Maintaining Health | Page 8

cases will get well by
following the advice given by correspondence. A medical man who
educates people by correspondence is considered unethical and is
severely censured by the ethical brethren. To prescribe medicine by
mail is without doubt reprehensible, but to educate people into health is
a work of merit, whether it is done face to face or by correspondence. It
is advantageous to meet the physician, talk things over and be
examined, but it is not necessary.
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.