Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Orthopathy

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

DEDICATION 7

PREFACE 8

INTRODUCTION 11

CHAPTER I—HEALTH—ITS CONDITIONS AND REQUIREMENTS 40

CHAPTER II—THE LAWS OF LIFE 50

CHAPTER III—LIVING MATTER CURES ITSELF 64

CHAPTER IV—IS DISEASE FRIEND OR FOE 81

CHAPTER V—ORTHOPATHIC IDEAS OF THE NATURE OF DISEASE 95

CHAPTER VI—ACUTE DISEASE A CURATIVE PROCESS 101

CHAPTER VII—SELF-LIMITED DISEASES 125

CHAPTER VIII—THE RATIONALE OF INFLAMMATION 129

CHAPTER IX—THE RATIONALE OF FEVER 146

CHAPTER X–LIFE’S ENGINEERING 154

CHAPTER XI—PHYSIOLOGICAL COMPENSATION 162

CHAPTER XII–LIFE’S STRATEGIC RETREAT 170

CHAPTER XIII—THE RATIONALE OF CRISES 180

CHAPTER XIV—ACUTE DISEASE NOT A RADICAL CURE 194

CHAPTER XV—THE UNITY OF DISEASES AND SYMPTOMS 202

CHAPTER XVI—THE CAUSES OF DISEASE 218

ENERVATION. 224

MENTAL CAUSES. 227

POISON HABITS. 230

EXCESSES. 234

SEXUAL ABUSES. 237

SELF-INDULGENCE. 250

IMPAIRMENT OF ORGANIC FUNCTION. 257

HEREDITY. 267

PREDISPOSITION TO DISEASE. 276

EPIDEMICS. 280

ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PARASITES. 284

CHAPTER XVII—GERMS 286

CHAPTER XVIII—PERVERSION 299

CHAPTER IXX—THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISEASE 315

CHAPTER XX—FEEDING 338

CHAPTER XXI—FASTING—PHYSIOLOGICAL REST 370

CHAPTER XXII—REST, SLEEP, RELAXATION 398

CHAPTER XXIII—SUNSHINE AND SUN-BATHING 417

CHAPTER XXIV—PHYSICAL EXERCISE 446

CHAPTER XXV—MIND IN HEALTH AND DISEASE 459

CHAPTER XXVI—THE STIMULANT DELUSION 482

CHAPTER XXVII—CONDITIONS OF CURE 502

CHAPTER XXVIII—THE HYGIENE OF HEALTH 533

CHAPTER XXIX—THE HYGIENE OF ACUTE DISEASE 545

CHAPTER XXX—HYGIENE OF CHRONIC DISEASE 563

CHAPTER XXXI—THE CARE OF WOUNDS 595

CHAPTER XXXII—THE PLACE OF ART 605

CHAPTER XXXIII—THE PASSING OF THE PLAGUES 614

CHAPTER XXXIV—EARLY RECOGNITION OF SUPPRESSION 631

CHAPTER XXXV–SUPPRESSION OF DISEASE AND ITS RESULT 638

DRUGS THAT INCREASE ACTION 641

DRUGS THAT DECREASE ACTION 642

CHAPTER XXXVI—THE DELUSION OF CURE 669

CHAPTER XXXVII—CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF THERAPEUTICS 696

HUMAN LIFE

ITS PHILOSOPHY AND LAWS

An Exposition Of The Principles And Practices Of Orthopathy

BY

HERBERT M. SHELTON

HERBERT M. SHELTON

D.P., N.D., D.N.T., D.N.Sc.

Author of

Fundamentals of Nature Cure; Food and Feeding; Living Life to Live it Longer; The Hygienic Care of Children (in preparation); Serum Poisoning—A Medical Crime; The Vaccine and Serum Menace; Scourges of Man (in preparation); Former Editor of How to Live; Former instructor in dietetics and Naturopathic Principles, American School of Naturopathy, and author of many popular articles on health.

How few men have ever lived who had mental capacity even to think of a first principle.—R. T. TRALL.

It is exceedingly difficult to secure an honest hearing for any criticism of authority. Established beliefs are well-nigh invulnerable because they are accorded infallibility by the masses who are educated to believe they will be damned for thinking, and because of this, few will tolerate opposition of any nature to anything they have been educated to believe. People who have their thinking done for them are always intolerant.—J. H. TILDEN.

We sedulously inculcate in the coming generation exactly the same illusions and the same ill-placed confidence in existing institutions and prevailing notions that have brought the world to the pass in which we find it.—PROF. JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON.

A sect skillfully organized, trained to utter one cry, combined to cover with reproach whoever may differ with themselves, to drown the free expression of opinion by denunciations of heresy, and to strike terror into the multitude by joint and perpetual menace—such a sect is as perilous and palsying to the intellect as the inquisition.—W. E. CHANNING.

I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.—WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

He has no enemies, you say.

My friend, your boast is poor.

He who has mingled in the fray

Of duty that the brave endure

Must have made foes.

If he has none,

Small is the work that he has done.

He has hit no fraud upon the hip;

He has struck no cup from perjured lip;

He has never turned the wrong to right,

He has been a coward in the fight."

DEDICATION

To all men everywhere, in all countries, all ages and all professions and all schools of medicine, who have either directly or indirectly contributed to our knowledge of Orthopathy and Orthobionomics, and especially to:

ISAAC JENNINGS

RUSSEL T. TRAIT

SYLVESTER GRAHAM

JOEL SHEW

GEORGE H. TAYLOR

ROBERT WALTER

EDWARD H. DEWEY

EMMET DENSMORE

CHARLES E. PAGE

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

FELIX L. OSWALD

O. S. FOWLER

JAMES C. JACKSON

JOHN H. TILDEN

This book is respectfully dedicated by

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE

THE human mind is very largely a product of its environment. It absorbs its food from its surroundings and digests and assimilates this, rejecting some portions of it and organizing the remainder into its own substance. It is for this reason that so few people ever get beyond the age in which they live, and why the vast majority never advance beyond the community in which they reside.

We are prone to regard life as static and to look upon those conditions under which we grow up as the natural and eternal order of things. It is for this reason that we resist change and are often found foes of progress and enlightenment. To the ancients slavery seemed to be the natural order of things and within the lifetime of many now living there were advocates of slavery as a divine institution. The subjection of women was, and yet is, in many quarters, regarded as the natural order of existence. Kings were once thought to be natural institutions and the advocates of the divine rights of kings are not all dead yet. The physician, no less than the layman, is a creature of his education and environment and may be depended on, in the majority of instances, to rely upon the traditions and procedures he has been taught to employ and to be antagonistic to change or innovation or what he may regard as heresy. When education and training have caused a thought to crystalize into habit, its eradication is exceedingly difficult.

Every advance that the human race has made has had to meet and overcome the old order, and because the old order was part and parcel of the makeup of the minds of the period, advance could come only through a mental revolution. People had to be taught to see things differently. They had to learn that progress does not mean the destruction of the universe. They had to acquire a new view of things.

Progress in living reform is no exception to this law of mental evolution. Before men and women can be persuaded to reform their modes of living, they must acquire a new perspective of life. They have to acquire a new understanding of health, a revolutionary new conception of the essential nature of disease, a new attitude towards the body and the laws which govern it, a new view of the causes of disease and of the conditions and requirements of recovery. Living reform must not be looked upon as a cure, which, having accomplished its work of restoring health, can be laid aside like a medicine bottle or a pill box, until one becomes sick again. Living reform requires the individual understanding of the why and wherefore of reform and can never depend on the obedience, by the patient, of his doctor or teacher.

Perhaps nowhere else is a revolution in our thinking more necessary than in our manner of viewing health and disease. Yet, so prone are men and women to regard their own ingrained prejudices as established first principles, that, it is difficult to attack and expose old error without offending those who hold to these. For, men usually regard an attack upon their inherited beliefs and prepossessions as an attack upon their persons. The lapse of time invests old ideas with authority and sanctity and history reveals that but few ever escape from the tyranny of these. This accounts for the persistence of many ancient, coarse and grotesque speculation in what we are pleased to call the Modern Science of Medicine.

To primitive man disease was an entity—an unseen evil spirit which attacked him to maim and destroy. He feared it. He surrounded suffering and pain with a psychology of fear, dread apprehension and awe. He did not understand it so he attempted to combat and destroy it. Man knew nothing of the protecting influence of discomfort and pain and, even yet, there are few who are capable of understanding the language of their sensations. They still either ignore them until a formidable and recognizable pathological state has been developed or else they seek to combat or suppress them. For, we still regard disease in the same light with which the caveman viewed it.

Each disease state and each location of an affection came to be looked upon as a specific disease—a special creation. Due to the persistence of the ancient notion that each form of disease is a special creation and to the idea that disease is an entity, an idea that exists, incarnate, in the germ theory, little progress has been made in the field of medicine.

The principles of Continuity and Unity which underlie all of modern science and which permeate all of its literature, have never found an acceptance in the field of medicine, and particularly in the field of disease, its causation and development.

Another fact—namely, that so-called disease represents a peculiar type of behavior of an organ or a system of correlated organs of the body has yet to find recognition in what is called Medical Science. That the symptoms of disease depend on the same vital powers as the signs of health is a fundamental fact of Orthopathy, but unrecognized by medical men. Back of all of these peculiar types of behavior lie the causes or occasions for this type of behavior and these should be of chief interest to us in preventing or curing disease.

Some medical men do recognize asthma, for instance, as merely a peculiar type of behavior of the respiratory apparatus, back of which lie its causes. But they do not recognize that vomiting or diarrhea, or fits and convulsions or inflammation or fever or coughing and sneezing are all mere types of behavior. They completely ignore the fact that the living organism is capable of many and varied and complex responses and reactions to excitation and stimulation and that it behaves in a certain way with reference to a given cause or occasion for action in obedience to fixed and definite laws of action inherent in living matter. We are watching the behavior of the living being, and not of the dead thing, when we observe the symptoms of disease and the so-called actions of remedies.

But we must not stop with the recognition that disease action is vital or organic behavior. Vital action is determinate and end-serving. When vomiting serves to eject a poison; when diarrhea eliminates a mass of putrescence; when coughing and sneezing clear the air passages of irritants and obstructions; when inflammation serves to heal a flesh wound, knit a broken bone, or remove a foreign body or an infection from the flesh; and when fever serves to increase cellular activities and heighten the body’s toxin-destroying powers, these are all definitely beneficial actions—that is, beneficial to the organism. None of them are so simple as we may at first suppose. Fever, for instance, is not merely a rise in temperature. The rise in temperature is the end-result of a complicated series of antecedent phenomena, all of which work, automatically, towards the end in view—the rise in temperature. The fever then results, automatically, in other actions equally as complicated. The entire series of phenomena is beneficial and protective, and represent an organic unit.

It is upon the above briefly skeletonized theory of the essential nature of disease that Orthopathy is based, and this is the central theme of this book. For writing this book, I deserve either to be crucified as a savior, or hung as a dangerous man. For, this is either the most important book of the kind ever written and brings to its readers the most important message they could possibly receive, or, else, it is the most dangerous book ever published and will be the means of great injury to many.

The philosophy of life, health, disease and cure herein unfolded is either true or false. If true no other book can equal this one in importance—if false, no other book can equal it in potential evil.

The book is not perfect. But I believe the principles herein unfolded are sound and know from experience that they work in practice. I am, at the same time, well aware that many of the details of application yet remain to be fully worked out.

It has taken over two thousand years of human labor and effort to write this book and it required four years for me to put it together. All of us who have labored on the book have worked with an earnestness and a zeal born of white-hot convictions and an honest desire to understand and present the truth on the subjects herein considered. We have only one desire in presenting the book to you—your own good.

THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION

"Nature ever shows the true and perfect way,

Therefore learn betimes ne’er from her path to stray!"

NO man, conscious of his moral integrity, intellectual ability and studied efforts to present what he conceives to be the truth upon any subject will ever apologize for speech or book, hence I offer no apology for having written this book. I deal with a subject which I consider to be one of the highest, if not the highest studies to which the human mind can turn—life, health, disease and correct living. That my subject is unpopular does not frighten nor deter me. Indeed, this is an added incentive to clearly present the matter.

At the outset permit me to disclaim literary merit and originality for most of what is contained in this book. I have spent years in careful and extended research in the field I am here trying to present and, although, much of what I have learned from my studies of the works of others is given in the form of quotations from these works, it is not possible to put it all into this form. I have followed their words very closely in some instances. I do claim originality, although, perhaps not priority, for some of the matter in these pages. But my work has been for the most part, that of sifting, selecting and testing what those who have gone before have left us as a heritage. Several years of experience in caring for the sick and in the use of many and varied means of treating them, followed by more years of experience with the purely hygienic system have proven, to my satisfaction, the truth of what I write in this book.

There is a theory that the Over Lord of the universe selects His instruments by which He releases certain truths from an unfathomable source at stated times, and that these truths are released when the public mind is ready for them. It may be so, I do not know; but I do know that a flood of light broke over the world about a hundred years ago and that it came almost simultaneously from a number of independent sources. The astounding harmony that exists in the teachings promulgated by these various sources and the readiness with which many thousands of people accepted them, would seem to lend credibility to the above mentioned theory. No one mind is capable of grasping all there is to know of truth. Enthusiasm may have blinded some of these men so that they failed to recognize errors that are patent to those who follow, and may have caused some of them to stray, often, from the path of truth, but each man who has identified himself with this movement and who has hesitated to tread the way of digression has done something to advance the truth a little farther towards complete enlightenment.

In its very nature enthusiasm is ardent and streaming. It either moderates as time passes, and dissolves into memory, or, else it cools and hardens into an unshakable conviction, the foundation of which must rest as well in facts as in reason and experience. Enthusiasm gives rise to extremes, and evangelism and these serve their purpose.

We have need of the extremest, the dogmatist and the evangelist to arouse the lethargic public to an awareness of a new idea, and during this incubation period it is unavoidable that many errors will be committed. A wise selectionism and differentiationism belongs to experience and a liberal view. Once a new idea is accepted, the gyroscope of time establishes equilibrium. The Hygienic or Orthopathic movement is now over a hundred years old and has proved itself worthy of a higher place than is accorded it in the minds of the leaders of the world’s thought.

At this point a definition of Orthopathy is in order that we may the better understand what we are studying. The following definitions are taken from Jennings, who coined the term Orthopathy to express his conception that "Nature is always upright—moving in the right direction," in disease as in health.

"Orthopathy:—From two Greek words, Orthos, upright, erect, true, and pathos, affection,—right affection. The vital economy always maintains an upright position. The tendency of all her movements, in the lowest depths of disease, as well as in the most vigorous natural action, is as true to the pole star of perfect health, as is the needle to the poles."

To the other systems then in vogue he applied the term Heteropathy. It is equally applicable to all systems of today other than the Orthopathic. Defining this last term he says:

"Heteropathy:—From two Greek words, eteros, another, different, and Pathos, affection, changed condition or disease, differing kind from the natural unchanged state; wrong or subservive action. Opposed to orthopathy."—Philosophy of Human Life.

The term Orthopathy was coined to express a new conception of the essential nature of disease, a conception that is the very antithesis of the ancient and still prevailing Heteropathic conception. The Orthopathic conception of health and disease leads to pure hygiene, while the Heteropathic tradition places its chief reliance on therapeutics. The one is a natural system the other an artificial structure. Therapeutics changes from day to day, hygiene remains always the same. Its principles are eternal.

Dr. Isaac Jennings of Oberlin, Ohio, deserves first mention in any account, however brief, of the development of this movement. In 1822, after twenty years spent in the practice of regular medicine, he gave up the pills, plasters, powders and potions of the saddle bag and launched out into a new and untrodden field. Many experiences during his twenty years of practice had caused him to rely less and less upon the curative agents of the Faculty and more and more upon regimen and the powers of life. In the year 1822 some of his experiences knocked the last remaining props from under his practice and caused him to abandon drugs entirely and rely wholly upon hygiene. But he did not feel that it would be professionally safe to tell his patients of his intentions. Therefore, for the next twenty years, he satisfied their faith in the power of potions to restore health by giving them bread pills, colored water and starch powders.

Dr. Isaac Jennings, the greatest pathologist (or, at least pathgnomist) of our century, was sadly misunderstood, chiefly, I believe, because he called his plan the ‘Let alone plan.’ Prevention plan, or Unmedicinal Cure, would have been a better word. Thus spoke Dr. Felix Oswald, Physical Education, p. 200, a Prince of Hygienists, of Dr. Jennings. Of Jennings, N. Bedortha, declared in a lecture on Medical Reform, which appeared in The Water-Cure Journal, of August, 1853:

"We have one more of the wonders of medical reform which we will mention. This had its origin in the State of Connecticut, the land of wooden nutmegs and other yankee notions. A pupil of the celebrated Prof. Ives, of New Haven, a man of science and good practical common sense and judgment, having commenced a course of medical practice under very favorable auspices, and while in the tide of prosperity, and enjoying a good share of popular favor, was seized with the very unpopular idea, that he was doing his patients more harm than good by the system of drug medication he had been taught to practice. Under this conviction he began to practice some duplicity upon his patients, and instead of giving them medicines, he gave those who were not seriously ill bread pills and cold water drops under the name of medicine. These he found worked admirably, and emboldened by his success, he ventured still further, and after a time he treated the most serious and complicated diseases with his bread pills and pure water. For fifteen or twenty years he continued his experiments, becoming more and more confirmed in his novel practice, until his mind became fully settled in its convictions, when he burst the bubble he had been so long inflating and came out before his medical brethren and before the world a sworn enemy to all drug medication.

"Surprise and chagrin seized his medical friends, but the effect upon the community in which he practiced was various. Some denounced him as an imposter, unworthy of confidence or patronage, and ready to stone him for deceiving them; while others, who were the more elevated portion, though confounded by the ruse practiced upon them, took the doctor by the hand and said, ‘if you can cure our diseases without the use of medicine, then you are the doctor for us.’ Thus encouraged, he went forward with his reform till he had perfected a theory of disease and of medical practice entirely diverse from any which had preceded him. Disease in his theory is a unit, and the manifestations of disease in the forms of fever, coughs, colds, etc., are kindly efforts of nature entirely true to the laws of life and health, which cannot be aided by any system of drug medication whatever, relying solely upon the vis med. naturae, placing the patient in what he supposes is the best possible condition by rest, pure air, and proper diet. This man is Isaac Jennings, of Cleveland, Ohio. He still lives to advocate his theory with much zeal. He has written two books in defense of his system, which he styles Orthopathy. He has never succeeded to any great extent in getting his practice into popular favor, although he has some warm friends who have adopted his views."

In his justly famous lecture on "The True Healing Art, or Hygienic vs. Drug Medication," delivered in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., in February, 1862, Dr. Trall said of Jennings:

"Who has not heard of Dr. Jennings, now of Oberlin, Ohio? Some years ago he practiced medicine in Derby, Conn. Being a close observer and a very conscientious man, and, withal, something of a philanthropist, he became a ‘reformer,’ and what all true reformers must be in the world’s estimation a ‘radical’ and ‘Ultraist,’ a ‘one-idealist,’ a ‘fanatic,’ etc. He became fully convinced that the system of drug medication was all wrong; that drugs instead of curing persons, or aiding nature to cure them, really hindered the cure, or changed the primary malady to a drug disease as bad or worse; and to put the matter to the proof, he practiced for several years without giving a particle of medicine of any kind. But his patient’s did not know it. The people did not mistrust that they were humbugged out of their diseases; cheated into health; deceived into saving the greater part of their doctor’s bills, all of their apothecary’s bills, and the better part of their constitutions. Under Dr. Jennings’ administration, diseases seemed to have lost all their malignancy and danger, and to have assumed a singularly mild and manageable form, type, and diathesis. He gave harmless placebos—colored water, sugar pellets, and starch powders—to keep up confidence and furnish the mind with some charm of mysteriousness to rest its faith upon, and then he directed such attention to hygienic conditions as would enable nature to work the cure in the best possible manner and in the shortest possible time.

His success was remarkable. His fame extended far and wide. The praises of his wonderful skill were heard in all the regions roundabout. In a few years, having conclusively demonstrated the principle involved, he disclosed to his medical brethren the secret of his extraordinary success. And do you think that they were all swift to adopt the no medicine plan of Dr. Jennings? Not quite—no, not one of them. Dr. Jennings has not at this day a single disciple, perhaps in all Connecticut. The Connecticut doctors all thought, doubtless, with Dr. Flint, of New York, ‘This no-medicine plan may do in public hospitals, but it will never answer in private families. It may do for Dr. Jennings or for the people, but will never answer for us.’

This reference to Professor Austin Flint, M. D., then of the New York Medical College, really related to a statement made by Dr. Flint, only a few weeks previously, in a clinical lecture to his class of medical students that in treating pneumonia in the hospitals he did not give any medicine at all and lost no patients. In speaking of private families, the professor said, There it would not do to refuse to prescribe medicine. At that time the deaths from pneumonia in private families in New York were thirty to forty a week.

In his Exact Science of Health, pp. 238-9, (1903) Dr. Robert Walter, then an old man and a graduate of Dr. Trall’s school, declared of Jennings:

A leading thought of our system was imbibed from the writings of Dr. Isaac Jennings, of Oberlin, Ohio. Dr. Jennings was a regular practitioner of the old school who located at Oberlin in its early days. He had a remarkable experience; was twenty years a regular practitioner; twenty years a practitioner with bread pills and colored water, and twenty years he practiced with no medicine or any other treatment than simple nursing, and claimed to enjoy wonderful success in the later years. In these years he sought to establish a system that he called Orthopathy. His leading thought was, ‘Disease is right action’; when the patient is very low his vitality is being recuperated, and when he is active, he is expending it in doing work, but in either case nature is doing the right thing.

Again he says, Life’s Great Law, p. 178:

Dr. Isaac Jennings, of Oberlin, Ohio, had a wonderful success fifty years ago in the treatment of fevers, choleras, etc., by the use of bread pills and colored water—a success which there is reason to believe has never been equaled in purely medical practice.

Jennings says he was well satisfied with the early part of his practice, but before long began to suspect there was something wrong. A number of cases conspired to shake his faith. He also found, as did Trall, that the older physicians gave less medicine than the younger ones, and were much more wary in their interference with disease, or attempts to break it up. Older physicians with whom he often consulted and whose opinions he respected, cautioned him against a free use of medicine and told him that many cases would get well quicker without than with medicine.

A case which came under his observation in the summer of 1815 served greatly to give bent to his new investigations. A family was suffering with a fever. He was in attendance. While on one of these calls the head of the house called him back, as he was preparing to leave and asked him to tell him what ailed him as he had not been well for a few days. He presented the characteristic symptoms of the prevailing fever fully developed. The doctor began to reopen his saddle bags, in order to supply him with medicine. The man objected, saying that should he grow worse he would send for him. Jennings says:

"A number of days elapsed without my seeing or hearing anything of Mr. P., when on passing near his house, I saw him in a lot nearby at work. Jumping from my horse, I went to him to ascertain what had become of his fever. To my surprise, I found that he had recovered entirely from his indisposition, and that too without the use of any medicine or means of any kind to arrest the disease.

"All that he had done was to keep quiet, refrain from eating while his appetite was lacking, and drinking freely of water as long as his febrile thirst called for it.

"Up to that time I had attended a large number of cases of fever in that district that season, and in no instance had one recovered in so short a time, or with so mild a set of symptoms as had Mr. P.; and yet, I had spared no pains in giving those whom I had treated the best possible chance—according to my sense of what was best in the cases—for recovering rapidly, safely and thoroughly, entirely eradicated of disease. I had watched the progress of disease by night and by day; had been prompt in meeting the symptoms with the kind and degree of remedial force that the respective cases seemed to call for, and apparently too, with signal success;—for I seldom made a prescription without seeing, or fancying I saw, good results; and my patients and their friends were satisfied, yea, more than satisfied with my practice. I obtained and enjoyed their warmest approbation, and their strongest confidence; and the enjoyment was heightened by a conviction that they were merited for I could but indulge the belief that I had used due and exemplary diligence in qualifying myself for the important post which I then occupied.

"This case was, indeed, a severe rebuke to professional greatness, but I felt unwilling to lose the benefit which the lesson was calculated to teach.

From this time my large saddle-bags were thrown out of employment, and it was not long before a small pair that had taken the place of the large ones, shared the same fate, and a pocket or two made to carry all the medicine I judged to be necessary in my practice.

Bread-pills, sugar pills, starch powders and colored water soon took the place of the medicines and he embarked upon what he calls his bread-pill practice.

At the time I launched forth into the ‘do-nothing’ mode of treating diseases, he says, "vigorous practical medicine-was the vogue of the day. Popular teachers and leading medical men discarded the doctrine of ‘cure by expectation,’ which had been brought considerably into notice and practice in the preceding century, by Van Helmont, Stahl, and others, as based upon a fanciful and visionary theory, and tending only to the use of inert and frivolous remedies, and on the contrary, recommended bold and energetic practice; and in this common sentiment I had participated largely, while a student of medicine, and in the first years of my medical life. It was no light affair therefore, to face square about on a subject which involved human lives, and attempt to stem the long established, broad, deep and powerful professional current, aware too, as I was, that such a course would be likely to alienate me from the warm affection and sympathy of those with whom I had taken sweet counsel, and whose favor was as dear to me as the apple of my eye."—Introduction to Philosophy of Human Life.

His lancet, also, was sheathed, and no more blood did he spill for the sick. His debut in medicine was made under the flag of Cullen, he was now sailing under a new flag the no-medicine practice. After having thoroughly tested the ‘no-medicine’ practice in disguise, and having reached a point where he was able to give a reason for the course he was pursuing, he made a full disclosure of his pathological views, and general plan of treating disease" to confidential friends and, later, to the whole world.

Jennings wrote three books as follows, Medical Reform, 1847, Philosophy of Human Life, 1852, Tree of Life, or Human Degeneracy, its Nature and Remedy, as based on the Elevating Principle of Orthopathy, 1867. This last was published just 45 years after he had forever broken away from drugs and treatments. However, he was not a crusader. A busy practice kept his nose to the grinding stone. A few physicians took up his work, but they were unable to follow the master all the way. When Dr. Jennings died, Orthopathy ceased to be heard of, although the influence of his work is still felt. It had a great influence upon Dr. R. T. Trall who will be discussed later. With Jennings, began the Hygienic movement.

In 1799 there was born in Austria a man who was destined to make medical history. This man, Vincent Priessnitz, a Presasant, opened the world’s first water cure institution at Graeffenberg in the Silesian mountains in 1826. He had had but little education, but according to his biographers, was a natural genius in the healing art. His institution grew, its fame spread throughout the world, others took up his methods and water cure institutions sprang up everywhere. By 1853 there was not less than seventy-five such establishments in the United States.

The water cure, often called, also the cold water cure, was the parent of modern hydrotherapy. It was, and is, only a palliative method with little or no virtue to commend it to the hygienist. However, the water cure broadened out, and long before Priessnitz’s death, it gave much attention to hygiene, particularly to diet, exercise and outdoor life. Several names are linked with the early days of the water cure in Europe chief among which are, Rausse, Hahn, and Metcalf. Priessnitz died in 1851.

The medical profession has adopted hydrotherapy but claims Winternitz as its father. Winternitz studied water-cure under Kneipp who in turn had studied under Priessnitz.

The next great apostle of Hygiene, a man who exerted a great and profound influence upon his contemporaries, and whose influence is not yet dead, despite the efforts of many to supplant him with German Water-Cure pioneers, was Sylvester Graham. Graham was born in 1794 and was the 17th child of his father. He was descended from a family of some distinction and in the reign of George I, one branch of the family was promoted to the title of Duke of Montrose. It was in 1718 that the Rev. John Graham, after being graduated at Oxford, arrived in Boston, Mass. Sylvester Graham was his last child. He was of a nervous mental temperament, a very weak and delicate child whose life was despaired of. At the age of 16, he developed symptoms of tuberculosis of the lungs. After various attempts at a career, all of which were wrecked by ill health, he entered Amherst College in 1823 to prepare himself for the ministry. It was here that he proved himself to be a talented orator, as well as being gifted with writing poetry and drawing portraits. While in college he studied anatomy and physiology.

Before the fame of Priessnitz had reached America and before the name of Jennings had gone abroad, Graham came forward as a champion of Hygiene and living reform.

Graham was too sincere to remain in the ministry. He was a truly religious man, and it seems was desirous of doing something of real and lasting good for his fellowmen. In 1830 he was engaged by the Pennsylvania Temperance Society to present the cause of Temperance. Two years later, 1832, he became conspicuous as the advocate of the principles set forth in his Lectures on the Science of Human Life. These principles were first put forth as a preventive of cholera, and thousands followed his advice with beneficial results. He says:

But the most signal demonstration of the truth of the principles which I am contending for, was afforded in the city of New York during the prevalence of cholera in the summer of 1832. The opinion had been imported from Europe, and generally received in our country, that a generous diet embracing a large proportion of flesh-meat, flesh-soups, etc., with a little good wine, and a strict abstinence from most fruits and vegetables, were the very best means to escape an attack of that terrible disease. Nearly four months before the cholera appeared in New York, I gave a public lecture on the subject in that city, in which I contended that an entire abstinence from flesh meat and flesh-soups, and from all alcoholic and narcotic liquors and substances, and from any kind of purely stimulating substances, and the observance of a correct general regime in regard to sleeping, bathing, clothing, exercise, the indulgence of the natural passions, appetites, etc., would constitute the surest means by which anyone could rationally hope to be preserved from an attack of that disease. I repeated this lecture after the cholera had commenced its ravages in the city. Notwithstanding the powerful opposition to the opinions which I advanced, a very considerable number of citizens strictly adhered to my advice. And it is an important fact that of all who followed my prescribed regime uniformly and consistently, not one fell victim to that fearful disease, and very few had the slightest symptoms of an attack.

Medical men in Graham’s day were no different in their intolerant attitude towards the ideas of others than they are now. They opposed and misrepresented him, as they do all who present the same principles today. In a foot-note Graham adds:

During the prevalence of cholera in New York in 1832, it was most extensively, clamourously, and continually asserted, that the ‘Grahamites’ were dying by scores with the epidemic, and this opinion has gone abroad through the country, and is perhaps generally believed. Yet I solemnly declare that I made the most diligent search in every part of the city where any such case was reported, and called on every physician who I heard had made any such assertion, and in the newspapers of the city, publically called for the specification and proof of such cases, yet I could not find a single instance in which an individual who had adopted and consistently observed the regime I had prescribed had died of cholera or any other disease, and but two or three instances in which there had even been a slight attack, and in each of these there had been decided imprudence.

J. Bradford, Sax, of West Aurora, New York, in his "The Organic Laws" (1851), confirms Graham’s statements in these words:

During the prevalence of cholera in New York, in 1832, not a single ‘Grahamite,’ and they were quite numerous, died of the epidemic. Only two or three were slightly attacked, and they had been decidedly imprudent.

As an evidence of the lay and medical ignorance against which Graham had to battle in his fight for living reform, I offer the following resolution, by the Board of Health of Washington, on August 16, 1832:

"The Board of Health, after mature deliberation, have Resolved, and they do now Declare, that the following articles are, in their opinion, highly prejudicial to health at the present season. Believing them, therefore, in the light of nuisances they hereby direct that the sale of them, or their introduction within the limits of this city be prohibited from and after the 22nd instant, for the space of ninety days:

"Cabbage, green-corn, cucumbers, peas, beans, parsnips, carrots, egg plants, amblings or squashes, pumpkins, turnips, watermelons, cantaloupes, muskmelons, apples, pears, peaches, plums, damsons, cherries, apricots, pineapples, oranges, lemons, limes, cocoanuts, ice-creams, fish, crabs, oysters, clams, lobster and crawfish.

"The following articles the Board have not considered it necessary to prohibit the sale of, but even these they would admonish the community to be moderate in using:

Potatoes, beets, tomatoes and onions.

Against such ignorance, Graham had an easy battle. There was no one to oppose him—that is no one worthy to fight. His lectures were well received everywhere and the Grahamites multiplied rapidly. The Graham Magazine and other magazines of a similar nature grew and spread the message far and wide. Hotels and eating houses were opened to feed the Graham diet. Many men of prominence and influence in that day, joined the ever growing ranks of the Grahamites, and the mighty movement for Living Reform, Medical Reform and Hygiene went forward by leaps and bounds. Some idea of the influence Graham exerted, especially upon the reform schools of that day, is gained from the remark made by Dr. Trall, that Graham knew more of the human body than any other man that had ever lived.

His "Lectures on the Science of Life," was first published in 1837. It was a veritable encyclopedia and ran through many editions.

His premature death in 1851 was due largely to the fact that he worked himself to exhaustion in the cause he was advancing, and partly to the fact that in his extremity he forgot his principles and permitted the doctors to give him stimulants.

The great evangelist and crusader in the cause of Hygeiotherapy, as he called it, was Russel Thacker Trall, M.D. Dr. Trall was born in Conn., in 1812, and after graduating from a regular or Allopathic school of medicine, he practiced in the regular way for twelve years. He was one of those rare geniuses who help to make every year of the world’s history an epoch of progress.

It is evident from a remark made in after years by one of the professors under whom he studied, that Trall’s was an independent and thinking mind, even while in medical college. The old professor said to one of the readers of Trall’s Journal (The Water-Cure Journal), I NEVER EXPECTED TRALL TO AMOUNT TO MUCH.

Shortly after Graham began his lectures and writings, this bold and fearless champion of the hygienic system, who was destined to eclipse all his predecessors and contemporaries, and who had grown tired of writing prescriptions in Latin almost before he had begun the practice, joined the ranks of the Hygienists. To the untiring efforts and indomitable spirit of this man, hygienists of today owe much more than most of them realize. He worked vigorously as a writer, lecturer, and teacher. One of his pupils declared him to be the master mind among them, (the Hygienists) in America, at least.

Shortly after the first reports of the success of the water-cure reached America, he, along with several other American physicians, sailed to Europe to investigate and study this new method. However, influenced more by the works of Jennings and Graham than by that of Priessnitz, Dr. Trall built up a system which he called Hygieotherapy. Something of the influence which Graham exerted upon him may be gained from the fact that, he stated that Graham knew more about the human body than any other man who had ever lived. Graham founded no healing system and developed no cures. His system was purely hygienic. Dr. Dodds records the following:

In the history of this worldwide reform the fact must ever remain, that while Hydropathy paved the way for the introduction of Hygeiotherapy, it was Trall who reduced the new methods to a science. He combined in one great system the use of all the hygienic agents; though many of his best thoughts on dietetics, etc., were derived from Dr. Sylvester Graham, who was his intimate friend, and perhaps equally talented. Trall once said of Graham that he came as near discovering the truth of Hygeiotherapy as anyone could, not to do it.—Drugless Medicine, p. 117.

Again she says of him:

"The mind of Trall was strictly analytical; he examined his premises carefully, and conclusions were logically drawn. The doctrines that he advanced, whether in Life Illustrated, the Water Cure Journal, or in his books, were not only interesting and instructive, but sensational. No such brilliant thinking on these subjects had before been done. The consequence was, that his writings though revolutionary and schismatic were carefully studied, and often severally criticized. Trall was then in the zenith of his intellectual powers. His thoughts were clean cut, his arguments forcible; and woe to the adversary who challenged him to debate. He always came out victor. The truth as he portrayed it was so self-evident, that his readers wondered why these things had not occurred to them before. By his admirers he was loved and venerated in the highest degree; by his adversaries he was hated, and often misrepresented. But in the work to which he gave his life he was without a peer; and the principles that he has left behind him will remain as a perpetual legacy to mankind. Through his writings alone, the name of Trall will long be a household word in this and other lands. There are thousands yet unborn, who will live to do him honor, to render that tardy justice, which, though it come late, is due to the brave and fearless pioneer of a great reform."—Drugless Medicine, pp. 114-15.

He began an investigation of the premises of medicine and their relation to Nature, and finding them, as he said, self-evident absurdities, set himself to the task of discovering the premises that must underlie any true system of caring for the well and sick.

He was both an iconoclast and a builder. Without a doubt he was one of the most prodigious workers who ever lived; and it is largely due to his untiring labors that the Nature Cure movement made the progress it did in those early days of its history. He was a missionary, crusader, scholar, thinker, writer, lecturer, professor, editor, and a physician all wrapped up in one bundle.

Dr. Dodds says of him:

Like many other distinguished men, Trall was not a born financier. Possibly it was just as well that he was not. It has been truly said, that to plan and execute even one great and good enterprise is more than has fallen to the lot of most men. Dr. Trall undertook a work so extensive that it could scarcely be compassed by a single mind. First, he must shake the public confidence in an institution venerable with age, its history reaching far back into the shadows of the past. Next, he must place in its stead a new system, in every way unlike the old, and with scarcely a friend to defend it. The principles underlying it must also be clearly expounded, and speedily put into practice. How much of this work he actually did is next thing to marvelous; and his failures, if such they were, might rather be termed successes, judged by the immense progress that has been made in hygiene since his death. He left the work clearly defined, so clearly indeed, that those who followed had but to pick up the broken threads of the warp, splice them, and weave on; filling in woof, and completing the wonderful web whose patterns he was permitted only to design.—Drugless Medicine, p. 115.

Speaking of the many works undertaken by Trall, Dr. Dodds says:

He even essayed to do more; he desired to found a college in which the principles of hygeiotherapy should be taught. And but for the lack of financial aid, not to say active sympathy which would have secured it, the college might have been successful, and alive today. It was founded in 1852; though the charter was not obtained until 1857. For twenty years and more, from the different states in the Union, from the Canadas and even from abroad, there came to him men and women to learn those great principles which he was expounding in his books, and also teaching year after year to his medical classes. In the meantime, financial disaster overtook him, leaving him completely bankrupt; and his death, hastened no doubt, by his reverses, occurred in 1877, putting an end to the college as well as to his other work.—Drugless Medicine, p. 116.

The New York Hydropathic and Physiologist School, the name of which was later changed to The New York College of Hygeo-Therapy, was founded by Dr. Trall and first opened its doors Oct. 1, 1853. In 1857, it was chartered under the laws of the State of New York, with the right to confer the degree Doctor of Medicine. This seems to be the only degree it ever conferred upon its graduates. Both sexes were admitted to the college, a very daring thing for a medical school to do in those days.

It was not until during the War for Southern Independence that Medicine, teaching and clerical work was opened to women. Trall was ever in the forefront of progress and reform.

This school, located at 15 Laight St., near St. John’s Park, New York City, was well equipped with apparatus and laboratory and a large library. Students received practical work in Trall’s Hydropathic and Hygienic Institute, a commodious establishment, located at the same address and which was the oldest and most extensive water-cure in the United States. Students visited the hospitals of the city on Saturday afternoons. Clinics were held on Fridays. In 1854 the college announced:

The course of instruction in this Institution embraces hot only all the positive facts and ascertained principles of Medical Science taught in other schools, and the theory and practice peculiar to the Hydropathic system, but contemplates also, a critical examination of all past and existing systems, with a recognition of whatever truths they embody, and an exposition and recognition of the falsities they contain. It embraces indeed, a much wider range of subjects than are taught, or even introduced, into any other Medical School.

The school taught its students the following subjects: Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Pathology, Psychology, Hygiene, Dietetics, Calisthenics, Theory and Practice of the Healing Art, diagnosis, Therapeutics, Jurisprudence, nature cure, water cure, and other subjects. Students were given work in Dissection, and the school taught subjects supplementing High School Education. Its methods of teaching represented a radical departure from the methods then in vogue and were more in keeping with the more advanced principles of the newer educational methods of today.

Among its list of Faculty members are the following names:

Dr. R. T. Trall, Institutes of Medicine, Materia Medica, Female diseases; G. H. Taylor, M.D., Chemistry, Surgery, Obstetrics; James Hambleton, M.D., Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene; J. E. Snodgrass, M.D., Medical Jurisprudence; H. F. Briggs, M.D., Philosophy of voice and speech: Asa Christie, M.D., Medical and Special Gymnastics; L. N. Fowler, Phrenology and Mental Science; Miss A. S. Cogwell, Chemistry and Physiology; Joel Shew, M.D., taught regularly for the first term of the school, after this he lectured occasionally.

Graduates of this college held commissions in the Medical Corps of the Federal Armies during the War for Southern Independence and have a very good record. Of this Trall declared while the war was still on:

"I have visited the camp and hospitals of our armies in this vicinity, and I learned—just what I knew before. One of the surgeons told me yesterday that his regiment was the most healthy one in the department. He gives no medicine, and his associate almost none. They have had several cases of typhoid fever, many cases of pneumonia, and some hundreds of cases of dysentery to treat, and have lost none.

I will not mention their names here, for prudential reasons. It might compromise their position. But when this war is ended—on or before the Fourth of July I hope—the names will be given to the world, and these facts will be certified. Suffice it to say now that they are of my school and my faith.—True Healing Art.

In 1861 the College presented a petition to the legislature of New York asking this body to endow the college and the hospital connected therewith. Among the reasons set forth as entitling the college to an endowment were:

"The general design and object of this school are pre-eminently beneficent, and calculated to promote the welfare of mankind more directly and effectually, perhaps, than any educational institution in the world (not of a religious character) in diffusing abroad a knowledge of the laws of life and the conditions of health, so as to prevent or lessen sickness in the community, and to teach a safe, sure, and economical method of curing all curable persons; and in thus accomplishing the purposes of this School, the people are necessarily indoctrinated into the principles, and led into the practices, which correct injurious personal habits, reform morbid appetences, establish hygienic rules, improve social usages, and lay the foundation for permanent temperance, health, virtue and happiness.

"The special purpose of this school is to qualify, male and female practitioners of the Healing Art in accordance with the principles of the Hydropathic, or more properly, the Hygienic or Hygeio-Therapeutic System, which we believe to be the true medical system; and also, in the language of its charter, ‘to educate and send into the fields of Human Progress competent Health-Reform Teachers and Lecturers.’ Much has been already accomplished in the furtherance of these purposes. Already the graduates of this school number nearly two hundred, nearly one half of whom are females; and the majority of them are now gaining an independent livelihood for themselves, while they are more successfully treating the maladies of their patients by the employment of simple hygienic agencies alone, than is done, or can be done, by the physicians of any other school or system.

"Health is pre-eminently the great want of the age. A precise, intimate, and practical knowledge of its conditions, and of the circumstances which induce disease, as well as of the way to remove diseases without incurring other evils as great, or worse, is the great need of the people. We believe the physical salvation of the race depends on it. In no medical school on earth except this are these things taught, nor are they pretended to be taught in any other. On these points, we speak advisedly.

"The Hygeio-Therapeutic College has inaugurated a new era in medical science. Its advent is an epoch in the Healing Art. It was the first medical school in the world—and so far the only one—to adopt hygienic or normal agencies, as light, air, temperature, water, food, sleep, clothing, exercise and rest, bathing, electricity, or magnetism, mental influences, etc., exclusively in the treatment of diseases, rejecting wholly and totally, as not only unnecessary, but injurious, each and all of the poisons known to the materia medicos of other medical schools, under the name of ‘drug medicines.’

"It has not only introduced a new materia medica and a new practice, but also a new theory and philosophy of medical science, at variance with and in opposition to all of the fundamental doctrines or dogmas on which medical systems have heretofore been built. In a word, it claims to have ignored the falsities of the old systems, and to have based its philosophy and its practice on the unerring and demonstrable laws of nature; while its practitioners claim to be successful in the treatment of all forms of disease, to an extent unheard of before in the world’s history, and unknown to any other medical school."

Hygeio-Therapy (erroneously called ‘Hydropathy,’ or ‘water-cure’), he declared, restores the sick to health, by the means which preserve health in well persons. Diseases should not be ‘cured.’ So long as causes exist, the disease should continue. But the causes of disease should be removed and the patient cured. "Truly remedial agents are materials and influences which have normal relations to the vital organs, and not drugs, or poisons, whose relations are abnormal and anti-vital."—The Hygienic System.

In a lecture to one of his classes he once made the following remarks which show unmistakably that he was working for a disease-free and doctor-independent world:

I cannot forbear a word in allusion to the prospects before us in a business point of view. The system which we advocate naturally and necessarily destroys the professional business and emoluments of its practitioners. If we cannot practice the Healing Art with a higher motive than to get a profitable trade out of the ignorance and falsities and infirmities of society, it would be well for us, and better for the world, if we should seek some other vocation. We cannot practice our system without educating the people in its principles. No sooner do they comprehend them, than they find themselves capable of managing themselves, except in rare and extraordinary cases, without our assistance. Not only this but our patrons learn from our teachings, examples, and prescriptions, how to live so as to avoid, to a great extent, sickness of any kind. When you become physicians, you will be continually teaching the people how to do without you. You must, therefore, continually extend your field of practice by making new converts, or your occupation will soon be gone. And whenever the world becomes so intelligent as to adopt our system in all of its parts, to the exclusion of all others, they will be their own doctors. They will not need us; indeed, there will then be no practitioners of medicine in demand, or in existence, except male surgeons and female midwives.—The Hygienic System.

The Civil War came very near wrecking the college and it did not long survive the war. As a matter of fact, the War set our movement back at least a hundred years. We can truthfully claim that we are now where we were in 1853. Our movement only began to revive about thirty years ago, since which time, we have been making great gains.

Dr. Robert Walter, one of Trall’s illustrious students says:

"In speaking of my predecessors I ought not to neglect the teachings of Drs. Russell T. Trall, and James C. Jackson, to whom I am indebted for valuable truth. Dr. Trall was an acute thinker and had many valuable ideas, but because of an unfortunate mental constitution, aggravated by his extreme notions of diet, he was extremely narrow, and his practice was an utter failure. A man of few words, he was equally a man of limited resources; the very elements which made him a successful popular writer made him also utterly impracticable. Jackson, on the contrary, was resourceful, eloquent, voluble, but eminently practical, even though his theories were quite indefinite. The one rock on which these men foundered was vegetarianism; their antipathy to the use of drugs as medicines was their typical virtue. If the so-called hygienic school of practice would really accord to nature the opportunity, as well as the power of cure, and cease their fads and