases,--or even suspected cases--of contagious
disease,--disease which, if permitted to spread broadcast, would net
him a horde of ducats.
He sees to it that no infectious disorders are imported into the
country--the spreading of which would give him much practice. He traces
every typhoid case to its ultimate dirty barn, or infected water
supply, and counts that day well spent whose low declining sun has seen
him stamp out a possible typhoid epidemic at its source.
He vaccinates all--willing and unwilling--lest he be kept horribly busy
attending a huge army of small-pox patients.
He instructs gluttons, and others, as to the grave dangers of
overeating, or of eating the right food at the wrong time.
He teaches mothers to sterilize their babies’ bottles, and thereby keep
the bugs of war at bay.
He thunders against exposure, against spitting in or on public places;
he has Health Ordinances passed, covering every conceivable method
whereby disease might develop.
Untiringly and without intermission--except during a few of the worst
blizzards--he inculcates the doctrines of flies, in their relation to
fingers and filth, and hurls Phillipics against mosquitoes, ticks, and
the insect world generally--not forgetting bed-bugs, lice, and other
disease-breeding vermin.
He extols the benefits of bathing, the rich rewards of fresh air,
exercise, and the relief of constipation.
In fact, he takes pride in doing all that within him lies, in order to
teach the world to do without him.
Thanks to doctors, we are learning about plumbing and posture,
mastication and measles, outdoors, deep breathing, poisons and poise.
We are finding out what bad teeth do to good health, how to work, play
and sleep so as to get the greatest physical good from each.
We are warned against overweight, alcohol, common colds and tobacco,
and the evil possibilities in marrying one’s cousin--or some one else’s
cousin who has, or has had, syphilis, feeble-mindedness, a drunken
ancestry, epilepsy, or some tendency to “hark back” and “revert to
type”--as did Mendel’s beans, or the black Andalusian pullets.
The subject of life and health conservation is “in the air.” Only
recently a president of the American Medical Association made this
theme the subject of his inaugural address. Hardly a medical journal
but has one or more articles devoted to it in each issue. We are being
specifically instructed in how to avoid disease.
Now, however, we are to learn how, in many instances, diseases, many of
them most grave and life-shortening, may be cured. This, by measures
which conflict with no other form of treatment, and so simple as almost
to appear ridiculous. For Dr. William H. FitzGerald, the discoverer of
zone therapy, is to tell us how he instructs his patients, under his
guidance and direction, to cure themselves.
Dr. FitzGerald’s position is one that commands respect. He is a
graduate of the University of Vermont, and spent two and a half years
in the Boston City Hospital. He served two years in the Central London
Nose and Throat Hospital. For a like period he was in Vienna, where he
was assistant to Professor Politzer and Professor Otto Chiari, who are
known wherever medical text-books are read.
For several years Dr. FitzGerald has been the senior nose and throat
surgeon of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, and is an active member of
most of the American medical societies.
I have known Dr. FitzGerald for many years. He is able and honest, a
skillful and competent surgeon, and a student. No matter how foolish,
how ridiculous his methods may seem, they are most decidedly not the
vaporings of a dreamer or a charlatan. They are the calmly digested
findings of a trained scientific mind.
And so Dr. FitzGerald is to give us specific details of one of
the most wonderful and perplexing things connected with the art of
medicine. This, because a physician’s premise is to teach--as well as
heal. Because publicity concerning the prevention and cure of disease
is a duty he owes mankind: not as an altruist, but as a human being.
Edwin F. Bowers, M. D.
Sept. 1, 1916.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
The chapters comprising this book were first published as special
articles in the “Associated Sunday Magazines”, and “Every Week”.
Accompanying the introductory article was this comment by Mr. Bruce
Barton, the able and critical editor of these Magazines. It explains
itself:
“For almost a year Dr. Bowers has been urging me to publish this
article on Dr. FitzGerald’s remarkable system of healing, known as
zone therapy. Frankly, I could not believe what was claimed for zone
therapy, nor did I think that we could get magazine readers to believe
it. Finally, a few months ago, I went to Hartford unannounced, and
spent a day in Dr. FitzGerald’s offices. I saw patients who had been
cured of goiter; I saw throat and ear troubles immediately relieved by
zone therapy; I saw a nasal operation performed without any anesthetic
whatever; and--in a dentist’s office--teeth extracted without any
anesthetic except the analgesic influence of zone therapy. Afterward
I wrote to about fifty practising physicians in various parts of the
country who have heard of zone therapy and are using it for the relief
of all kinds of cases, even to allay the pains of childbirth. Their
letters are on file in my office.
This first article will be followed by a number of others in which Dr.
Bowers will explain the application of zone therapy to the various
common ailments. I anticipate criticism regarding these articles from
two sources: first, from a small percentage of physicians; second, from
people who will attempt to use zone therapy without success. We have
considered this criticism in advance, and are prepared to disregard it.
If the articles serve to reduce the sufferings of people in dentists’
chairs even ten per cent., if they will help in even the slightest
way to relieve the common pains of every-day life, they will be amply
justified.
We do not know the full explanation of zone therapy; but we do know
that a great many people have been helped by it, and that nobody can
possibly be harmed.”
THE EDITOR.
[Illustration: Diagram of *Anterior Zones* on one side of the body.
Both right and left sides of the body are the same.
Each numbered line represents the *center* of its respective zone on
the anterior part of the body.
The tongue, hard and soft palate, posterior wall of the nasopharynx and
oropharynx, and the generative organs are in ten zones, five on each
side of the median line.
The middle ear is in Zone 4.
The eustachian tube and middle ear combined are in Zones 3 and 4.
The upper surface of the tongue is in the anterior zones.
The teeth are in the respective zones as indicated by passing a line
antero-posteriorly thru the respective zones.
The viscera are in the zones as represented by a line passed
antero-posteriorly thru the respective zones.
FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: Diagram of *Posterior Zones* on one side of the body.
Both right and left sides of the body are the same.
Each numbered line represents the *center* of its respective zone on
the posterior part of the body.
The under surface of the tongue is in the posterior zone.
FIG. 2.--Posterior view, illustrating individual zones. It will be
observed that what is commonly called the back of the hand is really
the front of that member, whereas the palm of the hand corresponds to
the sole of the foot.]
CHAPTER I.
RELIEVING PAIN BY PRESSURE.
No illustrator would ever think of drawing a picture of a boy with
a green-apple colic, unless he represented that boy with both hands
clasped fervently over the seat of war. Nor would he picture a pain
anywhere else, without showing the attempts made to relieve this pain.
For no one would believe his illustrations, if he omitted these details.
Now, while we know the fact of pain relief, through laying on of the
hands, or by kindred measures, we know only a part of its reason for
operation. There are several of these. They are, first, the soothing
influence of animal magnetism, experienced when we tenderly, if not
lovingly, rub the bump, accumulated in the dark of the moon, by
collision with a tall brunette side-board, or a door carelessly left
ajar. It does soothe. This we know.
Next, the manipulation of the hand over the injured place tends to
prevent a condition of venous stasis--a state in which the injured
surface veins dam back the flow of blood, and produce that lurid
discoloration known euphoneously as “black and blue.”
Also, pressure applied over the seat of injury produces what Dr. George
W. Crile, of Cleveland, calls “blocked shock,” or “nerve block,” which
means that by pressing on the nerves running from the injured part to
the brain area we inhibit or prevent the transmission to the brain the
knowledge of injury. In other words, the hurt place can’t tell the
central telegraph station anything about the accident, because the
wires are down.
Dr. Crile, and surgeons generally, now utilize this knowledge to
prevent shock during operations, by injecting cocain, or some
anesthetic solution around the course of the nerve trunk leading from
the place to be operated upon to the brain.
But there is yet another reason, which we have found out only
yesterday. And this is zone analgesia. Pressure over any bony eminence
injured, or pressure applied upon the zones corresponding to the
location of the injury, will tend to relieve pain.
And not only will it relieve pain, but if the pressure is strong
enough and long enough it will frequently produce an analgesia, or
insensibility to pain, or even a condition of anesthesia--in which
minor surgical operations may be successfully done.
This, of course, is not an infallible or invariable result. Specialists
in zone therapy have found pressure effective in obliterating sensation
in about 65% of cases; while it will deaden pain, or make it more
bearable, in about 80%.
In the hands of many who have tried these methods the percentage often
is much lower--because they haven’t learned how to apply it. For if the
operator doesn’t “hit” the proper areas or focal points he misses them
completely--and also misses results.
In attempting the relief of pain by “working” from the fingers it
should also be emphasized that it makes a difference, too, whether
the upper and lower or the side surfaces of the joint are pressed. A
physician experimenting with the method was ready to condemn it because
he was unable to relieve a patient who complained of rheumatic pains
which centered on the outer side of the ankle-bone. The doctor grasped
the second joint of the patient’s right little finger and pressed
firmly for a minute on the top and bottom of the joint. (See Fig. 3.)
The pain persisted, and the doctor jeered at the method.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Illustrating method of applying anterior and
posterior pressure to the finger joint.]
A disciple of zone therapy smiled, and suggested that while the doctor
had the right finger, he had the right finger in the wrong grip.
The doctor was advised to press the sides of the finger (See Fig. 4),
instead of the top and bottom. This was done, and the pain disappeared
in two minutes.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Illustrating method of applying lateral pressure
to the finger joint.]
This pressure therapy has an advantage over any other method of pain
relief, inasmuch as it has been proved that, in contradistinction to
opiates, when zone pressure relieves pain it likewise tends to remove
the cause of the pain, no matter where this cause originates. And
this in conditions where seemingly one would not expect to secure any
therapeutic, or curative, results.
For instance, I recall a case of breast tumor, with two fairly
good-sized nodes, as large as horse chestnuts. This lady had made
arrangements to be operated upon by a prominent surgeon in Hartford,
but had postponed her operation a few weeks on account of the holidays.
Meantime she had been instructed to make pressures with a tongue
depressor and with elastic bands (See Figures 17 and 5), for the relief
of the breast pain--which relief, by the way, was quite complete. After
a few weeks, this lady returned to her surgeon for further examination
and to complete arrangements for operation. Upon examining, however,
the surgeon found the growth so reduced in size that he expressed
himself as unwilling to operate, as he saw no necessity for operating.
The tumor has since completely disappeared--under these tongue pressure
treatments. This patient, and the name of the surgeon who saw her
“before and after,” are at the disposal of any physician who may regard
this plain unvarnished tale as an old wives’ chronicle.
A small uterine fibroid made a similar happy exit, as a result of
pressures made on the floor of the mouth, directly under the center of
the tongue. This patient next made a regular practice of squeezing the
joints of her thumb, first and second finger, whenever she had nothing
else important to do. And the result infinitely more than justified the
means.
Lymphatic enlargements, as painful glands in the neck, arm-pits, or
groin, yield even more rapidly to this zone pressure than do tumors.
And while no claims are made to the effect that cancer can be cured
by zone therapy, yet there are many cases in which pain has been
completely relieved, and the patients freed from the further necessity
of resorting to opiates. And in a few cases the growths have also
entirely disappeared.
[Illustration: FIG 5.--Showing method of “rubber-banding” the fingers
for trouble in the first, second and third zones.]
The growth of interest in this work is most encouraging. Dr.
FitzGerald and other physicians using zone therapy in their practice,
have had scores of letters from patients they have never even seen, but
who have written, expressing their appreciation for the relief secured
through instructions from some of their patients, or through following
out some suggestion from my articles in the magazines.
I have reason to believe that there are now upwards of two hundred
physicians, osteopaths and dentists, using these methods every day,
with complete satisfaction to themselves and to their patients.
And the number of laymen, and especially lay-women, who are preaching
the doctrine in their own households, and among their circle of
friends, must be legion. The adoption of the method is attended with
absolutely no danger or disagreeable results, and may be the means
of lengthening short lives and making good health catching. I, for
one, hope that the numbers of those who may be inclined to learn and
practice these methods upon themselves and upon the members of their
families may ever increase and multiply. For this is a big idea, and a
helpful one. Therefore, the more who make it their own the better for
the human race. We shall now let Dr. FitzGerald continue the argument.