Principles of Health Reform.
8. Personal cleanliness must be maintained by frequent bathing. Far too little importance is generally paid to bathing. Many people seek to hide their dirt by the use of perfumes. Many diseases have their origin in a dirty, torpid skin. Health reform indorses the ancient regulations of the Mosaic law, and enjoins so frequent bathing that the person shall never acquire an offensive odor, even in the sweltering months of summer, when a daily ablution is necessary. 9. Mental and social influences and surroundings must be such as to encourage cheerfulness and contentment. Health reform recognizes to the fullest extent the wonderfully intimate relation which exists between the mind and the body, and often discovers to the poor victim of despair that his difficulty is wholly in his liver. It not only recommends cheerfulness and contentment, but encourages it in the most effectual way, by promoting health. 10. Proper bodily positions and correct attitudes should be cultivated and preserved. Another of the objects of health reform is to call attention to the evil results of allowing the body to habitually assume unnatural and constrained attitudes and positions. Deformity is the inevitable result. RESTORATION OF HEALTH, OR TREATMENT OF DISEASE.
For centuries it has been the prevailing belief that disease was some sort of malignant entity, something to be attacked, fought and destroyed. With this theory of the nature of disease, it is easily comprehended why the practice of physicians has been such as it has. Supposing it to be something to be destroyed, it would seem very appropriate that poisons, the most destructive agents, should be employed for the purpose. But the world is rapidly becoming enlightened upon this subject through the influence of this movement, which advocates the following principles relating to disease:— 1. Disease is remedial effort. In other words, it is an effort of nature to remove obstructions or correct abnormal conditions. 2. All curative power exists in the living system. Men may supply conditions, and thus facilitate recovery; but nature does all the healing work. 3. Drugs and medicines never CURE. They may change the seat of disease, may create new diseases, but they never cure the patient. 4. The agencies which nature can use in her healing work are those known as hygienic, the chief of which are pure air, proper food, pure soft water, proper clothing, sunlight, exercise, rest, mental influence, and electricity. Disease originates in an abuse or non-use of these agents; health is only to be obtained by their proper employment. We say that the world is becoming enlightened upon this subject; this is the case with the more intelligent classes, and especially does the medical profession seem to be awakening to a recognition of the truth of the principles above stated. It may be said that drugs are still largely employed by allopathic, homeopathic, and eclectic physicians; this is true, notwithstanding the fact that many of the most eminent men of these different schools have unhesitatingly declared their unbelief in the efficacy of drugs as remedies for disease. Here is the chief ground of complaint which health reform finds against the medical profession. Their college professors and learned doctors admit and even declare the truth, but in their practice persist in perpetuating methods of treatment which are only consistent with old and exploded theories. Listen to the following admissions of some of the most eminent of the doctors of allopathic medication, and then attempt to harmonize such confessions with the nearly universal practice of drugging and dosing every ailment:— “Modern medicine inclines to regard diseases no longer as distinct entities, but, rather, as perverted life processes.”—N. A. Review for July, 1873. Says Reynolds, in his compendious work on practice, “No specific remedy will cure.” Again, “Energetic antiphlogistic treatment is energetic mischief.” Says Prof. Alonzo Clarke, M. D., “All our curative agents are poisonous; and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient's vitality.” Says Prof. St. John, M. D., “All medicines are poisonous.” Says Prof. Martyn Paine, M. D., LL. D., “Drug medicines do but cure one disease by producing another.” Said Prof. Jos. M. Smith, M. D., “Drugs do not cure disease.” John Mason Good, M. D., F. R. S., said of medicines, “They have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined.” Said Dr. Bostwick, “Every dose of medicine given, is a blind experiment on the vitality of the patient.” The above are but a very few of the testimonies which might be presented against the use of drugs; but are not the eminent authorities quoted, and the cogent sentences uttered by them, sufficient to convince any candid man of the truth of the propositions for the support of which they are presented? We think this is the case; but if further evidence is required, we have only to point to the thousands of chronic invalids who have been made such by the use of powerful drugs—the unnumbered throng of miserable dyspeptics who have ruined their digestion by making apothecary shops of their stomachs—the hundreds of cripples whose prospects for life have been ruined by mercury and like poisons. Health reform offers to replace this wretched and dangerous system of medical practice by one which is wholly safe, wonderfully simple, and eminently efficient. This system, known as the HYGIENIC SYSTEM, has saved the lives of thousands of individuals whose friends and physicians had given them up to die. All we ask is careful and candid investigation of the principles advocated.