Removing the Causes of Disease — The Stiffening Joints of Age Rejuvenated
By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.
Medical Superintendent of Hinsdale (Illinois) Sanitarium
THERE are few people who do not know about Graham bread, but not many in this generation have any intelligent conception of the remarkable Graham health movement that swept over the entire land between 1830 and 1840.
It was a time when the Spirit of God was striving mightily with the hearts of men. Wonderful spiritual revivals were in progress under the leadership of Charles G. Finney, William Miller, and others who had heaven-born messages to impart to earth's sin-cursed sons and daughters. It was during these years that the temperance movement was planted which is now ripening into such a wonderful harvest all over the earth.
It was also during this time that Priessnitz, a humble and unlearned peasant in Austria, was evidently raised up by God to demonstrate the marvelous healing possibilities of water and other natural remedies. Even the royalty of Europe came to him for relief from ailments that had baffled the skill of their wisest physicians; and as a result, water-cures came into existence all over the civilized world.
It was at this time when God was so wonderfully fertilizing the human mind and soul with divine truth, that the modern health idea was born. Its leading exponent was Sylvester Graham, who was not a physician, but a clergyman.
A DIETETIC SEER
Just as Lincoln was a great political prophet, so Sylvester Graham was a dietetic seer. It is remarkable how fully, at that early date, he anticipated the result of the most recent scientific medical work, including the researches of Chittenden, Prof. Irving Fisher, Horace Fletcher, and many other modern investigators. He was interested in fundamental truths instead of prevailing health fads, and foundation principles never can become out of date.
REMOVING THE CAUSE OF DISEASE
Modern scientists in these recent years have scored their most princely triumphs over disease by recognizing that it has definite causes and then insisting upon their removal. Yellow fever for a hundred years periodically struck terror to the fairest portions of our southland. The greatest physician was as helpless before its ravages as the most ignorant layman until Dr. Walter Reed, of the United States army, demonstrated that mosquitoes were the real cause of yellow fever. The discovery of this great truth, and the practical application of it, has transformed Panama from one of the most pestilential spots on earth to a veritable health resort, where the death-rate is actually less a thousand than in the most healthy city in the United States.
Sylvester Graham insisted that there was a definite cause not only for acute but also for chronic diseases, that they were not arbitrary dispensations of Providence. "One man gives himself up to an excess of stimulation; another to gluttony; one to some other species of sensuality; and thus chronic or acute disease is induced. . . . It has never occurred to them that there is any relation between their own voluntary habits, customs, and indulgences and the diseases with which they are afflicted."
THE PHYSICIAN'S DUTY
Unfortunately the medical men of that generation were endeavoring to remove disease by outrageous doping with drugs, instead of curing the patient's wrong habits, thus giving nature an opportunity to heal the disorder.
Even in this enlightened age, the sick will say, "Doctor, give me something that will cure my disease," not knowing that there can be no permanent cure unless the patient ceases manufacturing the causes for the disease. If I put my hand on a hot stove, I earn a blister; but there is just as real a cause for blisters on the stomach — or gastric ulcers, as we call them — as there is for a blister on the hand.
The same is equally true of headache or any other disorder. Nine times out of ten, headache is caused by eye strain, some pressure in the nose, or dietetic errors. Headache powders cure the patient just as chloroform cures pain in the operating room. But the headache powder temporarily paralyzes the stomach, the liver, and other organs, to the same degree that it does the nerves in the head; and the patient must afterward recover from its poisonous effects, just as the drunkard does from his alcoholic debauch.
Sylvester Graham asks and answers this vital question: "What remains for the physician to do, if no medicine is to be given? . . . To teach mankind the laws of life, the nature and the causes of disease; to guide their fellow creatures in the way of health; and when diseased, to make them wise by making them acquainted with the cause of their sufferings; to remove those causes, and thus enable the relieved system to recover health; and, when it is necessary, to remove immediate obstructions, to administer medicine as a necessary evil. . . . The grand distinction between a true physician and a quack, is, that the former prescribes when necessary, and then expressly as a necessary evil. The latter prescribes it as in itself a good, and therefore to be taken on all occasions and for all symptoms."
GRAHAM'S HEALTH PRINCIPLES
First, "Medicine of every kind, name, form, and quality, should be totally abstained from, unless a single dose should be rendered necessary by peculiar circumstances."
Second, "Distilled spirits, wine, beer, cider, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, pepper, mustard, and every other kind of artificial stimulants and narcotics, should be totally abandoned."
Third, "Food should be taken in the natural and simple state, and plainly prepared, or cooked with no other seasoning than a very little salt, and eaten in moderate quantities, at regular periods, well masticated, and swallowed slowly."
Fourth, "The bowels should be kept regular by unbolted wheat meal bread and fruit."
Fifth, "Let the last meal of the day be simple and light, and at a good distance from bedtime. Never sleep on a full stomach."
Sixth, "Keep the skin clean, and exercise it well with a flesh-brush."
A SUBSTANTIAL TEST
In the early thirties, cholera was spreading terror over this country. Nearly four months before it appeared in New York, Sylvester Graham gave a public lecture in New York City in which he contended that an entire abstinence from flesh meat and flesh soups and every kind of purely stimulating substances, and the observance of a correct regimen in regard to sleeping, bathing, clothing, exercise, the indulgence of appetite, etc., would constitute the surest means by which any one could be spared an attack of that disease.
Quoting his own words: "I repeated this lecture after the cholera had commenced its ravages in the city; and notwithstanding the powerful opposition to the opinions which I advanced, a very considerable number of the citizens strictly adhered to my advice. And it is an important fact, that of all who followed my prescribed regimen uniformly and consistently, not one fell a victim to that fearful disease, and very few had the slightest symptoms of an attack."
This experience is an interesting reminder of the words of the psalmist: "Thou shalt not be afraid . . . for the pestilence that walketh in darkness. . . . A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. . . . Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." Ps. 91: 5-10.
It is safe to predict this will only be fulfilled for those who are as intelligently cooperating with nature's laws as they are faithfully observing spiritual law.
Those who conscientiously adopt correct health principles will sooner or later reap bountiful and permanent results. Mr. Graham, speaking on this point, said that he had287helped many men who had begun to feel what they considered the stiffness and rigidity of old age coming upon them, and who, a few months after adopting a vegetarian diet, found with delight that much of their youthfulness and activity was restored to them, and they were soon able to cast aside their staff, forget their stiff and slow gait, and assume the elastic step of early life.
Graham did not merely advocate abandoning unwholesome articles of food. He insisted that their places should be substituted with those that were wholesome, nutritious, and appetizing. Upon this point he said: "I wish it to be distinctly remembered that vegetable food can be made incomparably more pernicious than plain, simple, animal food in temperate quantities. It is infinitely better to subsist on a mixed diet of vegetable and animal food under a good general regimen, than to live wholly on vegetable food badly selected, viciously prepared, and eaten in inordinate quantities, while at the same time we live in the violation of almost every other correct rule of health."
We owe a debt of gratitude to those pioneer health reformers who under great difficulties and amidst much opposition unfurled the true standard of reform. It is not only our privilege to profit by their work, but also our duty to lift the standard still higher, and ask God to help us teach these vital, life-saving truths to our fellow men.
