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In an address delivered before a meeting of members of the Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors on October 20, 1921, Dr. A. S. Knight made the statement that the mortality of a special group of 5987 men who had taken voluntary medical examinations regularly seven years under the direc¬tion of one company had been only fifty-three per cent, of the rate expected on standard insurance tables.
Thus the company, in defraying the expenses of the tests for its policy holders, had its principal returned and made on the invest- ment, through reduced insurance claims, a profit of two hundred per cent. It is reasonable to assume that these men, while enjoying greater freedom from disease, also were more efficient and enjoyed the feeling of increased general well-being and more freedom from loss of income through illness, in fact capacity for greater income.
But we are not as yet educated to the point of regular health examinations. Nor are we educated in the art of healthful living.
It is with the desire to help those with an honest and earnest wish to help themselves, to preserve health and ex¬perience the satisfactory feeling of abundant energy and vitality and to hold in check or quickly reduce signs and symp¬toms of developing trouble and its underlying causes, that these -volumes have been prepared with a great deal of thought
and attention to detail.
(more…)
Healthful living according to an intelligent plan will main¬tain a supply of those elements and substances responsible for youthful conditions but which are gradually destroyed by liv¬ing haphazardly. One practically may ignore bacteria as a factor of disease and decay if one lives rationally according to the plan previously suggested in these volumes. The large number of defects often found in those who consider them¬selves in good health—defects that in themselves and taken singly may be trivial, though sometimes serious—indicates that it does not pay to play the ostrich—to keep the mind in ignorance of the real physical status.
In early life and up to middle life is really the time to treat old age. Life can be prolonged to an appreciable degree and made pleasant while being prolonged, only by the preven-tion or avoidance or the arrest and cure of disease in its early stages. A great many people now heading toward premature death or semi-invalidism before they reach or pass middle life or old age could avoid either or both if they but knew their weaknesses and then modeled their plan of life according to need.
But all this does not detract from the value of health examinations. The time is coming when a majority of people will have these examinations, perhaps once yearly, realizing that these are among the greatest health insurances possible to have. The day of “preventive medicine” is ar¬riving. To the super-scientific physician this means so called prophylactic serums and vaccine?. To the physical culturist and clearer thinking medical physician it means living in such a way as to maintain vitality and avoid disease-producing and undue aging habits and manners of living.
The aim of preventive medicine is to diminish the chances for premature death, preceded by conditions that disable or that make life a burden. Nothing is gained by dragging out a miserable existence for five or ten years beyond the allotted “three score years and ten.” By proper living, planned with intelligence and aided by the findings of yearly examina¬tions, one retains youthfulness of mind and body and advances into old age mentally and physically fit.
Those who have made even a fair study of health and health-promoting measures and habits of living, such as are discussed clearly and in detail in earlier volumes of this work, should be able to modify their daily conduct so as to bring about correction of any abnormal conditions revealed; or they may be able to turn to one of these final two volumes and be directed to more or less specific remedies for their disorders. If they have the necessary health knowledge but not the self-assurance they may be able to follow suggestions given in these volumes under the observation of a physician broad-minded enough to assist them.
A great many people know the right and the wrong in the matter of treatment, but earn* so firmly implanted in their minds the impression of the accuracy of the physician’s knowl¬edge and advice (right or wrong—for many think, in spite of themselves, the physician must be right) that, regardless of the assurance they have of the correctness of their own be¬liefs, they will follow opposing news presented by their phy¬sician. There is no help for many of these people until they find themselves up against a stone wall and are compelled to help themselves if they are to get any help.
The purpose of fairly frequent physical examinations is not primarily to find what treatment is necessary; it is to dis¬cover the state of health and to determine whether or not some function or organ is beginning to break down under some stress that might be avoided if its effect is known. After these health examinations it may be that no treatment whatever will be advised, there being found no condition that cannot be corrected by following a few simple suggestions regarding changes in one’s habits or mode of living.
Common sense is as necessary in attempting to correct symptoms of developing disease as it is in treating well- developed disease—and for that matter even in attempting to live rationally. A case or two mentioned here will illustrate this. A great many people do not want to know if there is something wrong with them physically. They are content to proceed in ignorance of conditions that may be developing, conditions that sooner or later, often quickly, will spell their doom if allowed to continue. While going along they bolster up themselves with optimistic thoughts, with the auto-sugges¬tion that they are “all right,” with self-hypnotism into the belief that there is and can be nothing the matter with them, or that if certain symptoms develop they will be able to.wear them off. Many even acknowledge that they fear the exam¬ining physician will discover some ailment or developing ailment; and a great many fear they will be advised to have operations. These very fears should send these people to physicians for examinations, in order that they may know whether they are sound or diseased.
Those who always have relied upon doctors for treatment and who have never attempted to learn anything about their bodies, their needs and rational living so as to prevent develop¬ment of disease naturally may fear discovery of pathological or serious functional disturbances. If anything of this nature is found they naturally feel compelled to follow the physi¬cian’s advice.
This is why so many people submit to surgical operations and to virus inoculations as well as to medical treatment up¬on the first suggestion by their physicians—forgetting or not knowing that, in an individual case, frequently there are dif¬ferences of opinion among physicians as to the nature of an illness and the proper mode of treatment for the condition found. Because of this difference of opinion and before the suggestion and advice of the first doctor is taken as final, a diagnosis of at least one other physician should substantiate the first if the diagnosis and prognosis are grave. These doctors should not be acquainted with or have any connection directly with the family physician.
In a great many cases of acute disease where every early symptom and the fact of association of the patients with others having certain communicable diseases indicated the develop¬ment of these diseases, promptly applied natural measures have so quickly removed all symptoms as to preclude positive diagnosis. In a great many other cases diagnosed in their early stages as certain communicable diseases, natural measures have so promptly restored normal conditions as to create cer¬tainty in the minds of members of the families and friends that the diagnoses were wrong.
It is just as possible to change conditions that are permit¬ting the gradual development of a chronic disease which as yet cannot be diagnosed, so that the disease will not develop and so that all early symptoms of it will disappear. When people become health conscious and sufficiently versed in natural ways of living and of treating disease the majority will be able to prevent disease from developing or to abort both acute and chronic disease in case they begin to develop, by adopting and adapting the simple health measures em¬braced in the art of right living and, in the latter case, by using some of the special drugless measures described in Volume VI and applied in these remaining two volumes.
Many times a diagnosis is impossible simply because the symptoms and signs have not advanced sufficiently to furnish adequate basis for diagnosis. Practically all the importantdiseases can be diagnosed accurately only when there are fairly - pronounced indications. Certainly one should not postpone treatment until these indications do become sufficiently prom¬inent for a diagnosis to be made easily. Nor should one be content merely with treating to allay, or with allaying the symptoms. He should wish and aim so to reach the underlying causes as to check the developing disease and as nearly as possible restore normality.
In the early stages, practically all diseases respond quickly to proper treatment, and practically all acute diseases promptly disappear when the right treatment is applied. Often, how¬ever, chronic diseases, as such, cannot be treated in the earliest stages because there are no symptoms until the disease proc¬esses are well established, or because the early symptoms are ignored or misinterpreted. When chronic disease has become well advanced the ultimate outcome of treatment depends upon many factors, such as the degree of damage to vital organs or functions, the nature of the disease, specific causes and the possibility of their removal, the age of the patient, the dura¬tion of the disease and so on. Even the most effective of help¬ful measures most correctly applied are able, in some cases, merely to check the progress of the disease processes or to counteract their injurious effects.
The time to treat chronic diseases especially, but all other diseases as well, is before they have begun. To a considerable extent the same factors are used for maintaining health and preventing disease as are employed to cure disease, they being modified and adapted to the condition of the sufferer and the nature and location of the disease manifestations. But it re¬quires much more concentration of some of these factors to bring about correction of disease than it does to maintain health. Unfortunately, the average person goes merrily on his way giving no thought to the subject of health until his health is lost or greatly impaired.
What will quickly eradicate an acute or a subacute disease may merely check the progress of a chronic disease; and what would maintain reasonably good health may be inadequate to prevent development of acute disease, or in time a chronic disease. After a chronic disease has become well established or advanced, unless the vitality naturally is high, there may be no treatment that can restore the lost health to a high de¬gree. But even so, the treatments recommended in these re¬maining two volumes will do much to reduce the symptoms, hold the disease process in check and permit one to enjoy living It is true that diagnosis is less important when the chief object of treatment is to restore the general resistance of the body than when treatment is directed toward symptoms. Yet the course that may be run by certain forms of disease has become known after centuries of observation. This knowl¬edge permits treatment to be properly adapted to the condi¬tion when the condition is known with a fair degree of definite-ness. It certainly is of great advantage, even extremely im¬portant to know, for instance, that one has an organic heart disease, or nephritis, or diabetes, or locomotor ataxia, or tuber¬culosis, and so on. But many disorders, if only fairly ad¬vanced, are comparatively easy to diagnose. Among these are the above. It is in the earlier stages when there is great difficulty in establishing a diagnosis where adoption of a healthful routine and the discontinuance of specific harmful practices often are sufficient to check the progress of disease.
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