Preliminary Considerations : Part 6

Maintaining Health
by R. L. Alsaker

(Page 6 of 37)

I know of some cases of acute disease treated satisfactorily by letter and telegram, but the patients' families were in sympathy with natural methods, of which they had a fair knowledge, and they had unlimited confidence in the healer.

I am personally acquainted with many people who have been educated out of chronic disease and into health by correspondence, after the local physicians had vainly exhausted all their skill. It is simply a matter of applied knowledge and it works just as well in curable cases if given by telephone, telegraph or letter as if imparted by word of mouth. However, it seems to me that it is most satisfactory for all concerned when the healer and the sufferer can meet.

My words are not inspired by any ill feeling toward the members of the medical profession. I have found medical men to measure well up in every way. They are better educated than the average and they are as kind and considerate as are other men. As men we can expect no more of them under present conditions, but because they are better equipped than the average, we have a right to ask for an improvement in their practice, even if they have inherited a great many handicaps from their predecessors and it is not easy to throw off the past, which acts as a dead weight ever tending to check progress. The tendency of the times is for fuller, freer and more sincere service in every line, for evolving out of the useless into the greatest helpfulness. It is not asking too much when we demand of the doctors that they rid themselves of the injurious drug superstition and become health teachers, that instead of being in the rear they come to the front and make progress easier.

What I say about drugs is founded on intimate observation. I was educated medically in two of the colleges where medication is strongly advocated and well taught, and am a regular M. D. I have watched people who were treated by means of drugs and the biologic products, such as serums, vaccines and bacterines, which are now so popular, and I have watched many who have been treated by natural methods. Anyone with my experience and capable of thinking would come to the conclusions given in this book, that it is a mistake to administer drugs and serums and that the natural methods give results so much superior to the conventional methods that there is no comparison. Others who have discarded drugs know from experience that this is true.

The physicians who are on intimate terms with nature will neither desire nor require drugs. Sound advice, that is, teaching, is the most valuable service a physician can render. Right living and right thinking always result in health if no serious organic degeneration has taken place. If the public could only be made to realize that they need a great deal of knowledge and very little treatment, and that knowledge is very valuable and treatment often worthless the day would soon dawn when health matters will be placed on a sound, natural basis.

Surgery is occasionally necessary, but today from ten to twenty operations are performed where but one is needed.

"There is nothing new beneath the sun," is a popular quotation. It seems to hold true in the healing art, for the best modern practice was the best ancient practice. Naturally, people like to make new discoveries and get credit therefore. Our valuable new discoveries in healing are very ancient. Though much that appears in these pages may seem strange and new to many, I claim no originality. My aim is to present workable, helpful facts in such a way that any person of average intelligence and will power can apply them, and to get the essentials of health within such a compass that no unreasonable amount of time need be employed in finding them.

According to late discoveries, the ancient Egyptians were more advanced in the art of living than any other people on earth, including the moderns. They taught that overeating is the chief causative factor of disease, and so it is. They taught cleanliness, the priests going to the extreme of shaving the entire body daily. It would naturally follow that they prescribed moderation in eating, which leads to internal cleanliness. Cleanliness of body, in conjunction with cleanliness of mind, will put disease to rout.

The ancient Greek writers commented on the good state of health among the Egyptians, and modern medical writers marvel that they made so little use of drugs. Evidently they found drugs of little value, for they were taught hygienic living. The admirable health laws laid down by Moses were derived from Egyptian sources.

The ancient nations were as much influenced by the Egyptians as we are today by the Greeks who lived before the Christian era. The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. The law of supply and demand worked as well then as it does now. The heathen priests waxed fat and the medical art degenerated.

About five centuries B. C., Pythagoras taught that health can be preserved by means of proper diet, exercise and the right use of the mind. He also taught many other truths and some fallacies. In spite of much superstition mixed with his philosophy, it was too pure for the times and he perished.

Hippocrates, born about 470 years B. C., is one of the bright lights of the medical world. He was so far ahead of his time that he still lives. He was the founder of medical art as we know it. He used many drugs, but he also relied on natural means. He was the first medical man on record to pay serious attention to dietetics. The following quotations will show how well his mind grasped the essentials of the healing art: "Old persons need less fuel (food) than the young." "In winter abundant nourishment is wholesome; in summer a more frugal diet." "Follow nature." "Complete abstinence often acts very well, if the strength of the patient can in any way maintain it." In acute disease he withheld nourishment at first and then he prescribed a liquid diet.