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All this culminates in old age, cancer, diabetes, Bright’s disease, disease of the heart and the arteries, insanity and nervous diseases and, finally, death. Yet it is possible for us to avoid most of these ills. We can retain health, strength, youth and mental alertness up to the very hour of death and waste no time along the way by being sick. It is purely a matter of right thinking and wholesome living
When you treat your body decently it will repay you in health and strength. Therefore, stop killing yourself by degrees and you will grow old in years without becoming aged in body or mind. Avoid all devitalizing habits and in-fluences and give your body proper food, daily exercise, sun¬shine and fresh air, rest and sleep, and maintain mental and emotional balance. This is the daily insurance against disease and illness which everyone should pay—and draw dividends in happiness and contentment and success all along the way.B. M.”
Few of us ever realize how much we are in the habit of abusing ourselves. We begin to decay almost from the hour of birth. Our children enter kindergarten with decayed teeth. They suffer from enlarged tonsils and adenoids. They have enlarged glands. Many of them are deformed. Some of them are stunted. An appalling number of them suffer from rickets in varying degrees. This process of decay, due to defective food, lack of sunshine and fresh air, and other un¬natural influences, continues through life. As one tissue after another breaks down, “new diseases” are named. But it is all a related process.
We cannot over-estimate the tremendous importance of habits. Analyze your daily routine. Find out its exact effect on you and your family. Do not be afraid to make this an¬alysis careful and searching in its methods; for your success or failure will depend on what you learn from such reasoning. You have doubtless fallen into certain bad habits. Most of us do, sooner or later; there are few exceptions. Sometimes these habits are serious. They assume the degree of dissipation which gradually destroys health and body.
No matter how much knowledge you may possess as to the care of the body, there is always more to learn. Every day presents its lessons, so more and more information is grad¬ually acquired.
Some people follow a rigorous routine. They never vary in the slightest degree. This is not always desirable. Do not be afraid to experiment. Do not thoughtlessly cast aside either old or new ideas. New ideas often result in changing one’s entire life and often bring information which saves health and sometimes life itself.
Habits master us, hold us down or build us up. We should especially endeavor to be sure the daily schedule within the household is definitely upbuilding. Is the diet everything that can be desired? Do you bring a keen appetite to meals? Do you recognize the necessity for thorough enjoyment and full mastication of your food? Are you fully master of your ac¬tions? Can you compel yourself to follow certain rules after you have been convinced that they are desirable? All these and many other questions are important for guiding one into profitable channels. It is therefore desirable to form good habits—those that tend to make one vital, vigorous, studious, enthusiastic, and ambitious.
When elimination is faulty, through poor food, lack of fresh air, lack of sufficient exercise, or lack of sleep, poisons of various kinds get into the circulation and are absorbed by the tissues. When these foreign elements accumulate be¬yond what might be termed the saturation point, they must be eliminated or death will ensue. The cold, the pain, the general sense of misery—whatever form of physical discom¬fort one may feel—is the first message from the body that all is not well. Such messages should always be heeded to the extent, at least, of cutting down food and hastening the process of elimination. But, if you are not sure you are right in what you are doing, don’t depend on guesses. Consult a physician in whom you have confidence.
The best home treatment of disease is not in substitution of the experiments of an amateur for the work of a hospital, but in the building up of health habits for each member of the family. These furnish a natural protection against dis¬ease. Adherence to vitality-building rules should be part of the family life.
Probably, nowadays, nearly everyone is concerned about germs; but few people are concerned enough about minor ailments—such as colds, indigestion, that “tired feeling,” etc. —which pull down the vital resistance and make for general inefficiency and maladjustment. It is in dealing promptly with such conditions that the home treatment may be most useful. For none of these happens without a cause. They are danger signals that indicate something wrong within the body. A cold is the beginning of a complaint that often be¬comes serious, so it is desirable to give it the attention neces¬sary to modify or definitely cure it. Similarly, a pain any¬where in the body is a warning that something is wrong. There is always a reasonable excuse for the existence of pain. In nearly every case it assists in a needed physiological process that is curative. The greatest objection to drugs which kill the pain is not that drugs always do great harm in themselves, but that they keep the sufferer from ascertaining and re¬moving the physiological cause.
A foul alimentary canal is the cause of nearly all diseases, more especially of children’s diseases. Usually the first method to adopt in the treatment of children’s diseases is cleansing the lower bowel. In some cases the stomach also requires cleans¬ing, so an old-time method is recommended for this purpose; namely, tickling the inside of the throat with the finger till the stomach empties itself and to continue the process till nothing remains therein, giving drinking water to assist.
This, together with hot packs to the spine and throughout the entire middle part of the body, is what might be termed the fundamental principle in treating children’s diseases.
This, combined with the free drinking of non-nourishing liquids, will so quickly cleanse the body of the poisons which directly .cause serious diseases that these will literally be cured before they start. The method now in vogue of pumping antitoxins and other serums into children and the pernicious routine of drug¬ging cannot possibly obtain such results. It can only add to the body’s toxemia and reduce vitality.
There has been a definite need for a practical work on dis¬eases and their home treatment, in sane, safe and satisfactory ways. Some treatments or factors of treatment we describe may be unobtainable; some niayseem bizarre to the uninitiated; some may have been used already without desired benefit.
In such cases, one should remember that disease often is a “six-horse load.” Many have tried to move the load with a single “horse”—with a little or with much exercise alone; with diet alone; perhaps with merely dropping meats from the list of foods used, while often adding enough cereal of other none-too-good foods to counteract what value there may have been in the meatless menus; or with cold baths, or sleep¬ing with open windows, or the use of local heat or sun-baths, or some other single factor—a single “horse.” There is multi¬plied power in numbers, so any health factor will have greater value when used in combination with other health factors. Health Factors
Therefore, use as many of the health factors, as many “horses/’ as you can, provided there is no conflict and no con¬traindication to the use of some of them.
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But if a cure is possible, in most cases it is possible through natural treatment. People usually look for the quickest way to get welL Natural treatment is the quickest way even if it does not produce perceptible changes as quickly as medical treatment. The reason is that it is the only way in which health can be restored. A slow trip through a canal, with locks that cause temporary delays, on a boat that reaches its destination, is a quicker trip than one that leads over a water¬fall or through rapids that sink the boat and drOwn the oc¬cupants. In this case it is the only trip possible. It “is like that with natural treatment. The progress may be slow, there may be more or less discouraging delays at times; but if the destination of health can be reached at all, it may be by these methods.
The most frequent use for the home treatment of illness is in the case of children’s ailments. If children are properly fed and cared for and have abundant sunshine and exercise they may go through childhood without contracting any of the so called ‘’children’s diseases.” More and more, in careful families, this is happening. However, if a child grows up in a community and goes to the community school there is always the chance of illness through failure to maintain a proper routine of diet or elimination when away from the eye of the family.
The vital force which develops the body from an extremely
minute impregnated cell, which brings about the growth after birth and which maintains life and perhaps a considerable degree of health against many handicaps—that force will restore health and vigor and normal functioning if destructive processes have not been allowed to make too great an inroad into the organism.
This treatment has its failures, it is true. Vitality cannot be measured. It varies greatly in different individuals. Dis¬ease processes have progressed to different degrees in different cases; the disease conditions have created different degrees of destruction of organs and functions; ages of patients vary; some at forty are actually sixty so far as organs are concerned; some enter treatment whole-heartedly, others disinterestedly or half-heartedly, or even against their wills; the causes in some cases have been few, in others legion; some have had less interference with functions, less poisoning of the body by drugs than others; also some less or no interference by surgery: and so on.
Unless one becomes so enthusiastic as to employ some measures to excess (for instance the last, cold bathing or exercise) certainly no harm will follow from the treatment and the vitality will not surfer. This cannot be claimed for any drug or medical or virus treatment yet devised.
But in the majority of cases there will be pronounced improvement, and in a large number of cases there will be complete correction of abnormal conditions and complete removal of all symptoms—provided, of course, sufficient time is given for Nature to undo the damage.
Time is a highly important element in the correction of disease, just as it is in the development of disease. Disease does not spring upon one suddenly; it develops slowly, often so insidiously that one is not aware of it until it has become well established or well advanced. It is not corrected quickly except when acute in nature. But give adequate time, the aid of at least the important factors of natural, rational or right living, with special drugless factors in some cases, and favor¬able results may be counted upon.
Both the causes and treatment of disease will vary in dif¬ferent cases. In one instance disease manifestations will re¬sult from a certain combination of causes, with certain causes predominating, while in another instance of the same disease manifestations there will have been a somewhat different com¬bination of causes, with other causes predominating. In the treatment of diseases, then, even. though the manifestations may be the same or similar, certain treatment factors will need to predominate in some cases and other factors in other cases. The effort has been made throughout these volumes to bring before the reader the rationality of hygienic living and of natural, drugless treatment, an understandable cause of disease and theory of disease, and an explicit, positive, health-building means of overcoming disease. If followed withsreasonable accuracy the treatment factors as suggested for the various diseases will bring about health improvement in practically every instance.
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