THE 
NEW GOSPEL OF HEALTH: 
AN EFFORT TO TEACH PEOPLE 
The Principles of Vital Magnetism: 
OR, 
HOW TO REPLENISH THE SPRINGS OF LIFE 
WITHOUT DRUGS OR STIMULANTS. 
by 
Andrew §tone, m.d., 
PHYSICIAN TO THE TROY LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE; INVENTOR OF THE "PULMOMETER, 
OR LUNG TESTER;" AUTHOR OF A "TREATISE ON THE CURABILITY" OF PULMONARY CON- 
SUMPTION BY INHALATION OF COLD MEDICATED VAPORS, NATURAL HYGIENE," ETC.; 
"A TREATISE ON THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED SYSTEM OF ELECTRO-VITAL AND 
magnetic Remedies;" "the early physical degeneracy of Ameri- 
can PEOPLE," AND SEVERAL OTHER WORKS. 
Illustrated with One Hundred and Twenty Fine Engravings and Plates. 
LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE, 
TROY, N". Y. 
1875. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 
Andrew Stone, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Entorw ra»rd<ngto Art of <0 1873 b, Andmw Sh>n< M 0 .'n *e W.ea afM>« mZmZ of CaxfaM DEDICATION. 
HYGEIA! They who will not strive 
for Thee, magnificent Goddess ! have no 
spark of the divine electric fire in their 
craven souls! They who will not fight 
valiantly to overcome their enemies de- 
serve their vassalage, however galled, 
heart-sore, abject, thou leavest them to 
be! They who will deprive thy king- 
dom of the pride and glory of lordly subjects, at the 
bidding of sensuous appetite, deserve the traitor's gyves 
and fetters with which they soon are bound. 
Thou sittest in dazzling beauty, enthroned upon the 
saintly heights of wisdom, and the sceptre that thou 
swayest glitters with this magic word, that unlocketh 
all thy treasures, " Sele-Goveenment." PREFACE. 
We desire to be brief and explicit in narrating in what way and 
manner we are connected with this book. Some five years since, we 
received, through a medium of known integrity and ability, a com- 
munication, purporting to come from Sir Astley Cooper and Sir Ben- 
jamin Brodie, informing me that they, in connection with my Spirit- 
Band, numbering some eighteen or more of physicians, who had stood 
at the head of their profession when in earth-life, desired to commu- 
nicate some twenty short sections upon different medical subjects, for 
me to publish ; at the same time expressing much solicitude to pre- 
sent subject-matter that promised a more consistent and constructive 
mode of treatment than had hitherto characterized their practice in 
earth-life. Being now disembodied, and viewing the results of past 
experience with a far more progressive spiritual vision, they could 
see many errors which they now desired to correct, by substituting 
more rational and vital principles, having a direct tendency to con- 
struct or build up in harmony with the organic laws of life and 
health. 
This communication was entirely unexpected, unthought of, or 
unsought for on my part ; and still it was not surprising ; for, for 
many months prior to this, we had had, in sleep, tangible visions of 
printed matter, plainly spread before us, which we had read with all 
distinctness and facility, and many times whole paragraphs would be 
recollected after awaking. 
Hence, to us, the proposition seemed a perfectly natural one, and as 
a matter of consequence ; and we replied, Go on ; give the lectures, VI 
PREFACE. 
and, if considered worthy of publishing, they should be given to 
the public. 
We arranged with the medium for compensation, and then, in the 
spring of '70, they were promised in live months. Some five lectures 
soon followed, by Rush, Bell, Mott, and others, when the medium's 
health failed, and a delay or suspense occurred, one coming occasion- 
ally in a year or two. 
Being quite worn out with this unexpected tardiness and non- 
realization of promises, I sought to converse with the band through 
other reliable mediums, some four or more in number, when I dis- 
covered to my complete satisfaction the whole matter was familiar, 
and definite reasons would be given, and assurances again renewed 
that the work should be completed ; only command patience for con- 
ditions to be obtained or found in the medium of communication. 
Other media were sought by them, a few lectures ably given, when 
pecuniary or other considerations would again cause interruption 
and delay. 
The contingencies attending the condition and* control of medi- 
ums on the other side are best expressed by Sir Astley Cooper him- 
self, whose communication I will copy : 
" My Friend : I thank you heartily for your long-suffering pa- 
tience and persistence in helping us try this experiment of contribu- 
ting, bit by bit, the opinions of different individual spirits, bearing 
upon the same or kindred subjects. I was very anxious that this 
work should be commenced, though I had then no adequate idea of 
the trouble it would be to carry it on. I thought we could easily 
find and influence a score of mediums to contribute our thoughts and 
opinions through. 
" But I find that mental work demands a certain amount of men- 
tal adaptation ; and as, after five or six years' trial and experiment, I 
have found no medium so well adapted to our work as the one I first 
influenced in this country and now influence, I am at present at work 
endeavoring to secure her time and services for the use of our band. 
" She does not do her work willingly or gracefully, I admit ; but 
she does it, and that is the chief point. I think, as your book has PREFACE. 
VII 
already grown beyond its originally intended size, and new influences 
are constantly begging permission to speak through its pages, that 
you had better not wait for a specific section from me, but merely 
state that I have an interest in the work, and will soon make my own 
statement. I want to treat the subject of hernia so thoroughly and 
exhaustively that no one coming after me need ever have a hernia 
to treat. 
" With you in spirit I remain connected with the working band in 
all they do, and hold myself, at all times, yours to command, 
"Astley Paston Cooper. 
"Spirit-Sphere, January 14, 1875." 
It will be noticed in the Physiological Proem, that Dr. James 
Johnson alludes to the same obstacles and contingencies in the way 
of communication and mediumship. And the difficulty encountered 
in this way has caused a departure in subject-matter transmitted 
quite different from the original programme proposed for the book. 
The law seems to be this : Although all the original sections were 
prepared, yet the respective contributor necessitating the transmis- 
sion personally, if he finds the conditions inharmonious for control, 
the work is at once paralyzed. Hence the change somewhat from the 
plan first given by Sir Astley Cooper. Each section has the contri- 
butor's name attached. 
As the literature of the new school of medicine is yet to be writ- 
ten, it is to be earnestly hoped that mediums, properly organized, 
will be found efficient to the needs of the great undertaking. 
The principal part of the work has been given through the me- 
diumship of N. S. Emerson, formerly Mrs. French, of New-York. 
We are under obligations to Dr. E. B. Foote, for favors in the 
way of cuts, and also to Vassar College, an institution worthy of all 
confidence and patronage. 
ANDREW STONE, M.D., 
Lung and Hygienic Institute. 
Troy, N. Y., April, 1875. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM 1 
INTRODUCTORY. BY GALEN 9 
FIRST SECTION. 
The crude system of medicine to give place to finer and more spiritual 
treatment-Mankind approaching nearer to God-Brain texture improv- 
ing-Deadly effects of mercurial practice-All the essential elements of 
vegetables possessed in a more refined form than mineral-Properties of, 
too much neglected-Erroneous system of medical education-A decided 
approach to magnetism-Homeopathic physicians progressive-Hydropathy 
an improvement, but much abused-Drenching an advantage over drug- 
ing-Cautions-The lifting-cure a sham-Movement-cure rational-Lomi- 
Lomi-Its ancient prestige-Its wonderfully rejuvenating effects-The sun- 
bath-Its wonderfully curative agency-Electricity-The mind the real heal- 
ing power-Its effects upon digestion-Alexis St. Martin-Poisonous effects 
of anger upon digestion-The movement of the diaphragm and lungs 
electric-Dr. Golding Bird-The difference between electricity and magne- 
tism-Curing by laying on of hands-Contingencies of operating-How to 
gather magnetic strength-Physiology and Hygiene should be studied-The 
gift of healing a sacred boon-Individuality should be maintained-How 
to regard impressions 11 
General Remarks. 
SECOND SECTION. 
Origin of the term-Magnets are of two kinds-Have two poles or centres, north 
and south-The Earth a huge magnet-Diamagnetism-Dr. Faraday on 
magnetism of blood-Mode of gathering and using magnetism-An essential 
element of life-The more ethereal a substance, the more essential to life 
-Friedrich Anton Mesmer-Declined a large offer from the French govern- 
ment-The art a part of one's self-One of reciprocal sympathy-The mind 
Magnetism X 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
the seat of disease-Homeopathy the basest fraud-The life of a healer 
should be pure-Meat as well as vegetable diet necessary-Magnetic vam- 
pires-Non-magnetic incapable of strong love-Perfect health, perfect love 
-Reckless haste of American people all wrong-Diseased magnetism- 
Process of operating-Mode of diffusing virus into the blood, its subtlety- 
What to avoid...................................................... 23 
THIRD SECTION. 
Vital Magnetism. 
Lay hold of the principles of life-Two different objects can powerfully affect 
each other-The great secret-True and false magnetisms-Good homes and 
good houses essential-Divine laws not to be interfered with-The power 
that made the world can attend to it-Chronic inharmony from false desires- 
Proper education of girls-The true mission of woman, motherhood-Man's 
yearning after his true magnetic mate-Woman's condition far different from 
man's vitality, physiologically and magnetically-Harmony essential to the 
happiness of the future being-Infanticide terrible-Three fifths of the con- 
trolling influence of the world delegated to mothers-The relative difference 
between the secretion of the male and female-The imperative demand of 
the male-Causes for so much disappointment in married life-The days of 
courtship should never end-The food one is forced to eat neither satisfies 
nor nourishes-An appetite may be created for love-The dress of woman- 
Competing fashions-Corsets are unhealthy ; cause falling of the bowels- 
Nature has no need of abdominal supporters-An outrageous style of dress- 
A rational style of dressing for eliminating magnetism 31 
FOURTH SECTION. 
Vital Magnetism-Continued. 
Its origin-The brain a magnetic reservoir-The digestive functions set free 
electricity-The vitalizing properties of air-The great necessity of sun- 
light, and sunshine never should be excluded from rooms-Artificial heat 
may restore much magnetism-Danger of living in shady rooms or houses- 
Philosophy of sun-stroke-Proper diet-Cheerful, healthful society-The 
babe receives magnetism from the mother-Human magnetism the highest 
attribute of earth-life-Magnetism stirs the blood and contracts the muscles 
-Individual spirit organized electricity-The passions belong to the body- 
The body the home of the spirit-Evidences of spirit-communication always 
known-Swedenborg-Magnetism and electricity the agents of spirit-com- 
munication-The laws of spirit-control but little understood-Every form 
of clairvoyance, mesmerism, magnetism, and mediumship embraced in 
spirit-power-Home influences should be pleasant-Avoid unpleasant mag- 
netisms 41 
FIFTH SECTION. 
Mesmerism 53 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
XI 
SIXTH SECTION. 
Consumption G3 
SEVENTH SECTION. 
Scrofula. 
Meaning of the word-Manifested in indolent glandular tumors-Usually a 
disease of childhood-Wickedly hereditary-Its tendency to hydrocephalus 
or dropsy of the brain-Barbarous remedies of the old-school physicians- 
Only proper cure, out-door life and magnetism ; a plain, nutritious diet- 
Judgment in frequency of food-Starvation diet of hydropathists will not 
do-Mesenteric consumption a form of scrofula-Treatment for-Rickets, 
another form-Indications and cure-Too little lime in bones-Medicated 
bathing for-The duty of every man and woman respecting propaga- 
tion 85 
EIGHTH SECTION. 
Odyltc Force-only another Name for Magnetism, the Force of the 
Spirit 95 
NINTH SECTION. 
Some Astounding Remarks by Laennec on the Causes for and the 
Curability of Pulmonary Consumption 103 
TENTH SECTION. 
Vital and Animal Magnetism a Substitute for Anesthesia. 
The discovery of the use of ether, nitrous-oxide, chloroform, and other anaes- 
thetics-Their relative merits compared with vital magnetism-Remarkable 
instance of magnetism in childbirth-The galvanic battery to prevent in- 
jury from anaesthesia-Principal elements necessary for a magnetic physi- 
cian-Principles laid down by Jesus of Nazareth-The first and highest 
record of magnetic treatment-Reasons why the same striking results are 
not obtained now-Mental anaesthetics-Sympathy the strongest, excepting 
love-Love latent in every being, waiting to be awakened-Ill adaptation 
of certain temperaments-The highest aim of human life found in making 
others happy-The first step for a perfect ideal home is good health-Avoid 
vesication and application of morphia to denuded surfaces-Substitute the 
magnetic hand-Virtues of homeopathy only in faith-The brain not to be 
trifled with-Directions for choice of magnetic physician-An eloquent plea 
to substitute magnetism and electricity 105 XII 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
ELEVENTH SECTION. 
On Drinks and their Effects, or Drunkenness as a Disease. 
American people very immoderate in both eating and drinking-Want of indi- 
viduality of character for self-government-The great object of life is to 
use brain-power to the best advantage-Three forms of appetite-Appetite 
for strong drink hereditary often-A thorough knowledge of its effects- 
No man would treat a dog as he treats himself-Effects of alcohol upon the 
kidneys in deposits of calculus-Abnormal action-Nephritis or inflamma- 
tion of kidneys-Coma follows the retention of urea-Inflammation of neck 
of the bladder exceedingly painful-Dropsy-Bright's disease-Albumen in 
urine-Secretory functions obscure-Hydrocele-Children should be kept 
from stimulating drinks-Importance of chemical analysis of urine- 
Softening of the brain result of spirit-drinking-Magnetic treatment very 
important 117 
TWELFTH SECTION. 
The Blood and its Diseases. 
The heart the most important organ-The arteries carry the blood from the 
heart-The capillaries-The veins-Arterial blood more highly charged 
with magnetism-Diseases of the blood-Cold hands and feet-Rheuma- 
tigm-Globules-Neuralgia-The best remedy-Tobacco cause of rheuma- 
tism and nerve-ache-Syphilitic horrors-Cancer-Canker-Turkish baths 
the remedy-Analysis should obtain to determine the nature of the blood- 
Piles or hemorrhoids-Apoplexy-Paralysis-Electricity-Palsy-The lym- 
phatic glands-Carbolic soap-Magnetism better than the knife-Mothers 
should anticipate and remedy in conception 135 
THIRTEENTH SECTION. 
Care of the teeth-Use of carbolic soap-Importance of lime in food-Hot 
drinks and confectionery bad-Toothache a divine monition-The salivary 
glands-Gastric fluid, its importance-Food and time of eating regulated by 
discretion-Vegetable and animal foods, both may be necessary-Pork 
unhealthy-Generates scrofula, trichinae, and tape-worm-People do par- 
take of the nature of the food they eat-Grains of all kinds the most 
natural food-Neglect of the secretive functions the prolific cause of disease 
-Costiveness, its cause and remedy-Vital magnetism the best remedy 
The function of the skin, its great importance-The alkaline bath, its use 
The pack-Dyspepsia, its horrors-How cured-Importance of sunshine 
Exercise, its importance-Anger and fear to be avoided-Bilious persons 
should avoid milk-Buttermilk healthy-Animal fats to be avoided-Fruits 
should form a good share of the breakfast-The food should be most nutri- 
tious and of the best quality-A magnetic ride after dinner to be taken- 
Sleep before twelve, its importance-The Turkish bath, its effects-To be 
used discriminately-The medicinal vapor-bath 149 
The Stomach and Digestive Organs-Dyspepsia and its Horrors. XIII 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
FOURTEENTH SECTION. 
Womanhood and Maternity. 
Undesired maternity a curse-Women to be fit for mothers should be healthy- 
Must reform themselves-Proper dress, food, pure air, exercise, and em- 
ployment-A divine impulse to be heeded-Abortionism horrid-The darkest 
blot on modern civilization-Man and wife both cheat each other-How ? 
why ?-The heart always capable of love-Marriage a most solemn obliga- 
tion too little considered-How can most happiness be gained?-Wrong 
impressions of life-Should be well versed in the anatomy and physiology 
of her system-Maternity should not be crowded-Too little time to think- 
Magnetic nurse. 163 
FIFTEENTH SECTION. 
Female Weaknesses the Great Cause of Consumption 175 
SIXTEENTH SECTION. 
Mother and Child. 
Nature always does her best-Love the most important pre-natal influence-A 
very relative thing-And yet love should be the basis of all life-Different 
relations between the wife and husband explained-Conception, the mother's 
care in-Progress-Confinement-Birth and care of the infant-Moral or 
mental condition-Diet and hygiene-Foeticide, its horrors-God the Supreme 
Ruler-The awful responsibility of both father and mother-Every new life 
is a classification of organic faculties evoked from the great unknown cause 
-The great duty of the mother to know how to care for and rear her off- 
spring-A physiological manner of dressing for the infant insisted upon- 
Keep drugs and sweetmeats out of its stomach 181 
SEVENTEENTH SECTION. 
Diseases of Children. 
The importance of laying a firm foundation when very young-Preventive of 
contagious and other diseases-Magnetism before all other treatment-Pure- 
air exercise in the open air-Teething, how to manage-Convulsions, how 
to treat-The mother must regulate her diet and keep an equanimity of 
mind-Avoid soothing-syrups and opiates-Croup and diphtheria, how to 
treat-Warm bathing and magnetism-Cold medicated inhaling vapors 
highly important-How to cure scrofula, and what it is-Sunshine abso- 
lutely necessary-Scarlet-fever, how to treat-Putrid sore throat-Disin- 
fectants must be used-Caution against sudden changes-Water treatment 
beneficial, carefully used-Never use caustics to the throat-Function of 
the kidneys must be established-The Turkish bath a most efficient agent- 
Measles and other diseases of childhood-Children must be regarded as 
public property-Look for the book to be published 189 XIV 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
Homeopathy 197 
EIGHTEENTH SECTION. 
NINETEENTH SECTION. 
Cosmetics 
Beauty simply the skin-Too much washing of the face-The skin composed of 
two layers-Seat of the coloring matter-The skin or complexion must be 
well cared for-Diana bathed every morning in rain-water, the secret of her 
beauty-Cold bathing injurious and bad for the skin-Rub with the soft 
magnetic hand-A soft dry powder beneficial-Bathe other parts of the 
body more-Baths of milk-The Turkish bath-A domestic steam-bath from 
a heated brick-Of soaps, castile and carbolic are preferable to all others- 
To secure a fine complexion, the excretions of the body must be daily car- 
ried away-A quiet and happy temper essential-The magnetism of beauty 
and love 205 
TWENTIETH SECTION. 
Children not properly born-The unwelcome babe-Trouble should be met with 
fortitude, manfully-Premature exhaustion from bad pre-natal influences- 
Passions should be controlled-Self-government most important-Children 
should not be unduly confined-Should be early taught to work, and boys 
to all kinds of work-The brain an epitome of the whole body-Only a cer- 
tain amount of gathered force to expend-Danger of cutting the hair short 
on back of the head-Mechanical excitement of the passions one of the 
most fruitful causes of insanity-Cause of baldness-Of rheumatism-Shun 
tobacco and obscene books-Associate with the virtuous and pure and high- 
minded-Meanness of young men-A woman's first impulse-Individuality 
sacrificed-Insanity will soon be treated successfully-Model inebriate asy- 
lums-Cures by unconscious magnetism 213 
On Insanity. 
TWENTY-FIRST SECTION. 
The moral aspects of crime-Comparative degrees of crime-Diseased condition 
of will-Kleptomania-Violence-Brute force-Error of punishing children 
physically or by brute force-Pre-natal causes and influences-Self-culture 
and self-reliance should be taught the child early-Present methods of treat- 
ing crime aim at effects instead of causes-Prisons should be considered as 
hospitals-The effects of solitary confinement in deranging the harmony of 
mind-Affecting instance of maternal insanity from murdering her own 
child-Society secure only in the general culture and moral elevation of its 
members-The natural genius or bent of mind in children should be 
encouraged, not thwarted-Melancholy result-A case of a promising young 
The Treatment of Crime as a Disease. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
XV 
sculptor-Dean Richmond-Capital punishment should be abandoned- 
Prison officers should be teachers-Law-makers should understand the 
causes of crime-Bad results of unhappy marriages-The law of love and 
magnetic attraction should be patiently studied-Better principles of educa- 
tion should be adopted-Girls should be educated first to be women, then 
true mothers* 227 
TWENTY-SECOND SECTION. 
Remarkable Cases of Cures under the Direction of our Institution, 
in Accordance with the Newly Developed System of Treatment 
by Vital Magnetism and the Observance of the Laws of 
Hygiene 239 
TWENTY-THIRD SECTION. 
A remarkable cure of Bright's disease of the kidneys, general dropsy of the 
body and lower limbs after two years' standing, and unsuccessful treatment 
by three physicians-The true pathology of albuminuria or Bright's dis- 
ease explained, following the case 251 
Case Third. 
TWENTY-FOURTH SECTION. 
Cases of Cures 259 
TWENTY-FIFTH SECTION. 
Metaphysical Aspects of the Physical and Organic Laws, in Relation 
to Health, and the Relation and Subordination of all Diseases 
to Affectional Conditions. 
The secret of life-A motor-Spiritual ether-Continual change necessary to 
form life-The lily-Physical basis of life the same in vegetables, ani- 
mals, and men-Material elements demanded-Man more attentive to 
the needs of the lower animals than his own-The mother's mark 
not to be disregarded-The wail of- feebleness teaches a fearful les- 
son-Who shall roll away the stone?-Nature's grand protest-Bane- 
ful effects of drastic medicines-Awful sacrifice of life by bloodlet- 
ting-Eclecticism a great advance-The healer of the future-The medi- 
cal savants in spirit-life are not forgetful of the needs in their chosen 
profession-The mother brings her babe for restoration-The exercise 
of the believing will necessary-Hunger signifies cause-Supply the 
want-Fling to the winds all compulsory practice 271 
TWENTY-SIXTH SECTION. 
Hereditary Disease Eradicable by the "True Idea" Healer. 
Power of habit over nature-My moderate glass does not hurt me-Tobacco does 
not hurt me-Opium does not hurt me-Strong tea and coffee do not hurt XVI 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
me-Tight lacing does not hurt me-Procreative powers impaired-Nature 
pays no interest except on accumulated capital-The exercise of a part 
strengthens a part-The dyspeptic lady-The bowed-down old man-Bad 
liver-Pills and physic thrown to the dogs-Magnetism and magnetic sleep 
substituted-Hereditary scrofula-Allegory of temptation-Sad cause for 
deficiency of nerve-force-A mighty resolve to be clean-A grand ambition 
to make the body a fit temple for the immortal spirit-No drug can reach, 
no priest console-The queenly monarch, Health, only waiting to dethrone 
Habit-I have not long to live-You must live forever-The engine reversed 
-A grand resolve-Nature a most beneficent mother 283 
TWENTY-SEVENTH SECTION. 
Sympathy the "True Idea" of Healing. 
The true healer is born-Jesus the prince of Healers-The agonies of Gethsemane 
no fable-Diagnosis intuitive with the true healer-Diseases induced by the 
law of sympathy-The most energetic will degenerate if his powers are not 
used-Negative condition dangerous-The law explained-The positive 
physician or nurse seldom takes the disease-Doubting, boding people 
should not nurse or be with the sick-Perfect harmony between patient and 
healer should exist-Insane people should never be shut up together-In- 
sanity cured only by right magnetic conditions-Jesus cured the insane- 
The same law now exists-Young and old people should not mingle to- 
gether-The law-Error of husband and wife sleeping in the same bed- 
The young child should not sleep with an aged or negative person-Danger 
of young marrying the old-A sympathetic healer inj ured by absorbing 
tobacco and opium from the patient 295 
TWENTY-EIGHTH SECTION. 
The Necessity of a Combination of Healers, 
Fading and sinking of the young wife-She needs genial, cherishing influences 
for a sore heart instead of calomel and quinine, affectionate kindness instead 
of scorpions of poisonous drugs-A unity of forces-A failure of the most 
celebrated in some cases no argument against the principle-Causes of fail- 
ures explained-Faults of mediums-How to be avoided-Be upright, 
truthful, pure, you will then be guided to unfailing fountains-Excessive 
depletion of nerve-force the cause of ill-health-How restored and bal- 
anced by the new gospel of healing 305 
TWENTY-NINTH SECTION. 
How to be Receptive, and Restoked by the Virtue of the "Healer" 
ACCORDING TO THE " TRUE IDEA." 
Hygienic conditions necessary for speedy cure-Fevers, boils, ulcers, etc., 
only curative indications-Diseases are nature's physicians-Bathing in 
some one form an essential aid to health-Self-government the most god- 
like, the most remunerative-Every dwelling should esteem its bath-room TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
XVII 
a necessity-Be made receptive-Blood indications-The compressed air- 
bath-Men an epitome of the universe-So far imperfect when deprived of 
whatever belongs to him-The solar rays mighty in their effects-The sun- 
bath-Earth-bath-The foot-bath-The shower-bath-Electric and spiritual 
forces 313 
The Exercise and Use of all the Organs and Powers of the Human 
Being a Preventive and Curative of Disease. 
THIRTIETH SECTION. 
Every organ essential-The systematic use of, essential to harmony-The pores, 
their great function in eliminating effete matter-The electric forces, how 
eliminated and balanced-The brain the key-stone of the royal arch-Toil 
without the glow of satisfaction prostrating-Failure of clergymen in not 
properly exercising and harmoniously balancing every organ and faculty 
daily-A perfectly healthy mother essential to the development of the " com- 
ing man "-Lofty endeavor needed-The model health Institute must com- 
bine an art-gallery, a library, instruction in music, ingenious discussion, and 
logical philosophy-A cultivation of shrubbery or garden-While boating, 
sailing, fishing, sporting, and gymnastic exercises with music should be 
regularly alternated and varied-Far more satisfactory to build wisely than 
to repair-" I have not been well since the birth of my child !" the plaintive 
wail of thousands-A thousand little mounds upon the hill-side-Glowing 
advantages at our Hygienic Home 323 
THIRTY-FIRST SECTION. 
The Scientific Selection of Food indispensable to Health 337 
THIRTY-SECOND SECTION. 
Hernia or Rupture 343 
THIRTY-THIRD SECTION. 
Medicine 351 
THIRTY-FOURTH SECTION. 
Medicine a Science and an Art 357 
THIRTY FIFTH SECTION. 
The Brain and its Functions ; or, Diseases oe the Nervous System. 
Maladies of the brain and nervous system most complicated and difficult to treat 
-The great reservoir of nervous and magnetic fluid-Cranial and spinal 
nerves-Nerves of sensation and motion-The brain composed of three parts 
-The average weight-Foreboding indications-Fatal American habit- 
Kindly monitions-Stomach and brain, intimate sympathy-Catarrh-Perni- XVIII 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
cious habit of blowing the nose-Magnetism pre-eminent-Apoplexy, danger 
of-Heed the warnings-Epilepsy, cure for-Magnetism the best cure yet 
discovered-Requisites of a good magnetic physician 461 
TIIIRTY-SIXTH SECTION. 
Chief Big-Heart's Exposition of the Indian Method of Curing Dis- 
eases by Magnetism 473 
The Indian Method of Equalizing the Circulation and Curing Acute 
Colds, or Fevers from Colds, and Sudden Closure of the Pores, 
AS PRACTICED IN THE DAYS OF POWHATAN 482 
THIRTY-SEVENTH SECTION. 
Chief Silver-Arrow's Explanation of the Office of the Indian in 
the Science of Healing 487 
Electro-Vital and Magnetic Remedies used in Treatment by the In- 
stitution 495 HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL 
PROEM. 
UR book is somewhat unique, but it is us. We 
have no other apology to offer for it. It is not 
the consecutive action of a single brain, but rather 
the successive fragments of inspiration or influence 
that have come, under widely differing circum- 
stances, and with almost every kind of surrounding 
disadvantage. 
We give it to the world, as the best we could 
do at the time, and under the conditions that were 
afforded us ; but we feel no hesitancy in affirming 
that this is but a faint and imperfect outline of 
work yet to be wrought. 
Spiritualism, in its present form and phases, has been known to 
the dwellers upon the earth-planet not yet thirty years, and yet it 
has found its way into every department of life, has won attention 
from leading minds in all classes of society, and in all civilized 
nations. And this, not so much that it is new and strange, but that 
it fills a felt need in the heart and life of man. 
Spiritualism came upon earth, not as an abnormal growth, a mere 
curiosity to be examined and laid aside, not even as a miracle out- 
wrought from the hidden and occult laws of science, but it was 
evolved from the earth's own necessities. 
It came, like the Christ-spirit long ago, " Not to destroy but to 
fulfill." 
Old religion made war upon it, as the old is ever prone to do 
with the new ; but it need not. 
Spiritualism is not a destroyer of religions. Looked at in its best 
and truest aspect, it gives life and vitality to what was before mere 
husks and forms. And what is true of religion, the medicine and 2 
HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
nutriment of the soul, is true also of the body, and its nutriments 
and medicaments. The one attribute that separates man from the 
brute creation, that makes him altogether different from and higher 
than the other animals, is the fact that he is, or may be, dominated 
by the spirit, rather than by the mere physical needs that belong to 
the body. 
And it is this domination of the spirit that the true and divinely 
appointed healer appeals to, when he finds sickness and disease in the 
body that must needs be cast out, to make room for health and 
strength. 
In ancient times, kings were supposed to be divinely appointed, 
and to have the power of healing diseases, and casting out devils or 
impure or troublesome spirits. 
The latest tangible effort in this direction was when Prince 
Charles Edward was at Holyrood House, in October, 1745. He 
touched a young girl who had been grievously afflicted since her 
birth with scrofula, and she was perfectly cured in twenty-one days. 
Before this, up to the year 1719, there was a provision for this office 
made mention of in the Liturgy ; but it is said upon good authority 
that the old Jacobites believed that this power did not descend to 
Mary, William, or Anne, as they did not possess a full hereditary 
title, or in other words, did not reign by divine right. 
So gradually, as the spirit failed and faded from the confidence of 
the people, the power followed it, and the power of the king to cure 
disease is now counted as among the baseless and foolish supersti- 
tions of the past. 
It is true that the imagination has a powerful influence over the 
physical condition. But the imagination is one of the attributes of 
the spirit, and should in no way be despised. 
If, then, a person can be relieved of suffering by any appeal to the 
imagination, let it be done faithfully, even reverently ; for the spirit 
may not be trifled with in any way with impunity. 
Kings, presidents, ministers, priests, teachers, and leaders of all 
kinds should be healers. They should have enough true mag- 
netic strength within themselves to attract the kindly and beneficent 
spirits about them, who have power to bring blessing and health in 
lieu of weakness and despair. 
Thus only can they be fitted to act as rulers and guides for the 
people. 
Thus only can they be saved from the bitterness of feeling that 
their position is a mockery, and the outward show of respect paid to 
them, but grudgingly at best, is husks without heart. HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
3 
We do not expect our book to make a revolution either in medi- 
cine or in government. But we wish to leave in the mind of the 
reader the general impression that we have endeavored to take a 
step in the right direction. 
That whatever we have said has been not to further any selfish 
purpose, not to advertise a method at the expense of truth and jus- 
tice, not to find fault with regular medical systems or schools ; but 
to suggest that, as it is already known that a subtle current of mag- 
netism or electricity is forever ebbing and flowing about the earth, 
this current be made available for its best and highest possibilities of 
use. 
This is our theory : that the more subtle and intangible the ele- 
ments are, the more essential they are to human life. 
Thus it has been demonstrated by science, that certain mineral, 
animal, and vegetable substances go to make up the food consumed 
by man, and that these three constituents are all essential to the con- 
tinued possession of life and health. 
But if all mineral substances be removed from the daily food, life 
and apparent health will continue for a long time. If all animal sub- 
stance be taken away, life still continues, though probably for a 
shorter time, and with less reliable strength. 
The loss of all vegetable material would tend still further to 
shorten life ; but even if all food be denied to a person, life would go 
on for a few days, until the accumulated tissue be used up, and 
exhaustion ensue. 
If all liquids are abstained from, death comes quicker, and with 
greater suffer ng ; if the air be excluded, the period of life is nar- 
rowed down to a few minutes. 
If the supply of electricity be stopped, only a few seconds of life 
remain ; and if the impalpable cords of magnetism be severed, the 
person is dead at once. 
The reason why a human being can live for a long time in a 
trance, when all the functions of life and health are apparently sus- 
pended, when there is not sufficient nutriment taken either as food 
or drink to support life, when the lungs are not filled with air, when 
the heart does not beat, is because the magnetic current is unbroken. 
That alone keeps the mystic bond unsevered that unites the spirit 
to its material tenement. 
Magnetism is only another name for vitality itself. It is the 
principle of life animating all matter, permeating all space. And it 
is to this principle that we appeal when we heal without drugs. 
Every person has had more or less individual experience in this 4 
HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
power, which we call magnetism, which other writers call by other 
names. 
You sit quiet and low-spirited in your room ; some person comes 
in whom you do not wish to see. In five minutes, your hands and 
feet have grown sensibly colder, or insensibly benumbed ; a dull, 
slight headache seems stretching every nerve out of its proper place; 
you try to listen and reply properly, and succeed only in feeling very 
miserable, and in making your visitor, if in any way sensitive, decid- 
edly uncomfortable and unhappy without knowing why. 
Another person enters, whom you thoroughly like, and rejoice to 
see. There is a warm clasp of the hands, the blood is called to the 
surface and the extremities, the head is no longer overcharged, the 
brain makes no further exertion to comprehend and reply, conver- 
sation becomes natural and interesting ; and if you were sick, you 
feel better than you have for a long time. This is the true mission 
of the physician. To carry life and health to his patients because 
they like him, and believe in him or her, as the case may be. For 
the female physician has her place in the world too, and her work 
should never be ignored. 
The truest friend, the fondest lover, the most sympathizing spirit, 
the warmest heart, these make the best physician. 
And these spiritual characteristics will almost invariably clothe 
themselves in the fine physique, strong frame, firm muscle, plentiful 
tissue, warm hands, light springy step, genial smile, and quick, lov- 
ing eye, as sure to detect any change in the magnetic condition as 
the patient is to feel and realize it. 
These physicians may be found in every household. They need 
not the drill of the college, the superabundant culture of books, the 
opinions of the past, or the theories based upon other people's experi- 
ence. 
They are at once a law unto themselves and to their patients, and 
by this law the work of health-giving is wrought. 
These are the men and women about whom gentle and beneficent 
spirits, from whatever sphere, love to linger, with whom they are 
glad to work. 
Then study to be good and true, if you would call to your aid the 
true power of the spirit that moves the world. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson says that ideas and inventions are in the 
air. "We" (meaning the general race of men) "are all impression- 
able, for we are made up of these ideas. All are impressionable, but 
some more so than others ; and those who are most sensitive first 
express the ideas." HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
5 
This explains the curious contemporaneousness of inventions and 
discoveries. 
They came not alone to one person, but to several persons, who 
were equally impressible. 
The truth is in the air, and the most impressionable brain will an- 
nounce it first, but all will announce it a few minutes later. " So 
women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour." 
But, while agreeing with Mr. Emerson in the statement of the 
fact, in regard to the coming upon earth of inventions, discoveries, 
and ideas, .oe claim that they come from the spirit-life that surrounds 
and gives life to the earth. 
We who have passed away from the material existence which is 
confined solely to one planet, still feel a general interest in that planet, 
and a special interest in those individuals with whom we were closely 
associated as relatives or friends. 
And we bring the forward-reaching ideas from the great fount of 
wisdom and knowledge, to bless and comfort our friends, or with a 
trifle less individual selfishness we pass them along because they were 
given to us, and are useless if we keep them. 
Let us, then, teach you, O beautiful world of relations and 
effects ! to look up, just one step, if no more. To remember that the 
air about and above you, permeated with ideas and discoveries and 
inventions, is permeated also with individualities and lives. 
With spirits who love you, who would bless you if they could 
who will bless you if you will let them. We can see farther than 
you can, and though we are not infinite in power or knowledge, yet 
such as we have we would gladly give to you. 
We call out earnestly to you from every direction, " Give us 
time and opportunity ; be patient with us ; let us explain ourselves, 
and we will show you that we mean only the kindest and most bene- 
ficent deeds toward you all." 
We try curious experiments with the laws of gravitation, of 
formation, of optics and audits, only to call attention to our real 
selves. To let you know that we are, and are waiting to express 
ourselves plainly to you. 
The idlest and most foolish physical manifestation is significant 
if it awakens thought or inquiry ; and that is all we ask for it. We 
know that no person can receive another's experience, and make it 
serve as his own. 
Each must have his individuality appealed to ; his wants, tastes, 
or inclinations consulted. 
We know that spiritualism comes to each individual through a 6 
HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
different channel, in a different way. It has a myriad voices, and 
they cause a myriad different chords in the human heart to vibrate 
with greater or less intensity. 
To some it appeals to the affections, bringing an echo of a love 
that cheered and brightened the earth-life for a little time, then 
suddenly vanished at the portals of the grave. To many it speaks 
with the voice of reason. 
Was so much of culture and intellect and education given toman 
for the brief life of three or four score years ; and then, when he is 
just beginning to see and understand and reason for himself, behold 
is he naught ? Shall he have no enjoyment of the knowledge he 
has acquired? And the answer comes back from the sage in the 
spirit-spheres, "AZZ that ice have gained of knowledge or wisdom is 
ours forever, and the blessing of teaching is also ours. For that we 
speak to you." The voice of religion is perhaps strongest of all. 
The human mind is so constituted that in its normal condition it 
needs something to look up to, to rely upon. 
It feels that it was not self-created, self-evolved from the great 
mass of matter about it, and it asks perpetually, " Whence came I ? 
Why am I here ? Who will take care of me ? guide, protect, and 
direct me ? I walk but blindly through a maze of time ; I follow no 
visible guide ; I make for myself a new track in the pathless space 
before me. How shall I know if I walk to destruction or salvation 
To such as these, the waiting angels answer, "We are the agents 
of the great Will, the guiding Mind, the all-pervading Presence that 
is higher and wiser than your comprehension can reach. We will 
teach you of the beneficent father-power and mother-love, which is 
God. This power it is which cares for and protects you ; this love 
which surrounds you like a great net, through whose meshes you 
can never fall." To the stricken mother come the words of her child 
" Mamma, I love you ; talk to my dear papa about me ; tell him I 
have such a pretty home ; a garden, a lake, and a boat, and I want 
him to teach me how to row." The mother is bewildered and 
delighted. She remembers how her little Theodore was charmed 
with the lake and the boat one day. Can it be-is it possible that 
God is so good as to let her darling speak to her again ? 
The mourning husband receives some fragmentary message from 
his lost wife, some pet name by which she used to call him, some 
reference to a past incident that made trouble between them once. 
To the general world these are generalities, but to the heart that 
is hungry for the bread of life, shocked by the horror and mystery 
of death, these atoms are the manna that feeds the soul. HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
7 
We, the disembodied spirits, feel this craving, and reaching out, 
and asking for, of the human heart, acting as magnets to draw us 
back to earth. 
And it is in partial answer to these cravings that we endeavor 
to interest the minds of our readers in the phenomena of spirit-mani- 
festations, knowing that if once an interest is awakened, investiga- 
tion and, in a large proportion of cases, conviction is sure to follow. 
To be able to make use of and in some degree to control the 
elements about us ; to use the magnetic and electric currents for heal- 
ing and strengthening the sick and weary frame; to make faith take 
the place of mineral and love of vegetable poisons ; to teach huma- 
nity ; to breathe charity in lieu of miasms ; this is the work we have 
undertaken, and which we ask you, kind reader, to help us in carry- 
ing on. 
We have not written wonderfully, not even well perhaps ; but we 
offer as an excuse for this, that we are like mechanics working with 
a class of tools with which we are not well acquainted and perfectly 
familiar. 
Our book is in itself but an experiment, which we have been 
enabled to try, through the faith and liberality of our friend and 
co-worker, Dr. Andrew Stone. 
We give him such thanks as our limited command of words 
enables us to express ; but he knows by a sort of spiritual conscious- 
ness that is not dependent upon the outer senses, that we are with 
him. 
That we share every good impulse, and lend what aid and 
strength we can to help along every good work of his ; and he does 
the same for us. 
This sort of brotherhood, of general faith and acceptance, is what 
we want in the world ; is what we need to carry on our work ; and 
what we have faith to believe as well as the prevision to see every 
year is bringing us more and more of. Instead of a single super- 
naturally-gifted man, working for us alone, surrounded with doubt, 
skepticism, and ridicule, as Swedenborg wrought, we have an army 
of men and women sustaining and strengthening each other, with 
brave hearts, clear intellects, and undaunted earnestness of purpose. 
True, there are many frauds and deceptions clinging to our skirts, 
many unreliable phases yet to be done away with ; but we are con- 
stantly striving to supply the highest needs and most earnest crav- 
ings of all hearts as well as to relieve all suffering, and make the 
human body a strong, pure temple, in which the spirit may dwell in 
peace and glory. Though we work in doubt and comparative dark- 8 
HISTORICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
ness, yet we never stop working. We tell you the same thing a 
hundred times if you do not understand it by ninety-nine times' tell- 
ing ; we give varied expression to the same idea, in order to interest 
different minds and keep them thinking. 
We haunt you with the possibilities of an invention or a dis- 
covery until it seems to follow you night and day, and will not let 
you rest. But be patient with us and our many failures ; do what 
you can to help us on with our work, and rest assured you will 
thereby receive assistance in youi' own way at last. 
Do not compel us to do what we wish rather in spite of your 
will than by aid of it. Do not resist us when we try to influence or 
assist you, but keep one frank generous thought in mind, that you 
will work for the highest purpose and the most universal good, what- 
ever the means may be that you are allowed to work with. Then can 
we join our efforts to yours and work and think with you. The 
result may not be startling or wonderful, but it will be beneficent, 
and at last satisfactory. INTRODUCTORY. 
BY GALEN. 
IMES have been, when to promulgate a new discovery 
was to invite persecution, and to be the open advo- 
cate of a new truth, frequently led to the prison or 
the stake. History, both sacred and profane, is re- 
plete with its heart-rending stories of the martyrdom 
of the noble heroes who lived in advance of their 
times, and who, for the sake of what appeared to 
them to be truth, were willing to suffer and to die. 
Truth has always had her martyrs, else Socrates, my 
contemporary, would not have been compelled to re- 
ceive, although with smiles, the hemlock, the then 
popular reward of those who dared to freely express 
opinions in advance of the preconceived notions of his age, no matter 
how devoted to the highest welfare of his countrymen. 
No matter how beneficial to the human family, no matter how cal- 
culated to relieve suffering, let a mode of cure, for instance, be new, 
it is met with sweeping denunciations of humbug and quackery. And 
when a truth is for the first time ascertained and promulgated, many 
persons, too ignorant to investigate, too stupid to comprehend, or too 
bigoted to admit, stir up the prejudices of the unlettered multitude, 
and after having cried on the pack, are reckless for their part if the 
truth itself, were it possible, should perish with its advocates. He 
who has the manliness to lift up his voice in defense of newly-dis- 
covered truth against old theory, though acting in behalf of the best 
interests of the human family, is too often doomed to penury and per- 
secution. Such has been the case in the ages gone by, when error 
was rampant over the earth, and alas ! such has been the case in this 
enlightened age and generation. But the Spirit of Progress is 
abroad in the land, and you may confidently hope to realize a better 
state of things. Unfortunately, there has been too great a tendency 
in the human family to adhere with dogmatical tenacity to old 
errors, rather than search after truth; and even truth, when ascer- 10 
INTRODUCTORY. 
tained, is often rejected, or with too much reluctance adopted. 
When Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, there was 
not a single physician in England over forty years of age, who ap- 
preciated or acquiesced in the discovery. This may be said to be the 
scientific age, and he who henceforth would sway or control public 
opinion in regard to the science and philosophy of a new truth must 
himself be scientific. Thus, in introducing to suffering humanity 
our new system of vital magnetic treatment, we shall endeavor to 
make it comport with science, drawing largely from the experience 
of the past, and giving the highest standard of knowledge that we 
possess in spirit-life. We propose to elucidate the causes which dis- 
turb the grand equilibrium and physical harmony of the various 
functions of the human body, and state the best remedies and means 
of cure, touching upon diet, hygiene of dress, atmospheric influ- 
ences, electricity, magnetism, and whatever, in our opinion and ex- 
perience, may tend to relieve a suffering world. In this, we shall en- 
courage no rash experiment. We shall not bow down at the shrine 
of tradition. We shall not attribute all disease to one common 
cause ; we shall not galvanize into existence exploded theories ; we 
shall not strain the intellect, or pervert facts, to find reasons for a 
new theory ; but in our efforts to show the cause of disease, we 
shall not hesitate to appreciate any phenomena, however humble, to 
illustrate our meaning, or advance any idea which sound philosophy 
may indicate, however radical as compared with the pernicious teach- 
ings of an old-school system of therapeutics, however popular. For 
this purpose we have labored long, and to this end we devote our 
energies, and for the advancement of a higher standard of know- 
ledge we consecrate our time and talents. FIRST SECTION. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
The crude system of medicine to give place to finer and more spiritual 
treatment-Mankind approaching nearer to God-Brain texture improv- 
ing-Deadly effects of mercurial practice-All the essential elements of 
vegetables possessed in a more refined form than mineral-Properties of, 
too much neglected-Erroneous system of medical education-A decided 
approach to magnetism-Homeopathic physicians progressive-Hydropathy 
an improvement, but much abused-Drenching an advantage over drug- 
ging-Cautions-The lifting-cure a sham-Movement-cure rational - Lomi- 
Lomi-Its ancient prestige-Its wonderful rejuvenating effects-The sun- 
bath-Its wonderful curative agency-Electricity-The mind the real heal- 
ing power-Its effects upon digestion-Alexis St. Martin-Poisonous effects 
of anger upon digestion-The movement of the diaphragm and lungs 
electric-Dr. Golding Bird-The difference between electricity and magne- 
tism-Curing by laying on of hands-Contingencies of operating-How to 
gather magnetic strength-Physiology and hygiene should be studied-The 
gift of healing a sacred boon-Individuality should be maintained-How 
to regard impressions. 
N offering these remarks upon an unpopular subject 
to the world at large, and especially to sick and 
suffering humanity, we offer, along with them, an 
apology for the very imperfect manner in which the 
different diseases have been described or diagnosed, 
and for the little that has been said of the human 
system in general, and each organ in particular. 
We wish this little work to travel fast and far, as 
it is in itself but the alphabet, the mere initial page, 
of what is to follow, upon the way to prevent and 
cure disease. 
It is well known by the medical faculty that the 
crude and powerful medicines which have been in use for the 
last century, are gradually being superseded by lighter and finer 
remedies. 
The reason for this is evident to the thinking mind. 
Mankind are progressing physically, spiritually, and mentally. 
The every day thoughts and words of hundreds of thousands of 12 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
the cultured and educated men of to-day are better, purer, and 
nearer to God and the absolute truth than were the highest flight of 
eloquence, the loftiest imagery or the mental efforts of a life-time, 
a thousand years ago. 
And it is safe to conclude that the texture of the brain improves, 
as its work grows finer and fairer. 
The Journal of Medical Reform said, long ago, in a dissertation 
on the value of mercury as a remedial agent, 
"The strongest evidence to prove the injurious effects of the 
various preparations of mercury on the organism of man is to be 
found in the admissions of those physicians who have most exten- 
sively employed them in their own practice. 
"That mercury has de- 
stroyed more lives than it 
has saved, and entailed 
upon the human family a 
train of disorders and an 
amount of suffering past 
all computation or de- 
scription, no physician 
will deny, unless he be 
wholly wedded to the er- 
rors of early education 
or a slave to the authority 
of musty books." 
Without wholly agree- 
ing with this wholesale 
denunciation, we can de- 
clare, both from experi- 
ence and observation, 
that if the time ever was in the history of man's development, when 
he needed crude minerals to be thrust into the stomach for the pu- 
rification of the blood, that time has now passed away, and other 
remedies must be found and used. 
Next to the mineral comes the vegetable kingdom, possessing in 
a more refined form all the essential elements both of medication 
and nutrition found in the former. 
Many valuable remedial agents grow unnoticed in field and 
forest, and the idea almost involuntarily suggests itself that the 
medical students who go through with the routine of books, and 
graduate at the universities and colleges in such large numbers year 
after year, are either too indolent or too timid to think for them- 
Fig. 1.-A Salivated Patient, the Effects 
of Calomel. GENERAL REMARKS. 
13 
selves, and so they accept the stated dogmas as containing all of 
wisdom and science it is necessary for them to know. 
Their usual mode of proceeding is to inquire of the patient what 
are his symptoms, then by consulting the books, find out what 
disease is indicated, and by further consultation learn what drugs are 
to be applied as remedies or curatives. 
Then if the patient recovers, it is a triumph of medical skill; and 
if not, he has the privilege of dying according to established rule 
and precedent, secundum artem. 
Some allopathic physicians are truly magnetic and intuitional. 
Holding their work to be a sacred office, and human life always 
worth saving. 
These are the kind of whom it is said that their medicines are 
more efficacious if they mix and administer them themselves, and 
often that the doctor's visit does more good than his drugs. 
Homeopathic treatment is to medicine what the Universalist's creed 
and faith is to religion. 
A reaction so sudden, so powerful, and so determined, that reason 
is lost sight of, and the mind seems so glad to escape from crudities 
that it wanders to infinitesimalities, which are certainly very mythi- 
cal, and the possibility of their benefit very hard to understand. 
Still they give nature an opportunity to do her work unmolested, 
which, in nine cases out of ten, is all that is needed, especially if the 
mind is satisfied and at rest. 
Homeopathic physicians are nearly all progressive and intuitional. 
Many of them struggle slowly back to sensible doses, which are a 
great improvement on allopathic medication, and perhaps only less 
beneficial than botanic medicines. 
But our space here is too limited to discuss the merits of botanic 
treatment, and we can only refer the general reader to books which 
have been already prepared upon this subject, and which are really 
very useful in helping men and women to understand their own 
constitutions, and how to preserve health or cure disease. 
Next to the botanic comes the hydropathic treatment. 
Much abused and little understood, it still has many advantages 
over the old way of filling the blood with unwholesome ingredients ; 
and if the necessity should come for choice between drenching and 
drugging, let it be drenching, by all means. 
There is magnetism in water, though it needs careful application. 
The constitution of man is so adaptable that, by practice, a heal- 
thy person could so accustom himself to moist atmosphere, vapor, 
steam, or even water itself, that he could stay in it for hours with- 14 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
out apparent injury. In fact, there are men and women connected 
with public bathing-houses, who are often saturated with moisture 
for ten or twelve hours every day, for weeks and months in succes- 
sion; but an ordinary person who is obliged to go daily from place to 
place, in doors and out of doors, with change of temperature, per- 
haps change of clothing, should never take a cold or slightly warm 
bath more than once each day, and never a hot bath oftener than 
once in nine or ten days. 
Sick people should be very cautious about using hydropathic 
treatment, and never meddle with it at all unless quite sure that it 
is accompanied with good magnetism and favorable conditions. 
There is a new method of cure growing in popular favor now, 
called the movement-cure. It depends for its success far more upon 
the magnetic power of the operator than upon the mechanical mani- 
pulation. 
It is beneficial in many cases of chronic disease, rheumatic and 
neuralgic, as well as in disordered digestion, dyspepsia, and constipa- 
tion, and in imperfect or very irregular circulation, which implies 
disease of the heart and other organs. 
But in every case, we do not hesitate to say that the movement- 
cure would be much more beneficial if used with a good knowledge 
of magnetism and elec- 
tricity, and a strong 
will to apply these prin- 
ciples. 
Similar to the move- 
ment-cure, and like it 
deriving its principal 
power and use from 
the magnetic currents 
it reaches, is the Lomi- 
Lomi of the Sandwich 
Islanders and other 
dwellers in the Pacific 
Islands, even as far as 
Australia. 
It is the usual cus- 
tom there, when hunt- 
ers come in wearied 
from the chase, or fish- 
ers from their toil, for 
two stout young wo- 
Fig. 2.-Japanese Manipulators. GENERAL REMARKS. 
15 
men to take them first into a tank of water that has been thoroughly 
sunned ; and after washing with sponges, they then to lay them on 
la pile of matting, and manipulate gently until the swarthy fellows 
fall asleep under their hands. 
A traveler, I think his name is Emerson, tells of experiencing the 
most beneficial and healthful possible results, from a trial of Lomi- 
Lomi, when he was sick and exhausted from exposure and fatigue. 
If any woman of rank is ill, her medical attendant gives her a 
course of bathing, sun-bathing, and rubbing that speedily changes 
the magnetic conditions about her, and makes her well in nine cases 
out of ten, without any medicine internally administered. 
In China, magnetic treatment has been employed for hundreds of 
years, and in San Fran- 
cisco some of the most 
successful medical prac- 
titioners are Chinese 
manipulators. 
In Japan, the same 
treatment is used with 
the most wonderful re- 
sults, a striking peculi- 
arity noticed throughout 
the kingdom being, that 
all Japanese manipula- 
tors are blind, and al- 
most without exception 
their gift is hereditary. 
What connection the 
blindness can have with 
the magnetic power it is hard to understand, unless, indeed, the 
want of sight is hereditary, and so shuts them out from other voca- 
tions, and gives them opportunity to develop their gift of healing. 
These Japanese physicians go about the streets, feeling their way 
with long staffs, and blowing shrill reed-whistles to attract attention. 
If any one is sick or weary, or threatened with any disorder, the 
public physician is called in, the patient is disrobed, covered with 
some light drapery, and the manipulator commences by rubbing the 
head thoroughly, and proceeds thence to neck, chest, trunk, and 
limbs, gently pinching and kneading the whole body. 
The lifting-cure scarcely deserves the name of medical treatment, 
being merely a mechanical form of exercising the muscles, and 
almost any man could find quite as much benefit, and make himself 
Fig. 3.-Japanese Manipulators. 16 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
far more useful, by lifting a heavy and troublesome baby from the 
arms of a weary mother, and taking care of it for a while, or per- 
forming any other manual labor that would call into action more 
muscles than his ordinary vocations are in the habit of doing. 
Dio Lewis, himself a model specimen of muscle, and the devel- 
opment thereof, suggests, teaches, and practices various unique 
methods of healing the sick, among them one known as the sun- 
bath. 
This ought to be better understood and more universally used 
than it is, as being simple, comparatively harmless, and within the 
reach of all. 
The sun is the great central fountain of magnetic existence and 
power, and those who have not friendly human magnetism at hand, 
may derive great benefit from such contact with the emanations of the 
sun as would excite perspiration, quicken the flow of the blood, and 
assist the whole system in throwing off its accumulated impurities. 
Without referring particularly to various other methods of curing 
disease or relieving pain, which man's restlessness has invented or his 
necessities evoked, many of which are very good, and all without ex- 
Fig. 4.-The Sun-Bath. GENERAL REMARKS. 
17 
ception improvements upon the old way of universal drugging, we 
will proceed at once to the use of electricity and the galvanic battery. 
Fro. 5. 
This is employed far more extensively in the hospitals of England, 
France, and Germany than in America. 
Electricity is to the air what metals and minerals are to the earth. 
At once the wealth and the waste of the whole laboratory of 
nature. 
And through every inch of soil, through every strata of stone, and 
every grain of sand, through every sea and river, and every drop of 
rain or dew, as well as through the fifty miles of atmosphere that sur- 
round the planet earth, two currents, one 
electrical, the other magnetic, are constant- 
ly flowing. 
These are not easy to describe, as be- 
ing too intangible for ordinary measure- 
ment, and men arc prone to doubt what 
they can not measure with their outward 
senses. 
But as the steam needs the powerful 
engine, strongly fashioned and constantly 
watched, to control its otherwise erratic 
and useless power, so the electrical cur- 
rent needs the battery to condense it and make it useful. 
Fio. 6.-Illustrating the two cur- 
rents in the atmosphere, one electri- 
cal, the other magnetic. 18 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
But the highest natural production of the earth, the connecting 
link between the material and spiritual spheres, is so constructed as 
to be the best possible battery for the action of the electrical and 
magnetic currents. 
The mind is the real healing power in any animate body, and by 
its action electricity is gathered and distributed, strengthening the 
action of the nerves and tending to equalize the circulation of the 
blood. 
That the mind controls to a great extent the electrical forces of 
the whole physical economy, may be noticed in the fact that in cases 
of severe mental action the brain becomes stimulated to unusual ac- 
tivity and consumes or uses up more than its due proportion of the 
nervo-electric fluid, thus withdrawing enough from the stomach to 
supply the extra demand. 
But the action of the stomach is stopped thereby in consequence. 
One of the most interesting cases of experiment ever known or 
recorded was the case of Alexis St. Martin, whose side was so injured 
by a wound from a musket-ball that the action of his stomach could 
be plainly seen. 
If he ate an ordinary dinner, and talked or walked or rested or 
even worked moderately after it, the process of digestion would go 
regularly on, and in two hours the food would be converted into 
chyme, and thus disposed of. 
The chyme conveyed through the pyloric orifice of the stomach 
into the duodenum, and the stomach left comparatively empty. 
But if the man became angry or excited immediately after eating, 
the process of digestion would be arrested until he became calm 
again, even if the excitement lasted for five or six hours. 
We claim that this was an electrical disturbance more than any 
trouble of solids or fluids. 
Dr. Foote says, in his Plain Home Talk., 
" It is the interruption or partial withdrawal of the nervo-electrical 
circulation which causes what we term nervous disease. 
"And there are more affections of this kind than were ever dream- 
ed of in the allopathic philosophy. 
" There is often an inharmonious action of the nervous forces in 
lung, liver, heart, and kidney diseases. 
" All these organs perform their appropriate functions and offices 
under the stimulus of electricity. 
" For instance, the lungs are not expanded and contracted by the 
inhalation and exhalation of air ; but the diaphragm is thrown down- 
ward and the air-vesicles opened by the nervo-electric forces acting 
on the muscles. GENERAL REMARKS. 
19 
" By this electric movement, air of necessity rushes in, to fill the 
vacuum. 
" When the same forces contract them, exhalation naturally fol- 
lows. 
" In diseased lungs and shortness of breath, there is frequently an 
interruption of the nervo-electric circulation, and hence the necessity 
of electrical remedies of some sort in the cure of many cases of pul- 
monary disease." 
Dr. Golding Bird, a physician who is quoted as authority and 
whose opinion is respected throughout the medical world, says of 
electricity, 
" Being conscientiously convinced that the agent in question is a 
no less energetic than valuable remedy in the treatment of disease, I 
feel most anxious to encourage its employment by the practical phy- 
sician, and to urge him to have recourse to it as a rational but not in- 
fallible remedy, and not to regard it as either expected to or capable 
of effecting impossibilities." 
The same writer adds that " electricity has been by no means fairly 
treated as a therapeutic agent; for it has either been exclusively refer- 
red to when all other remedies have failed, or its administration has 
been carelessly directed without reference to its manner or efficiency." 
All this has reference to what we call mechanical electricity, or 
that gathered and distributed by metallic agency. 
But far beyond this, in curative power, is the electricity generated 
by the human will, gathered in nerve and muscle, and given out by 
kindly faith through ready and gentle hands to the sick and suffering 
ones of earth who are ready to receive such ministrations. 
By some authorities, magnetism is said to be electricity which has 
passed through the human frame, but this is not so. 
There is as much difference between electricity and magnetism as 
between air and water. 
It is not easy to give general directions for the application of 
electrical currents or magnetic power. 
But it would be well for any one who desires to practice or ex- 
periment with either electricity or magnetism, to procure a good gal- 
vanic battery first, and study well the principle upon which it acts. 
In applying it to cases of severe sickness or low prostration, it is 
best always to let it pass through the hands of the operator before it 
reaches the patient. 
But the most essential points and elements in a good magnetic 
physician are a well-developed brain with the moral nature predomi- 
nating. 20 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
A strong will, and yet a gentle and kindly deference for all, a 
thorough self-respect, and a never-failing consideration for the right s 
of others. 
A spirit of self-sacrifice, an earnest wish to benefit others, to do 
good-not merely to help individuals, but to make the world better 
and wiser, happier, and more healthy. 
The next requisites are good health, a cheerful and equable tem- 
per, and warm, firm hands if magnetic influence predominate, or 
moist, cool hands if the electrical currents be strongest. 
We believe that all acute diseases and a very large proportion of 
chronic diseases can be permanently cured by the laying on of hands, 
if a grain of common sense be added to the treatment in each case. 
We do not utterly abjure all other methods of treatment; but in 
order to keep the van of all curative agencies, to act as pioneers or 
advance-guards and keep the way open, that the timid may follow at 
a safe distance, we like to advocate the best, the most radical, and the 
most progressive views, both in theory and practice. 
Magnetism permeates every human frame ; but to comparatively 
few is given the power to concentrate it and use it for the benefit of 
others. 
Practice and harmonious conditions tend to develop this power, 
and it never does any harm, never interferes with any other method 
of treatment, though other methods interfere with it sometimes; but 
if a magnetic physician has the true good of the patient at heart, he 
or she will never insist that the regular physician be given up, until 
the patient feels that more good can be done without the medicine than 
with it. 
Any reasonable person, after a fair trial w'ith magnetism, will be- 
come convinced of this fact; and it is next to useless to magnetize a 
person who is determined that the treatment shall do them no good. 
It is not actually essential that the patient have abundant faith or 
implicit confidence in magnetism, if they have but liberal reasoning 
faculties and a willingness to be convinced of any truth. 
But in any case, it is very much better for patient and physician 
to agree in opinion and to believe in each other. 
Sometimes, owing to strong sympathetic action, the magnetizer 
takes on all the symptoms of the disease which the patient manifests. 
This is often unpleasant, but may be readily thrown off by exer- 
cise in the open air and quick manipulations. 
Sometimes the magnetizer feels very weary and exhausted after 
treating several cases, especially of chronic disease. 
To enable the system to gather magnetic strength from the atmo- GENERAL REMARKS. 
21 
sphere or the sunshine, perfect rest should be indulged in for several 
hours, and every thing done to keep up the healthy and natural tone 
of the system. 
Physiological works should be carefully studied, and anatomy and 
hygiene thoroughly learned by experiment and observation; but a man 
or a woman with good health and a kind heart can be a successful 
magnetic physician without any knowledge at all of the human frame. 
While a person may be ever so well educated and have a scientific 
knowledge of all the minutiae connected with life, and if they have 
not charity, if they have a selfish or a sordid nature uncultured to 
kindness and love, they can never be permanently successful with 
magnetism. 
For the strength of magnetism is in giving. In gathering from 
the mysterious fountains of Nature's great heart and imparting to 
those who need. 
Faith to the despairing, strength to the weak, rest to the weary, 
and hope to all. 
Any one blessed 'with the gift of healing should use it as a sacred 
boon, for the benefit of others. 
And if they are honest and conscientious in the discharge of their 
duty as it comes to them, they can depend upon the justice and gen- 
erosity of the world to pay them for their labors. 
And justice and generosity seldom fail to be sufficiently remune- 
rative. 
It may be as well to remark in this connection that it is right for 
every person to retain their own individuality in whatever they may 
do or say. 
Never do any thing merely because you are told to do it, if it does 
not correspond with your own judgment and reason. 
Some people say they can not follow their impressions because 
they are not plain, but a real impression is plain. 
Sometimes, of course, a person may attract two or more different 
influences, and each influence is liable to give a different impression. 
Sometimes, too, an impression may be received which is entirely con- 
trary to what you consider the right way or the best way. 
In both these cases, individuality is to be respected. 
Consider the different impressions, and choose between them with 
all due deference for the reason and judgment which are given to 
each individual. 
And if every one would act from principle, with a well-defined 
idea of right and wrong, seeking the right and shunning the wrong, 
surely, in the words of a popular poet, " The world would be the 
better for it." Benjamin Rush. SECOND SECTION. 
MAGNETISM. 
Origin of the term-Magnets are of two kinds-Have two poles or centres, north 
and south-The Earth a huge magnet-Diamagnetism-Dr. Faraday on 
magnetism of blood-Mode of gathering and using magnetism-An essential 
element of life-The more ethereal a substance, the more essential to life 
-Frederick Anton Mesmer-Declined a large offer from the French govern- 
ment-The art a part of one's self-One of reciprocal sympathy-The mind 
the seat of disease-Homeopathy the basest fraud-The life of a healer 
should be pure-Meat as well as vegetable diet necessary-Magnetic vam- 
pires-Non-magnetic incapable of strong love-Perfect health, perfect love 
-Reckless haste of American people all wrong-Diseased magnetism- 
Process of operating-Mode of diffusing virus into the blood, its subtlety- 
What to avoid. 
HIS word is said to be originally derived from the 
word Magnesia, the name of the city where the load- 
stone was first discovered, and magnetism is properly 
used to signify the power which the magnet has to 
attract iron. In the science called Diamagnetism, it 
is said that every substance is more or less affected by 
the magnet; but as iron is more especially magnetic, 
the term is chiefly used with reference to it. 
Magnets are of two kinds, natural and artificial. 
Natural magnetism consists of the iron ore that is 
usually called magnetic iron, and is familiarly known 
as the loadstone. Artificial magnets are usually bars 
of tempered steel which have been magnetized by the action of the 
galvanic current, to which they have been in some way exposed. 
The power of the magnet to attract iron is by no means equal 
throughout its whole length, the magnetic force being the strongest 
at the ends, and not appreciable at all in the middle of the bar. The 
force even increases with the distance from the centre of magnets ; 
and the ends, where the attractive power is greatest, are called its 
poles. 24 
MAGNETISM. 
The magnet has then two poles or centres of magnetic force, each 
having an equal power of attracting iron. This is the only property, 
however, which they possess in common ; for whenever the poles of 
one magnet are made to act on those of another, a great dissimilarity 
is brought to light. 
If a magnet be suspended so that it has free action, when left to 
itself it takes up a fixed position, one end keeping north and the other 
south; and when the magnet is disturbed or swung around, no matter 
how swiftly, both poles will return to their original positions and 
there stay. Thus we are enabled to distinguish them as north pole 
and south pole. When thus suspended, if we try the effect of another 
magnet upon it, we see that the pole of the suspended magnet that 
is attracted by one of the poles of the second magnet is repelled 
by the other, and vice versa; and where one pole attracts, the 
other repels. If now the second magnet be suspended like the first, 
and left free to act, it will be found that the pole which attracted the 
north pole of the first magnet is a south pole, and that the pole which 
repelled it is a north pole. We thus learn that each magnet has two 
poles, north and south, alike in their power of attracting soft iron, 
but differing in their action on the poles of another magnet, like poles 
repelling, and unlike poles attracting each other. 
It might be thought that by dividing a magnet at its centre the 
two poles could be insulated, the one half containing all the north polar 
magnetism and the other the south. When this is done, however, both 
halves become separate magnets with two* poles in each, the original 
north and south poles standing in the same relation to the other two 
poles called into existence by the separation. 
This, then, is a known rule. We can never have one kind of mag- 
netism without having it associated in some magnet with an equal 
kind of opposite magnetism. It is this double manifestation of force 
which constitutes the polarity of the magnet. 
The fact of the freely-suspended magnet taking up a fixed position 
has led to the theory that the earth itself is a huge magnet, having 
its north and south magnetic poles in the neighborhood of the poles 
of the axis of rotation, and that the magnetic needle or suspended 
magnet turns to them as it does to those of another magnet. All the 
manifestations of terrestrial magnetism give decided confirmation of 
this theory. 
We now come to the science or theory of Diamagnetism, a term 
applied to a class of substances which, under the influence of magnet- 
ism, take a position when freely suspended at right angles to the 
magnetic meridian, that is, they point east and west. MAGNETISM. 
25 
The fact that iron is attracted by the magnet has been known from 
very remote times, and that bismuth expedites a repulsive action 
toward the magnetic needle has been now known for nearly one 
hundred years. But Dr. Faraday was the first, about the year 1840, 
to show that all bodies are more or less affected by magnetic influ- 
ence, and his thoughtful and interesting researches on this subject 
have opened up a new field in the domain of science. But as the 
world itself is shown to be a huge magnet, and every dweller on its 
surface is likewise magnetic, every drop of blood that courses through 
the veins of an animal as well as the stream of life-giving sap that 
permeates the veins of every plant and tree, has its magnetic quali- 
ties without which neither life nor motion could be maintained. The 
magnetic nature of flames and gases has been also stated. When a 
flame of a candle is brought between the poles of a magnet, it is re- 
pelled by them and thrown out horizontally into an equatorial posi- 
tion. To ascertain the magnetism of gases, Faraday inflated soap- 
bubbles with them, and their magnetic power was exhibited by their 
being attracted or repelled by the poles. It was also ascertained by 
causing the gases to flow out from glass tubes in the presence of 
magnetic poles, when the peculiar magnetism of the gas was shown 
by its choosing an axial or equatorial means of egress. 
There is another theory, that there is no such thing as magnetism 
per se ; that it is only a state or condition of matter. But we are not 
discussing science here ; we merely propose to direct the sick and suf- 
fering howto take advantage of the principles of magnetism by which 
they may find relief and gain strength ; for as one magnet acts upon 
another in attracting or repelling it, and as one magnetic iron will act 
upon its hardened neighbor, steel, and impart to it so much of its 
own magnetic currents that the two become equalized by coming in 
contact with each other, so the healthy human being whose blood is 
full of vitality and whose whole frame is instinct with life and vigor, 
can impart to his weaker friend the magnetic strength which by his 
strong will and active brain he can gather from the atmosphere about 
him, from the food he eats, from the very earth over which he moves 
with his strong, elastic tread. 
This is the one underlying principle of magnetic healing ; and if 
people would but bear in mind that magnetism is a part of life and 
one of its most essential elements, they would find the subject worth 
studying and the principles worth applying. It is well known that if 
a person is left entirely without food, he will soon starve to death; but 
if left entirely without water or any liquid, he will die still sooner and 
in far greater agony. If left without air, death still more quickly en- 26 
MAGNETISM. 
sues, thus proving that the more ethereal a substance is, the more essen- 
tial it is to life; and the mysterious magnetic currents that flow about 
the earth are life itself. This then is the only philosophical reason 
that we can offer for urging upon human kind the great importance 
of magnetism as a healing agent. 
And this leads us to a phase of magnetism sometimes called Mes- 
merism, so-called from the name of the person, Frederick Anton 
Mesmer, who first introduced it as a separate science. Having made 
various experiments with the mineral magnet, he was led to the dis- 
covery of a power of magnetism in animals and in human life. This 
he made public a hundred years ago, in his treatise on magnetism, 
lie soon after established a hospital at Vienna, for the perfection and 
promulgation of his discovery, and soon went to Paris, where he de- 
voted himself to the cure of diseases, and had crowds of followers. 
The French government offered him a large sum of money for his 
secret, and it was thought very strange that he refused it. He died 
in Germany, in the year 1815. 
In an autobiographical journal which he was in the habit of keep- 
ing, he says, " My friends blame me much for not accepting the gen- 
erous offer of the French government, and imparting my secret of 
healing in the university to which they would send me. Every day 
I receive scores of applications from people who wish to learn my 
art ; but it is as much impossible for me to teach them how I heal, as 
it would be to explain the expression of my eyes or the tone of my 
voice. My art, if art it may be called, is essentially a part of my- 
self ; it was born with me, has grown and developed with me, and, so 
far as I know, will die with me, for I surely can not impart it to 
others. The most that I can do in that direction is to encourage peo- 
ple to live pure, healthy lives, to use their will-power always as bene- 
ficently, as uniformly as possible; never to waste their vitality, or 
abuse any power or gift, and to be ready at all times to bear one 
another's burdens in the way of pain and suffering and disease. If 
my life has not taught this, how vain would be the poor words I 
could now speak ! And yet I foresee for the vital principle whose 
uses I have discovered, a brilliant and useful future. It will give 
life to the great, ponderable facts of medication ; and where it does 
not wholly take the place of drugs and herbs, it w ill vitalize and 
spiritualize them, thus adding to their effectiveness, while diminish- 
ing the quantity employed." 
And the words of Mesmer have proved true in more senses than one. 
The only underlying principle of truth in homeopathy is this idea 
that the mind is the seat of disease, and that the spirit or life of the MAGNETISM. 
27 
drug can be employed, which in minute quantities will produce ex- 
actly the opposite from the poisonous effects which the drug itself 
produces in a healthy organism. Homeopathy, per se, as it is at pre- 
sent practiced, is the basest fraud that has ever been foisted upon 
an intelligent people; and when a cure is performed ostensibly by its 
treatment, it is, in at least six cases out of ten, owing to the curative 
principle in nature, which only needs to be let alone in order to 
manifest itself ; and in three of their four cases, it is the magnetism 
of the physician that works a cure. 
No man or woman can attain to eminence in the medical profes- 
sion without having something of the spirit of healing indwelling 
in the soul, and manifesting itself in the life. The life of a healer 
should be pure, strong, gentle, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, asking 
little and willing to give much. 
There is no use in trying to give stated directions in the way of 
diet, exercise, or the mode of life that shall be alike useful to all 
physicians who wish to heal by magnetic power. Each one should 
use his own judgment in determining what food best assimilates to 
his peculiar needs, what exercise is most beneficial. It is not in any 
way essential that a vegetable diet should be insisted upon ; for we 
have been a meat-eating race for so long a time that the habit of 
centuries can scarcely be overcome in a single individual. Therefore, 
using due reason and discretion, let all choose their own food, mak- 
ing it always as simple, healthful, and nutritious as possible. Let the 
human frame be kept at its highest stage of health, that there may 
be always something of vitality and magnetic life to impart to the 
weak and suffering. And let no one forget that one of the most 
powerful healing agents ever yet discovered is a kindly sympathy 
for those in distress, and an earnest wish to relieve the suffering. 
Magnetism has been called the first step out of the indifference of 
matter. To be magnetic, therefore, one must be well, full to the brim 
of royal health. We cat and drink by the action of certain minute 
ganglia. There is secreted from the arterial blood an impalpable, 
ethereal, magnetic aura which enters into and invigorates the nerves 
and brain, giving us physical and mental power. If this magnetism 
especially permeates the brain, then we are in high spirits ; if it rushes 
to the digestive organs, we delight in the table, in beef and wine and 
strong, rich food. It may centre in the delicate tissues just over 
the eyes ; then we are clairvoyant ; or it pauses near the internal ear, 
and we become clair audient. We may have the power to send it 
streaming from our finger-ends; then we can fascinate others and put 
them in magnetic sleep, or we can relieve pain by laying on of hands, 28 
MAGNETISM. 
which is no longer, as it once was, an inscrutable miracle. Sometimes 
we have this magnetic power in such abundance that it floats around 
us, forming an atmosphere which is palpable and real to sensitive peo- 
ple. Some people seem to be entirely without this ethereal power, and 
they are magnetic vampires, feeding on others. They absorb much 
and give little. 
The non-magnetic person is incapable of strong love, yet may not 
therefore be utterly selfish or entirely bad. 
No medicine on earth can minister to a mind diseased save where 
that disease originates in violated magnetic law ; then it can and does. 
Remember, therefore, you who would make magnetism a remedial 
agent that a contracted heart and collapsed lungs mean illness and 
vice ; that the breath should be drawn strong and full, the lungs ex- 
panded, the shoulders set well back, the head poised gracefully and 
firmly, if one would have magnetism sufficient for the daily uses of 
life, and enough to spare for the sick and suffering about them. 
Magnetic vampires, of whom we have spoken, the people who take 
much and give little or nothing magnetically, are generally such 
as were born of women who yearned for love from the father of the 
child they were carrying, but yearned and longed in vain. Hence the 
new soul came into the world ahungered and athirst for that food 
and sustenance whereon souls grow and are nourished. 
Perfect health is perfect love. A well man ought to be a good man, 
and so of a woman. The great tendency of the Americans is to wear 
themselves out too rapidly. They exhaust their magnetic strength, 
and do not wait for it to recuperate itself either from the air they 
breathe, the food they eat, or the harmonizing influences about them, 
but go heedlessly on in a sort of mental gymnastics that comes very 
soon to mental debauch. All this is wrong. 
People should learn to hoard more carefully their magnetic than 
their physical strength. They should give it as they would give of 
abundant wealth, never more than they can afford, for exhausted 
capital leaves crippled powers. 
We have given minute directions in another chapter for the me- 
chanical methods of imparting magnetism and using it as a remedial 
agent. But there is one truth that will bear repeating as often as a 
blessed thought will bear thinking. It is this: that the true magne- 
tizer must have the good of his patient at heart, must work with an 
earnest and loving will, ready to take upon himself the pain and suf- 
fering, if in that way he can relieve suffering and benefit the patient. 
The physician must learn to use his hands and his will simulta- 
neously. MAGNETISM. 
29 
The motion of the hands being a visible expression of the will, and 
he must beware of merely local treatment, which often throws a too 
powerful current of magnetism on a portion of the body already over- 
charged with diseased, magnetism. 
For instance, in a case of headache, it is always best to rub the 
spinal column, if possible, and to chafe the hands and. feet thoroughly, 
in order to excite the circulation and equalize the magnetic currents. 
In cases of neuralgia, the whole body should be rubbed and per- 
spiration excited ; hot baths and fomentations being used on the 
parts most affected. So in the case of any other specific disease. 
Restore and strengthen the general vitality of the system, and thus 
enable it to conquer the weaknesses that beset and the troubles that 
befall it. 
It is well known that, when a person is bitten by a poisonous rep- 
tile, molecules of living germinal matter are forced into the blood, 
where they rapidly multiply. Millions upon millions being produced 
in an almost incredibly short space of time. 
The natural action of the blood is interfered with ; combustion is, 
so to speak, extinguished by these foreign agents ; the lungs no longer 
vitalize; the skin ceases to throw off its accumulated secretions ; the 
breath comes slowly and with difficulty ; coldness, drowsiness, insen- 
sibility creep along, and death is the result. This is poison that can 
be detected by the senses. 
But a subtle form of poison lurks in the magnetic influence that is 
pernicious and unpleasant. For body and soul act and react upon 
each other, and mental and physical powers droop and fail simulta- 
neously when the supply of pure and healthy magnetism fails, from 
any cause whatever. Then look to it, ye who would have strong, 
active brains, quick perceptions, sensitive nerves, red, healthy blood, 
and regular heart-throbs, carrying the vital fluid to and from the 
lungs. 
Remember that true and pure love is the great remedial agent, 
and magnetism is to love what electricity is to the message that 
goes flitting over the telegraphic wires. 
That as two magnets are drawn or repelled by the quality of the 
element that permeates them, so human beings are attracted or re- 
pulsed by the innate magnetic life within them. 
Keep away from the people who cause an involuntary shudder to 
creep through your frame when you come near them. Keep away 
from the person who does not give your hand a gootl firm grip of 
w'elcome, whose presence brings with it a chill of disappointment or 
indifference. 30 
MAGNETISM. 
Give that man or woman plenty of space, and do not seek theii 
society, if they make you feel weary and low-spirited with no visible 
cause. 
In short, shun all disagreeable people ; for it is a sure sign if a 
person is disagreeable to you that the magnetic conditions are inhar- 
monious, unhealthy, and injurious between you. 
There are probably people enough in the world whom you like. 
Seek these, and when found, learn to appreciate them truly. 
Sik Arthur Clarke. 
Curing Consumption. THIRD SECTION. 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
Lay hold of the principles of life-Two different objects can powerfully affect 
each other-The great secret-True and false magnetisms-Good homes and 
good houses essential-Divine laws not to be interfered with-The power 
that made the world can attend to it-Chronic inharmony from false desires- 
Proper education of girls-The true mission of woman, motherhood-Man's 
yearning after his true magnetic mate-Woman's condition far different from 
man's vitality, physiologically and magnetically-Harmony essential to the 
happiness of the future being-Infanticide terrible-Three fifths of the con- 
trolling influence of the world delegated to mothers-The relative difference 
between the secretion of the male and female-The imperative demand of 
the male-Causes for so much disappointment in married life-The days of 
courtship should never end-The food one is forced to eat neither satisfies 
nor nourishes-An appetite may be created for love-The dress of woman- 
Competing fashions-Corsets are unhealthy ; cause falling of the bowels- 
Nature has no need of abdominal supporters-An outrageous style of dress- 
A rational style of dressing for eliminating magnetism. 
E WISH to show to all reasonable and thinking 
minds that the way to abolish disease is to lay 
hold of the very principles of life and strengthen 
and encourage their action. 
In contradistinction to the magnetic influ- 
ence which has been found to exist in all metals, 
; in fact, in all physical matter, there is the spirit- 
ual or vital magnetism, which, imperceptible to 
all outer senses, exists, as life itself exists, in a 
way that can not be explained or understood 
thoroughly, and yet is appreciated in a greater 
or less degree by all. As Dr. Foote pertinently 
says, "A man will tell you that he does not believe in magnetism or 
magnetic treatment ; and yet if he bumps his head, he instinctively 
rubs it briskly with his hand. That is magnetism; the unconscious 
effort to equalize the disturbed currents and make them flow on 
evenly again." 32 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
If a person strikes his elbow suddenly and with some force, his 
pulse is thereby accelerated. A brisk rubbing of the injured member 
therefore equalizes as well the circulation of the blood as of the more 
impalpable but not less real magnetic current. 
In the same manner that two objects of the same organism act 
and react upon each other, two different and distinct organisms can 
far more powerfully affect each other. This is the one great secret 
that underlies magnetic medication. Every person is born with a cer- 
tain amount of magnetic capital, to be used or abused as the will and 
circumstances surrounding may direct. One thing is very certain, 
that no person can have within him a strong, pure, and earnest love 
without healthy magnetic development. Especially is this true among 
women. Naturally more sensitive than men, they need associations 
about them from which they can at all times draw strength and pure 
and loving sustenance. 
Many persons think themselves in love when they are only mag- 
netically fascinated. 
This magnetic fascination may become a pure and hallowed sup- 
port, or it may degenerate into a selfish excuse for cruelty and un- 
kindness. 
Every person who truly loves is as willing to give as to take ; 
more so, in fact, for love is essentially self-sacrificing. 
Woman's strength consists in using her own legitimate powers, 
and never trenching upon man's domain unless she wishes to be 
looked upon as a man. Woman should draw man loveward through 
gentleness and unselfish affection, on her part, which will naturally 
correspond to the attributes of strength, guidance, and protection, 
which belong to man. Peace will reign at least nine tenths of the 
time in a healthy family, where discord and inharmony will be con- 
stantly at work among disease and suffering. 
Magnetic health brings rest and quiet, through which the physical 
system can gather strength. 
In order that the magnetic conditions of both man and woman be 
pure, strong, and healthy, it is necessary that they should have good 
homes ; homes that will not impose upon every woman a burden of 
care which she is no wise fitted to bear; homes which will not de- 
mand that every woman shall be a housekeeper, a looker-after ma- 
terial things, a slave to the dominion of king dust, whose sceptre is a 
ragged bunch of feathers that must wave too often like a bird of ill 
omen before the distracted eyes of his victims. 
It is not necessary that a woman be trained like a man in order 
that she may be independent and earn her own living; for there are VITAL MAGNETISM. 
33 
plenty of pleasant and graceful ways in which woman's life may be 
made both attractive and profitable, if she so wills it. It is true 
every girl should be trained to be self-supporting ; not defiantly and 
aggressively so, but with her own strongest impulses and best powers 
so developed that their own tastes may be gratified without doing 
any violence to their finer instincts. Women can be artists, and yet 
be kind and affectionate daughters. They can be sculptors, and wise 
and gentle sisters ; architects, and good mothers ; teachers, and fond 
and loving wives. 
Whatever a girl wants to do, that she should be encouraged in 
doing, and almost every girl wants to do something to make herself 
useful and independent. There is no need for a woman to be classed 
or to class herself offensively as a reformer, in order that she may do 
good work in the world. 
It was said by Mrs. Mary Livermore, the well-known lecturer, a 
few days since, speaking to one of her own ilk, " O you little witch ! 
you want to reform the whole world and the witch addressed was a 
pale, sharp-visaged, sickly, irritable woman of something more than 
forty years, who, though ostensibly married, is of the class to which 
Dr. Cljirke refers, when he says, "There is a class of hermaphroditi- 
cal persons who are not truly wives, and never can be wives-not 
mothers, and never can be mothers." This witch smiled, and evidently 
took the lady's words as a compliment. But she made a great mis- 
take. 
It is no compliment to a human being that they wish to interfere 
with the divine laws by which we all are governed. 
The power that made the world can attend to its progression and 
reformation in a way which we finite beings know not. 
It is more a diseased vanity, an abnormal desire for distinction 
and notoriety, that make these women ramp and race and struggle to 
place themselves in positions which they have not strength to fill. It 
is because they need pleasant, sunshiny homes, places of rest and 
freedom from care, because they need the strength within themselves 
to inspire earnest and honest love ; and, lacking this, they are dis- 
contented, restless, and unhappy ; which- unhappiness reacts upon all 
who come within their sphere, and chronic inharmony is the result. 
It is true that girls need only so much education as will make 
them good mothers ; because the true mission of woman is mother- 
hood, and the great care of her life should be to rear brave sons and 
strong and gentle daughters. 
The magnetic influence that comes from parentage is one of the 
most intricate and mysterious studies that the human mind has yet 34 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
Fig. 7. 
attempted. It may be said, as an appendage to the theory we have 
just advanced, that the true mission of woman is motherhood, that 
the true mission of man is fatherhood, and that he should devote his 
life just as conscientiously to the child-life that is to come after him. 
It is true that every man, for the sake of his children as well as for 
his own sake, should make his life pure and natural, his physical, 
moral, and mental natures well balanced, well educated, and well 
cared for. But nature makes a wide distinction between the imme- 
diate cares of father and mother for the young life they have evoked. 
A man may spend a single hour, or even less time, in the society of a 
woman whom he loves. (Let us, for the honor of man and for the 
best good of future generations, understand distinctly that no man 
spends even a single hour in the intimate relations that lead to parent- 
age unless with a woman whom he devotedly and truly loves.) lie 
is called away by business or some other motive. He remembers the 
woman as a gentle and holy influence that fell upon his life. He 
thinks of her pleasantly and kindly, and that is all. Sometimes, per- 
haps, he wishes that the days of his wanderings were over, and that 
he could go back to the woman he loved, to the wife, it may be, and 
be happy with her. 
How is it with the woman ? Her lover has gone from her sight. 
She knows she will not see him again for a long time. Perhaps, 
owing to the uncertainties of his journeying, they can not even hear 
from each other. Days gr'ow to weeks ; a little wonder, a trembling 
uncertainty creeps into her mind. Months pass ; the uncertainty VITAL MAGNETISM. 
35 
becomes a certainty. There is a new life throbbing within her own. 
The woman is not necessarily unhappy, though, sad to relate, she is 
too often so. But allowing that she is happy, that every legal form 
has been complied with, that society gives her permission to bear her 
babe in peace, that she is not called upon to disguise its presence with 
unnecessary torture, or hide its birth by the crime of infanticide ; 
still there can be no hour, no single minute for the long year that fol- 
lows the departure of her lover, in which she does not think of him, 
constantly reminded by the child-life which demands her care. 
How important is it, then, that the mother, whose very life and 
thought must be given to her child, should have every thing harmon- 
ious and elevating that could in any way tend to the future life and 
happiness of that little epitome of herself and another, while waiting 
to have its individuality confirmed. 
Every life is worth saving, and the crimes of abortion and infan- 
ticide are scarcely more terrible than the atmosphere of chill repug- 
nance, the constant wail of the mother-heart over her unwelcome 
offspring, that fills so many homes. 
Unconscious as the father may be of the very existence of his 
child, the mother's every pulse throbs for it and wi|h it, and it is no 
wonder that our wisest physicians and philosophers have delegated 
to woman at least three fifths of the controlling influence in the 
world. Women have more power than that even, if they but knew 
how to use it rightly. 
Pardon us for coming very near to a subject usually tabooed 
alike in polite literature and medical nomenclature. But it is true 
that a physical necessity exists in the very nature and constitution of 
man which the normal and healthy woman can not, from her own ex- 
perience, appreciate. Men do not know this, many of them ; even 
wise and sensible men would not believe it if they were told ; but it 
is nevertheless true that the fluid that is secreted by the generative 
organs of man is nature's wise provision for the propagation of the 
race, and it demands a natural and healthy excretion. It is the life 
of the future generations, and should be so considered. With woman 
the whole matter is different. A single, tiny ovum passing without 
pain or effort once every month from the ovaries to the womb, and 
thence as a natural excretion carried out of the system, is the only 
atom of life that she is called upon to furnish. 
Our stupid reformers tell us that women have as much right to 
ask for love and its passional expression from men as men have from 
women. So they have, as far as abstract right and privilege are con- 
cerned. But a person seldom asks for that which they neither want 36 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
nor feel need for, and nnless excited by personal contact with some 
one magnetically adapted to her own life and organism, the natural 
and healthy woman feels no stirring of sexual instinct within her. 
There are unnatural, unhealthy, and abnormal conditions under which 
the sexual instinct is falsely and ruinously excited, but of that we will 
deal in another chapter. Our present purpose only is to explain, if 
possible, to ignorant and puzzled manhood, the reason why they are 
so frequently disappointed in the married life to which they had 
looked forward with so much hope and pleasure. 
The days of courtship should never end, and each fresh experience 
in the annals of love should be a new seduction on his part-a new 
giving of herself, life, and heart, on hers. 
The food which a person is forced to eat neither satisfies nor nou- 
rishes them, especially if they have no appetite for it. But suppose 
you entice them to a game of romps, some healthy and pleasant 
exercise that makes the blood circulate faster, the pulse beat 
quicker, that exhausts the accumulated nervous force, and leaves the 
muscles weary and the brain temporarily depleted, then you have 
manufactured an appetite, and the food that was almost loathsome 
before grows tempting and desirable. 
Is the lesson then so difficult to learn, that just as easily an appe- 
tite can be created for love and its passional expression ? Ah well ! 
we leave you to make your own applications of the mystic subject. 
There is one more point that materially affects the magnetic life of 
woman, and therefore the magnetic welfare of the human race ; it is 
the dress of woman. 
The feminine nature, turning instinctively toward all that is grace- 
ful and beautiful, has a natural fondness for drapery. This is one great 
reason why dress reforms are so unpopular with women of taste and 
refinement, because the reform dress is usually an outre and ungrace- 
ful combination of all that is most objectionable in the ordinary man 
and woman costumes of the present day, without the redeeming fea- 
tures of either. Still there are adaptations of dress that are graceful, 
comfortable, and healthy. And we know scores of women who dress 
simply, and even elegantly, without any pretensions to reform, and 
yet never wear an injurious or unhealthy article of dress. 
Corsets are unhealthy, not merely because they are usually 
tight about the waist, but also because, by a pressure upon the dia- 
phragm, they are the cause of a tendency to falling of the bowels. 
And the so-called abdominal corset supplies a want that never should 
be felt. 
Nature has provided abundant support for the abdomen ; won- VITAL MAGNETISM. 
37 
drously strong and supple are the ligatures that cross and recross each 
other to hold the bowels in their proper place, to support the womb 
and bladder, to make the loins strong and light and supple. If these 
muscles be properly cared for, if proper food be eaten, and proper 
exercise taken, there would be no need for abdominal supporters of 
any kind. 
A tendency to falling of the bowels, if early discovered, can be 
easily cured by proper magnetic applications. A strong and healthy 
current of magnetism directly applied to the weakest locality, and 
followed by a general treatment to equalize the magnetic circula- 
tion, will give a tenseness and vigor to the diseased or weakened 
organs that nothing else can impart. 
That the clothing should be light, comfortable, and, to please the 
eye and the taste, graceful, we will not deny ; but there are absurdi- 
ties in the latest edition of the reform dress that will certainly be 
apparent to any observer. For instance, read the description which 
a woman herself gives of her own dress ; and she, be it understood, 
a reformer of the fiercest and most rabid kind. She says, " In the 
winter I wear next my skin an entire suit of flannel, waist and 
drawers combined, the sleeves reaching to my wrists, and the waist 
coming up well about the neck, the drawers-legs fastened about the 
ankles. Over these, I wear a canton flannel suit made in the same 
way. And last winter, I wore, in addition to these, a similarly made 
suit of heavy twilled blue flannel : my woolen stockings are held up by 
elastic straps that fasten at the waist. I wear leather boots, buttoned 
high, and over these, when I go out, I wear blue cloth leggings lined 
with heavy linen, and buttoning from the ankle to the knee. I wear 
but one skirt or petticoat of woolen, and a cloth dress cut with a plain 
loose waist, and a sack of the same over all." 
This is her own description ; and a more thoroughly unhealthy, 
unnatural, ungraceful, and in every way undesirable dress could 
scarcely be invented or devised. There are eight thicknesses about 
the ankles, where no extraneous warmth is needed ; there is the irri- 
tation of flannel over the whole skin, which is bad and unhealthy; 
there are six to eleven thicknesses about the waist, which are un- 
necessary and burdensome; and there is an utter lack of gracefulness 
and elegance in the whole appearance which would make the whole 
thing objectionable, even if no other objection were offered. The 
clumsy boots, buttoning high about the leg, are bad, and the leggings 
over them simply outrageous. 
You may think it time that we, having complained of the fashion- 
able dress, and criticised the reformer, make some suggestion of im- 38 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
provement. Wise, thoughtful little women all over the land, we 
call upon you each and all to assert your individuality ; to choose each 
the dress best suited to her own means, taste, figure, and convenience, 
and to wear it, never forgetting to make yourselves as pretty and as 
comfortable as possible. I do assert it as my honest opinion, after 
years of careful thought and inquiry, that flannel should not be 
worn next the skin ; that nothing should be worn which clings closely 
or acts in any way as an irritant.* 
Our suggestion for a dress would be slippers or low shoes, that 
could be taken off and put on easily ; soft, thick stockings, prefer- 
ably of cotton ; a cotton chemise, made long enough to come below 
the knees ; a loose cotton or stout linen waist, to which, by means of 
clasp-pins, all skirts can be easily and securely fastened without the 
trouble of buttons and button-holes. 
If a woman has a good figure, she, of course, needs no padding or 
building up ; but so many of them have, either from an unhealthy 
and unnatural mode of life, or from hereditary weakness and disease, 
thin, angular figures, that they are quite excusable for adopting the 
little devices of padding that go to make them look trim and 
attractive. 
Long, soft wrappers that can not be easily tumbled or torn, loose- 
ly belted about the waist, and neatly collared and cuffed with the 
same material, or with soft, dark lace, are the most attractive and 
serviceable house dresses. 
For the street, there is the simple walking-dress, plain skirt, swing- 
ing a couple of inches from the ground, and any kind of sack or 
over-dress that may suit at once the taste and comfort of the wearer. 
Thick cotton drawers should be put on when going out in the cold 
or wet, exactly as the cloak or other garment is put on for warmth 
and protection from the weather. These should come just below the 
knee, where they may be met by long, soft, knitted leggings. 
You may think this dress would be a very insufficient protection in 
the variable climate that prevails in the United States ; but, ladies, 
remember the lighter the burden of clothing that you are compelled 
to carry, the more strength you will have for other purposes ; and the 
free circulation of air next the skin, carrying off the insensible per- 
spiration, and not compelling it to struggle through various thick- 
* Our contributor, in making these very exclusive remarks about the use of 
flannel, means them to apply to the healthy, the strong, the robust; therefore 
the invalid, the consumptive, the very negative lymphatic, will not be deluded 
thereby, but in all cases be governed by their needs, or consult a physician of 
large common-sense and practical experience.-Ed. VITAL MAGNETISM. 
39 
nesses of flannel or other cloth, is one of the best tonics that can 
possibly be used. You will And that you will seldom, almost never, 
have colds, coughs, and other irritating diseases if the skin is kept cool 
and comparatively dry. Then, of course, you are to take what exercise 
your health demands or your circumstances permit. You are to bathe 
for the sake of cleanliness, and not as a mere matter of form. In 
short, ladies, you are to use your common sense in all things. 
Thus only can you win the strong currents of vital magnetism to 
flow through your systems, making you at once healthy and happy, 
giving you time and strength to develop every best instinct, every 
purest hope and aspiration. 
The warmth of the dress is largely a matter of habit, and one 
needs what they are accustomed to. Accustom yourselves, there- 
fore, to as little clothing as possible, that you may have healthy, 
vigorous cuticles, ready to absorb the ever-present wealth of magnet- 
ism in the air, and adapt it to your nourishment and support. 
I did not intend this as a special exhortation to woman: but 
as man governs the world, and woman governs man, I am content to 
address myself to her. 
Sir Arthur Clarke. FOURTH SECTION. 
VITAL MAGNETISM- C ONTINUED. 
Its origin-The brain a magnetic reservoir-The digestive functions set free 
electricity-The vitalizing properties of air-The great necessity of sun- 
light, and sunshine never should be excluded from rooms-Artificial heat 
may restore much magnetism-Danger of living in shady rooms or houses- 
Philosophy of sun-stroke-Proper diet-Cheerful, healthful society-The 
babe receives magnetism from the mother-Human magnetism the highest 
attribute of earth-life-Magnetism stirs the blood and contracts the muscles 
-Individual spirit organized electricity-The passions belong to the body- 
The body the home of the spirit-Evidences of spirit communication always 
known-Swedenborg-Magnetism and electricity the agents of spirit com- 
munication-The laws of spirit-control but little understood-Every form 
of clairvoyance, mesmerism, magnetism, and mediumship embraced in 
spirit-power-Home influences should be pleasant-Avoid unpleasant mag- 
netisms. 
HE subject of vital magnetism is demanding, more 
than ever, a place in the medical world to-day. 
It is an agent more valuable than any combina- 
tion of barks, and gums, and roots, more potent 
than any chemical drug, perfectly harmless if used 
with reason and in a spirit of kindness, and within 
the reach of all, however poor, or ignorant, or 
feeble. 
Every lyrain is in itself a magnetic reservoir, 
receiving magnetism and distributing it according 
to the condition and needs of the system. 
Every motion evolves electrical and magnetic 
force. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, the 
action of the respiratory organs, all set free a certain amount of 
electricity, which the brain garners for future use. 
The brain is composed mostly of two substances. A pale gray 
tissue which collects and holds the vital magnetic or nerve-making 
substance, and a white fibrous matter, firm in texture, and consisting 42 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
of fine tubes, which act as distributing agents to carry the vital fluid 
to the nerves. 
There are in other parts of the sys- 
tem smaller magnetic reservoirs, some- 
times called a ganglion of nerves ; but 
all these are under the control of, and 
receive supplies from, the brain itself. 
And to keep the brain well supplied 
with nerve-power, with magnetic vig- 
or, with vital electricity, is the great 
object and desideratum of life and 
health. 
Through the nerves of special sense 
the brain is constantly being communi- 
cated with in regard to the physical 
condition and surroundings of the 
body. The brain is instantly informed 
when light comes to the eyes, when 
pleasant or unpleasant odors reach the 
nostrils, when waves of sound are 
borne to the ears ; and it is the in- 
dwelling spirit which governs brain 
and nerves, which carries all know- 
ledge through the medium of physical 
powers, which supplies / the motor 
nerves with motion, and the sensitive 
nerves with sensation. 
This power of the spirit can not be fully comprehended by mor- 
tal mind acting through matter. 
But when the grosser material of bone and muscle and tissue is 
laid aside, then the spirit is free to inhabit its spiritual dwelling- 
place. 
It is useless to try to provide a healthy body for a diseased 
spirit. 
And it is best always to protect the spirit, to provide for its 
welfare and happiness. Then the body suffers less, the brain is more 
active, the nerves are stronger, and the whole machinery more easily 
acted upon. 
The vitalizing property of air is mainly electricity, which is 
taken up by the lungs and pores, and carried to the brain for use. 
But once gathered there, it takes on some portion of the spiritual 
influence and life-power of man, and becomes human magnetism. 
Fig. 8.-Nerve-Telegraphs. VITAL MAGNETISM. 
43 
This can be imparted by laying on of hands, and sometimes by 
the force of will without actual contact, so that the recipient may 
receive a strengthening and beneficial influence. 
A gentleman in New-York State, Mr. Vincent Kenyon, could, at 
one time, enter a room where any person was lying dangerously ill 
with either chronic or acute disease, and, by merely sitting down 
quietly and looking at the patient, there would soon appear symp- 
toms of improvement in the physical condition of the sufferer. 
Strength would return to the weakened frame, light to the eye, 
and courage to the mind. 
The exercise of his will, on the part of Mr. K., had doubt- 
less much to do in producing these wonderful results; but the 
co-operation of the patient was not essential to its action, as many 
were healed in this way who had no faith whatever in the possibility 
of such a result, and many others who were entirely ignorant of any 
such effort being made, and yet felt themselves growing stronger, 
pain and inflammation fleeing away as by magic, and health and 
vigor returning. 
But owing to his ignorance of magnetic laws, Mr. K. was 
not able to gather vital magnetism enough to recuperate his wasted 
powers. 
The nerve-centres became weakened, and he has ever since been 
affected with a species of spasm, usually coming on in the night, and 
having the appearance of cramp in the stomach. 
Nor is Mr. K.'s an isolated case in regard to the healing gift. 
Many people have had it; some have grown famous from its 
exercise. 
A Frenchman, known as Zouave Jacob, has cured hundreds, and 
Dr. J. R. Newton has healed thousands merely by the laying on of 
hands, by the simplest form of manipulation, by the imparting of 
vitality. 
This should be more fully understood, and more generally prac- 
ticed. 
We want institutions that shall be consecrated to the divine law 
of health. Homes where the sick in body and mind can go and find 
rest. 
Where the weak will can be strengthened, the hungry nerves fed, 
and harmony restored to the worn and weary mortal. 
We want large, cheerful rooms, clean and fresh, no matter how 
simple, where patients can be treated. 
Galvanic batteries that will cause the blood to flow more readily 
and its vitality to be more equally distributed. Animal magnetism 44 
VITAL MAGNETISM, 
that shall be derived from the horses, cows, goats, and dogs about 
the place. 
Fig. 9.-The Magnetism derived from Horses and Animals. 
Human magnetism too, emanating from strong healthy magneti- 
zers, both male and female, who will work with earnest purpose and 
generous hearts, to give what they have so freely received from 
nature's fountain, life and health. 
We are glad to find an interest in these subjects becoming more 
universal, and we take pleasure in recommending the few.institutions 
of the kind to the careful consideration of all thinking people. 
In all that may hereafter be done toward assisting nature in 
throwing off disease, people will look back to the pioneers of all 
reform in this direction, and it is well that every step taken now 
should be in the right direction. 
Good and thorough ventilation is one essential requisite in an 
institute devoted to the improvement of health. And the day is not 
far distant, when the engine that forces hot air through the house 
in winter, making it of an equable and pleasant temperature, will 
force cool air through the same or corresponding pipes in summer, 
thus keeping the rooms at all times comfortable, well ventilated, 
and healthy. There is much magnetic power in the atmosphere, and 
so subtle and intangible are its currents that they are first absorbed 
by the sensitive organism, so that the air is robbed of its vital princi- 
ple, more valuable than oxygen, even before the oxygen deserts it. 
This is one most powerful argument in favor of pure air, if the 
vital magnetism be weakened. Artificial heat is magnetic in 
strengthening properties for some constitutions, and a room or suit 
of rooms so arranged that a uniformly warm temperature can be VITAL MAGNETISM. 
45 
kept up through the changeful months of autumn, winter, and 
spring, would save more patients from consumption than any 
amount of journeying to warmer climates can ever do. 
The room thus prepared should be gradually made colder as the 
cold outside increases in intensity, sinking from seventy to sixty 
degrees perhaps, but never greater variation should be allowed, if it 
be possible to avoid it. 
See Dr. Stone's treatise on Consumption and its treatment, etc. 
But it should be constantly borne in ' 
mind that the sunshine is never to be ex- 
eluded from rooms devoted to the acquir- 
ing or maintaining of health. 
Artificial heat may and often does 
prove beneficial, but no form or kind of 
artificial heat or light yet invented or dis- 
covered can begin to compare with natural 
sunlight for the purpose of stimulating and 
assisting either animal or vegetable life. 
Besides the action of sunlight upon all the 
mere animal tissues of the human body, it has a very decided effect 
upon the mental organization. A person leaving a room habitually 
sunny, and going to live in one where the sunlight seldom or never 
enters, will grow low-spirited, peevish, irritable, or gloomy, hopeless, 
and nervous, as the natural temperament may be. 
The danger of sun-stroke is largely increased by the wearing of 
dark or black coverings on the head, and I believe there is no authen- 
tic record of any person having suffered from sun-stroke while wear- 
ing a white or light-colored hat. But the condition of the blood 
and nerves is also to be considered in this connection. 
Any stimulant that heats the blood or weakens the reactionary 
power of the nerves, renders a person more liable to prostration from 
sun-stroke. 
And the best preventive of any such casualty is to eat light, 
nutritious food, drink cooling drinks, slightly acidulated if possible, 
and wear something light both in color and texture to protect the 
head ; then any reasonable exposure or exertion will not be attended 
with injurious results. 
But when the brain has been affected by heat, the vital magne- 
tism will be much reduced, and there must follow long quiet seasons 
for rest, and a gathering again of the magnetic forces. At such 
times, pleasant and healthful society is of the utmost importance, 
and can scarcely be over-estimated. 
Fig 10 -The sunshine essentially 
necessary to health. 46 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
It is an old and trite saying, that a babe takes more from its 
mother than the milk from her breast, and every nurse or physician 
knows that even if the mother can not 
nurse her child, the little one grows 
stronger from being placed near her 
in the same bed, and in her arms if 
possible. 
It is not merely the warmth and 
the physical life ; for any artificial 
heat, however skillfully applied, will 
not produce the same result. It is 
the magnetism that belongs only to 
mother and child, that can not 
be otherwise supplied. This human 
magnetism is the highest known at- 
tribute of earth-life. It is that 
quality which allies man to the angels, and makes him sure of 
another life, a future existence, where all that is incomplete and un- 
satisfactory may be made complete and perfect. Men may not real- 
ize this intellectually; but the ignorant or the most learned, the 
most simple or the most profound, has felt the strange, yearning de- 
sire, that without reason or argument seems to demand of the future 
some recompense for the unrequited toils and troubles that make up 
so large a portion of every human life. 
Though it might not be possible for the large majority of intelli- 
gent men and women to tell wAy they desire or have any faith that 
they shall yet enjoy a future state of existence, yet there are few 
who do not anticipate a life of which they have no knowledge. 
It is the incomprehensible magnetic power that stirs the blood, 
contracts the muscle, and thrills the nerve, that asserts itself and 
claims continued existence as its true prerogative. Individuality is 
a manifestation of the magnetic life. 
It is not merely a manifestation of the great principle of life that 
pervades the universe, but it is a voice from that especial divine 
spark which has become a power unto itself ; which has taken on so 
much of earthy material, accumulated so many gross particles, that 
it can go its separate way, recognized as an entity even among ma- 
terial particles and grossness. And this magnetic life, this individu- 
ality, is what makes every person different from every other person, 
and is the principle which continues to exist as an individual, when 
the earthy material has fallen away, dissolved and lost by some law 
affecting only the union of animate and inanimate existence. The 
Fig. 11.-Showing the magnetism imparted 
to the babe by the mother. VITAL MAGNETISM. 
47 
best idea of a spirit as a separate and distinct being, that can be 
given to those who are accustomed to judge and measure every thing 
by the material senses, is, that it is organized electricity. 
That, when the grosser frame is laid aside, the spirit, escaping, 
attracts to itself finer particles and a more ethereal form. 
With the earthly frame go the appetites which ministered unto 
it, the passions which glorified or debased it, the weakness which 
marred it, the strength which distinguished it. While to the spirit 
remain the motives which actuated, the hopes which encouraged, and 
the faith which cheered it. And spirit in a spiritual sense, as matter 
in a material sense, always seeks its own level. The human being 
approximates to a certain extent to this same principle. 
Seeks the society it is best fitted for or would like to be fitted 
for. 
But surrounding influences of wealth, or family, or social posi- 
tion sometimes elevate a person higher than their natural tendencies, 
and sometimes drag them lower. 
In the world of spirit all this is changed. There is no power or 
influence, or factitious circumstance whatever, that can in any way 
affect the life or position of the spirit. 
The power that dwells within the soul has more and more oppor- 
tunity for free expression and action, as the spirit progresses, throws 
Fig. 12.-Faith. 48 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
off the habits and imperfections which it gathered in earth-life, and 
grows higher, purer, and more nearly allied to the Highest. 
As babyhood is but a prelude to youth, and youth especially 
designed as a stage of preparation for mature life, so the longest 
human life is but a brief and imperfect season of preparation for 
the measureless life of the spirit that reaches out beyond time and 
space into infinitude. 
How important it is, therefore, that the spirit should be well 
treated and considered. 
That every possible advantage be given it for growth and develop- 
ment. That the body, which is the home of the spirit, be kept pure, 
and strong, and healthy. 
Even though it be but for a comparatively short time that the 
spirit dwells in its earthy tenement, it is due to the better and 
higher life it is destined to lead in the future, that that tenement be 
properly and consistently cared for. 
For many thousand years, as far back as can be traced any au- 
thentic record of human life, there are evidences of efforts made bv 
spirits who have passed on from the earth to other stages of exist- 
ence, to manifest themselves to and communicate with their friends 
left in the material world. Some of these evidences are vague and 
indistinct, and they vary in style, from tragic and frightful, to comic 
and ludicrous. Any one who will carefully read the accumulated ghost- 
stories of the last two hundred years, will find that, however slight 
their foundation may seem to be, they have gained credence sowidelv 
that it seems impertinent to say they are mere fabrications. Even 
the ancient witchcraft, with its uncertain vagaries and sometimes fatal 
results, seems to have been beneficent in its original purposes, namely, 
to heal the sick, to ameliorate suffering, especially to cure nervous 
diseases and troubled minds. But, from being misunderstood and 
unappreciated, the power soon came to be wrongly applied. 
There is no doubt, in my mind, that the original design of that 
peculiar phase of life and history known as witchcraft was an effort, 
on the part of disembodied spirits, to establish some tangible method 
of communication with the material world they had left. But find- 
ing that the minds of the people were not ready to receive such 
demonstrations, or that they themselves were not sufficiently well 
acquainted with the laws of magnetic control to make it safe and 
pleasant for them to proceed, they withdrew the undeveloped power 
and influence, and hided their time. 
Many years ago, when the quaint but faithful Swedenborg wrote 
the strange spiritual teachings that were given to him, he recorded VITAL MAGNETISM. 
49 
that he had received one day a visit from a spirit whose material 
existence had been passed on the planet Jupiter. 
lie (the spirit) reported that it was no unusual thing for spirits who 
had passed on from that planet to a less material life to return and 
communicate with their friends, or to teach them concerning the higher 
spheres. And, he continued, in coming years, when your people have 
progressed in reason and spirituality, it will be no unusual thing for 
spirits who have laid aside their mortal forms and escaped from the 
thralldom of earth to return and communicate in some tangible man- 
ner with the friends who mourned for or needed them. It is not 
recorded that the spirit gave any inkling as to the way in which 
these communications were to come, or the material to be used in 
transmitting them. But magnetism and electricity were unknown 
forces then, and though the strange visitant was probably using one 
or both of these, to control the brain of his subject, yet he evi- 
dently did not try to explain his power to his subject. 
And this brings us directly to the question, lias the prophecy 
made at that time been fulfilled, or is it being fulfilled ? 
There are millions of people, in the United States alone, probably 
millions more in other parts of the world, and these embrace many 
active brains, strong minds, and cautious judgments, who are ready 
to declare to-day that spirits do communicate with mortals. 
And they declare this, not as a mere creed or belief, but as a 
matter of conviction based on evidence they have received. 
This can not be all superstition on the part of those who receive 
this evidence, or fraud on the part of those who give it. 
A large number of people are now known as " mediums" or media. 
They profess, or some power professes through them, to give com- 
munications from the unseen world, the world of spirits. 
Many of these are men and women of known honesty, integrity, 
and reliability. 
A large proportion take more pains to hide than to exhibit their 
weird gifts, and so very little is known of them, beyond their im- 
mediate and often small circle of acquaintance. 
Some of those who have adopted public mediumship a busi- 
ness, a means of support, are mere charlatans, tricksters, and amateur 
jugglers. But there are others who truly and honestly believe that 
the abnormal phenomena are produced by disembodied spirits. Now, 
as I said before, a belief which has obtained such universal credence 
ought not to be repudiated as a myth or a delusion. 
The spirits are communicating. The age and time of spiritual 
progression has truly come. And here let me say that the best work 50 
VITAL MAGNETISM. 
of the spiritual awaking, so far, has not been done through its 
media. 
At least, not through its professional media. It has been in a 
general spiritual growth, a liberal and kindly feeling for each other 
and for humanity in general. The spirits, finding they could make a 
recognizable impression on the minds of their mortal friends, fell 
diligently at work wherever they could find people ready to receive 
them. 
In different ways, they found they could approach people of dif- 
ferent temperaments. Some through their affections, some through 
their interest in science, many through their religious hopes and 
aspirations, and nearly all through that powerful element in human 
nature known as curiosity. 
Hundreds and thousands who took their religion for granted, 
in a weekly dose, who never paused to think or inquire if the soul 
had a separate existence, that continued after the body had been 
laid aside, would stop to wonder what made a table move without 
sufficient force being visibly applied. 
And when the cry came that it was all done by electricity, peo- 
ple who had at all begun to think upon the subject said with hesi- 
tating acquiescence, " Yes ; but has electricity intelligence?" 
Can it answer questions ? 
And when the next argument was put forward, " It is the action 
of mind over mind," the investigator could not help asking, " What 
mind ?" 
A truthful and reliable medium once said, " I do not like to have 
people ask questions about business. I do not feel that the infor- 
mation they receive can be relied upon, or that it is right for any 
person to give themselves up to any guidance that interferes with the 
exercise of their own will and judgment." 
More than this, I know that the person who asks the question 
often answers it just as much as though he held the pencil and wrote 
the words. 
I can not help this, nor is the questioner aware of it. It is the in- 
fluence of mind over mind. But what is mind? Is it not spirit? 
And if the spirit confined in its fleshly tabernacle has so much power, 
will it not, when free, have vastly more ? 
It is a problem very difficult to solve. But the question that next 
arises is, if the communications are from spirits, why should they be 
so vague and unsatisfactory, even contradictory sometimes ? 
It is because the means by which the work is done are so imper- 
fect and the laws of control so little understood. VITAL MAGNETISM. 
51 
Because conditions are so unfavorable, and harmony is not ob- 
served. 
But we can not here explain the strange phenomena of spirit 
intercourse. 
We do but hint at it, and leave each one to pursue their own in- 
vestigations. 
The subject is worth careful study and much serious thought. 
It is intimately connected with vital magnetism. 
It is the turning-point of many social and scientific questions. 
It is working a complete revolution in the manner of treating 
diseases. 
Spirit-power and control embraces every form of clairvoyance, 
mesmerism, magnetism, and mediumship. 
It is the power that lives, that manifests itself through every 
material form, from the inanimate mass of granite that makes the 
largest mountain to the faintest zephyr that plays about its base. 
Magnetism and electricity are to the spirit what air and light are 
to more material life. And if the magnetism be impure or the elec- 
trical currents in any way disturbed, the spirit is unpleasantly affected, 
and the body soon suffers. 
Then keep the home influences pleasant, to attract a loving and har- 
monious circle of spirits. Let no harsh words or unkind thoughts 
break the tranquil magnetic tide that ebbs and flows about each indi- 
vidual. 
Avoid coming in contact with people whose magnetic influence is 
unpleasant or questionable. 
And if obliged to meet such persons, do not quarrel or argue with 
them. 
It gives them an advantage they could not otherwise obtain ; lets 
them come within the sphere of your individual life, where you can 
not repel them so easily as you could at a distance. 
Guard well the spirit, which is the real and true life. And care 
for the body only as it is the shrine and temple of the living spirit. 
Dominique Akago. FIFTH SECTION. 
MESMERISM. 
CONTRIBUTED BY FRIEDRICH ANTON MESMER. 
MUST be the hero of my own story perforce,, to 
clear, if possible, from my name the stain of fraud 
and deception that has for so long rested upon it. 
I was born in Germany when the great " Peasants' 
War" and the cruel "Thirty Years' War," had wasted 
the energies and eaten up the wealth of the land, and 
peace and the empire were dying. My mother was 
a Suabian peasant woman, and the love of freedom 
burned brightly in her heart. 
I know' her soul was strong and pure ; for while she 
lived, it spoke in brave words of courage and loving 
deeds of kindness ; and after she laid aside the bur- 
den of mortal life, I felt it thrilling in every bright hope of mine, 
leading me on and on to better work for the world. 
My beautiful mother ! From her I inherited the strange gift of 
magic, and though some of her family, it is said, had practiced "black 
magic" that carried a curse with it, her own power was all in the 
region of " white magic," and fraught with blessing. 
Fortunately, the gift of my inheritance was of the whitest and 
most beneficent order, and even when I was a babe, my mother dis- 
covered the germs of that wonderful power in me, and dedicated me 
at once to the god of healing. 
The power of the mineral or metallic magnet to attract metals 
was even then well known, and not being understood, was at once at- 
tributed to magic. It was believed that these magnets, when pro- 
perly manipulated, had power to cure disease. 
But there was the mystery. 
They must be properly manipulated, and by the proper persons, or 
no beneficial result would follow. 54 
MESMERISM. 
This early led me to inquire, "Was it the magnet or the hand 
that wrought the cure ?" 
My mother had a magnet, the fame of whose magical virtues was 
known far and wide. 
Often have I seen her take that bit of iron in her hand with a 
gentle, caressing motion, speak to it some low, inarticulate word, then 
pass it lightly over an aching brow, or a swollen and inflamed joint, 
or an ugly, suppurating sore. 
Strangely, and by almost imperceptible degrees, the pain would 
depart, the swelling would disappear, the inflammation subside, and 
the suppuration cease. 
I had great faith in my mother, but very little faith in that bit of 
black iron. Yet when she saw in my eyes the doubt and question- 
ing, she would put the magnet in my hand, and bid me rub some 
waiting sufferer, while she stood with her hand on my head ; or, 
perhaps, only touching my shoulder, and I could feel the strange, 
strong thrill creeping and quivering through me as the pain and 
disease fled away. 
Still, this did not have the effect that she intended ; for when 
I crept alone into her room and took the sacred magnet in my small 
hands, and held it tight, and whispered to it, no thrill swept through 
my nerves at its cold touch. So all the more I believed in my 
mother, and less in the iron charm. 
With almost incredible care and patience, I fashioned a bit of slate 
to the exact size and shape of the magnet, and with fear and trem- 
bling I exchanged the one for the other, carrying the magnet about 
in my pocket day after day, and leaving the slate in its place, de- 
termined to wait until a patient came, and see if the healing did not 
go on as usual. 
It was a bad case of inflammatory rheumatism that came ; a 
strong man, who had been working day after day upon the dikes, stand- 
ing or walking with his feet in the heavy mud and the water nearly up 
to his waist. For a time, the intense excitement of saving lives and 
homes, where the river had burst through its banks, kept his blood 
circulating with such extra force that he could not take cold ; but as 
he grew weary, he had less power to resist the abnormal influences 
about him ; the continued wet and chill caused the blood-vessels to 
contract where they were least protected by muscle or adipose tissue 
-this, of course, was about the joints-and pain and swelling was 
the result. It was terrible to see a strong man suffer so, and I 
remember how my mother hurried, as soon as they had laid him 
on the bed, to bring her magnet and rub him. She took the bit of MESMERISM. 
55 
slate in her hands without even, looking at it, and proceeded to her 
task. 
She closed her eyes as usual ; but, instead of the peaceful and 
quiet look that usually rested on her face, she grew pale and wan, the 
lines about her mouth were tense, and almost painful to see, her 
breathing was long, labored respirations, and it was plain to see that 
she worked with the greatest difficulty. 
Slowly, very slowly, the pain which the sick man suffered was 
relieved ; but it left my mother utterly prostrated, and it was several 
days before she quite recovered her strength. 
Grieved and conscience-stricken, I put the magnet back in its 
place, but still I was not satisfied. 
It was by such experiments as these that I discovered the princi- 
ple of animal magnetism, as I called it, to distinguish it from the 
curious metallic magnetism which puzzled me so greatly. 
I believed that there was a latent, inherent power in all organisms 
to control others, and to heal them. 
I called it brain-power and will-power, the action of mind over 
mind ; and since then it has been termed od-force, the odylic influence, 
electricity, and a hundred other names besides Mesmerism. 
It is not a matter of temperament, as far as temperament is mani- 
fested in color of eyes, hair, and complexion ; for the mystic power 
is known to exist in the fiercest sanguine and the coolest lymphatic, 
in the darkest brunette and the fairest blonde. 
It is not a matter of climate ; for from the equator to the poles it 
is found, and manifests itself in one form or another. 
All nations of which we have any record, all times to which his- 
tory extends, bear witness to this curious power, varied alike in its 
purposes and its results, but springing from one great universal 
source. 
I say, I believed that all human beings possessed this power, and 
that, under favorable circumstances, it might be developed and in- 
creased to a wonderful extent. I knew I possessed it. 
I had demonstrated the fact in a hundred different ways ; and 
knowing that I had been through with no especial course of training 
to learn or acquire it, I could but think it was a natural power, and, 
like breathing or any of the physical senses, shared by all., 
This was not in itself a very great mistake ; but when I tried to 
reduce the mystic power to a science, and teach it by fixed laws and 
rules, there I failed. 
And yet, so wonderful and apparent was my own power, that 
people would not believe me when I told them I had nothing to teach. 56 
MESMERISM. 
The magnet of iron, which I sometimes rubbed upon an aching 
brow, and the pain would flee away at its touch, lay utterly power- 
less in the hands of him who would fain be my student and disciple, 
and then I was blamed in bitter terms because they said I would not 
impart the secret of my success ; that I took their money, and 
taught them nothing. 
Then I said, " I will take no more money for myself ; if the peo- 
ple will give, they shall give to the poor and sickand so, when I 
was forty years old or thereabouts, I established a hospital in Vien- 
na, where I cured many patients; and those in whom I had discov- 
ered the same power that I possessed cured many also. 
Soon after this, I went to Paris, and there I was quite as successful 
as in my own home. So much so, in fact, that the government of 
France offered me many thousand livres, many thousand dollars, if I 
would betray to them my secret. 
I told them I had no secret, but they would not believe me, and 
when I refused the money, they called me odd, eccentric, and even 
insane. 
Yet I converted many skeptics to a faith in the power of magnet- 
ism, and established a sort of half-school, half-hospital there, leaving 
it in charge of some of my most faithful students and followers 
when I returned,to Vienna. 
It was after this that I was offered an independent fortune, more 
wealth than I had ever dreamed of possessing, and this, too, by my 
own friends and adherents, if I would betray to them the secret of my 
power. 
I wanted the money to devote to my work, to enlarge my hospital, 
already overfull, and to bring health and comfort to many for whom 
I had now no place. 
I hesitated, but they urged me to accept it as a gift if I would not 
take it as tuition-fee in the regular line of business ; they knew if I 
once accepted the money, that I would hold myself in honor bound to 
give them true and just equivalent for it, so far as lay in my power, 
and they thought in that way they could wrest from me a carefully- 
guarded secret which I was keeping for some purpose of my own. 
Urged by my needs and their flattering importunities, I took the 
money, and I said, 
" Gentlemen and friends, I will lay bare to you my heart ; I will 
give my very soul to your keeping, in return for this munificent gift, 
donated by your kindness through my poor and unworthy ministra- 
tions, to the sick and suffering." MESMERISM. 
57 
This only meant that I would tell them all I knew, which I at 
once proceeded to do, and behold, they are no wiser than before. 
There was a secret; I knew it, felt it, but I dared not utter it; for 
I knew they would call me insane, and deprive me of my liberty and 
my work if I did. 
I knew, when my gentle, truthful mother closed her beautiful eyes 
iu a semi-trance and laid her hands upon the aching brow or distorted 
limb of some poor sufferer, that she called upon some spirit to aid 
her, and Ifully and firmly believed that the spirit came. 
The power that guided my hand, that thrilled my nerve, that 
healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, made the deaf to hear, 
the mute to speak, the lame and maimed to walk upright and strong 
again, was the power of the disembodied spirit acting through me. 
When I pressed the balls of my two thumbs lightly upon the 
temples of my patient, in order to throw him into a magnetic sleep, 
or as people soon learned to call it, to mesmerize him, I felt the pres- 
sure upon my own brow of two similar points of contact, like the 
poles of a battery when fully charged. And by this pressure and the 
effect it produced upon me, I could at once determine what effect I, 
or rather the power acting through me, could produce upon the pa- 
tient or subject. 
I looked upon this mystic power of mine as a precious and sacred 
gift. 
I shivered when people tried to analyze it with their hard book- 
learning, to submit it to severe scientific tests. I shrank as if in pain 
from all experiments tried merely for curiosity, and I would not give 
my magnetic subjects up, even for an hour, to the mental control of 
a person whom I considered impure or unworthy in heart or life. 
One idea seemed curiously to possess me. It was, that when my 
mother passed away from earth the mantle of her spiritual gifts would 
fall upon me, and my power be increased tenfold. And so it was. 
I knew when she came to me, and more plainly than ever before 
did I hear her dear voice urging me on in the path of duty, telling 
me never to sacrifice the highest to any lower impulse, but to remem- 
ber that my life was consecrated to a power not my own, to a work 
which owned a higher master mind than any earthly authority. It 
was then that I reached the very zenith of my fame and usefulness, 
and then, had I but possessed the moral courage to speak the truth 
as I believed and received it, I might at once have established the 
fact of the power of the disembodied spirit. 
But as Galileo feared physical pain or perhaps death, so I feared 
to take another step in the way of reform, of social query, and cavil 58 
MESMERISM. 
and criticism, of ridicule and ostracism at last. I had my little share 
of personal pride. I had established a hospital, I had done some 
good in the world. T would take this money so freely offered, and 
for the future I would rest. 
But instinctively my friends and pupils, even my most devoted 
followers, felt that I had not told them the whole truth, even as I be- 
lieved it. 
And so, little by little, I lost my power. I felt it slipping aw'ay 
from me, and I struggled bravely and determinedly to keep it. I 
talked with an earnestness that was positive fervor, with an eloquence 
that was all but inspiration; I wrote with tireless patience all the 
minutije of treatment for different cases, all the theories and experi- 
ments of which I had any knowledge ; and yet I did not say, "This is 
the power of the disembodied spirits who visit me. This is the work 
of the physician who toiled and groped his blind, experimental way 
through a half-century of earth-life, and has now added a whole cen- 
tury of clearer knowledge and better light in the spheres beyond, 
which he returns to bless the waiting world with." 
And because I did not say this, I did not tell the whole truth. 
For a person to say that they believe in mesmerism and do not 
believe in spiritualism is an absurdity • for mesmerism is but one 
manifestation of spiritualism, and a very weak and imperfect mani- 
festation at the best. 
I do not deny that some minds or spirits while yet in the body 
do have a certain control over other minds ; for I have known a sen- 
sitive subject when so magnetized or mesmerized as to be unconscious 
of surroundings, to be so under the control of the operator as to 
answer questions in a way quite foreign to the truth, and that be- 
cause the one in control believed as the answers indicated. 
I knew then that the person who asked the questions answered 
them too, and just as personally, distinctly, and individually as though 
he had spoken the answers with his own voice. 
But this does not go to prove that there is no such thing as spirit- 
control. 
In fact, it goes far to prove that there is such a reality, and this is 
one manifestation of it. For if the spirit still in the form, and com- 
pelled to express itself through the physical senses, has so much 
power, surely the disembodied spirit has far more power to act inde- 
pendently and freely. 
I often hear the question discussed, "Has a man a spirit, a spiritual 
existence?" And the query sounds very strange, for man is a spirit. 
When men learn to reason from this stand-point, to take as a fun- MESMERISM. 
59 
damental principle that man is a spirit in whatever sphere he exists, 
and of whatever material his visible form may be composed, then can 
they begin to approximate the power of the spirit itself, whether 
clothed in the ponderable and changeful material of the earth-life, 
or the more subtle and ethereal chemical elements that make up the 
habitation of the spirit upon some of the other planets, or farther on 
yet in these realms of spiritual existence, that are freed from most of 
the laws that govern the physical universe, and yet are just as ame- 
nable to their own adaptation of laws as the most sterile and barren 
mass of organic substance. 
I was not a cheat and a deceiver, I did not feign any power that I 
had not full faith in ; but I did not tell the whole truth. Therefore I 
failed to reach the highest possibilities of my own work, and passed 
away from earth unsatisfied. 
I believe the reason that Swedenborg's words, unreasonable and 
imperfect as they are, yet carry so much faith and conviction with 
them, is because he told his whole belief and faith, heedless of the 
world and its taunts, regardless of society and its sneers. And the 
most skeptical critic who finds fault with the philosophy of Emanuel 
Swedenborg still feels that his heart was in his words, and that it is 
there yet. That he gave his time, his life, his own best self to his 
work, and then gave that work to the world freely and frankly, with- 
out hope of fee or reward. 
I remember a brief, quaint interview with him while I was yet a 
boy, in which he said, 
"A spirit visited me from the planet Jupiter. I asked him, 'Is 
death the same terrible mystery on your planet that it is here upon 
the earth ? ' and he answered me, ' Nay 1 Death is neither terrible nor 
a mystery ; for we keep up a pleasant and frequent intercommunion 
across the boundary, that takes away all dread.' 
" ' But why can not such communion be generally established on 
this planet ? ' I asked wistfully, and the spirit made answer, ' The 
child plays idly and harmlessly with his toys ; if he had the keen 
blade of the surgeon's knife or the intricate apparatus of the scien- 
tist, he would only make toys of them and demand that they should 
please him.' 
"The earth is young yet. If the angels and archangels and the 
spirit of the Most High were to visit its people, its people would ask 
of them, 'How can we acquire wealth? How can we win gold? 
How can I stretch out the boundaries of my possession and encircle 
all that surrounds me and make it mine ? ' 
" The day comes when the people of earth will see that gold and 60 
MESMERISM. 
wide possessions are not the best gifts. Then the freed spirits will 
return and talk with them. Many weak and frivolous things must 
be said perforce, but the truth will be revealed at last. 
" Hide, ye in patience." 
And Emanuel Swedenborg was not a man who would be easily 
led astray by a whim, or deceived by an illusion or a phantom. 
One of the keenest and clearest mathematicians that ever demon- 
strated a problem, and the best anatomist that ever studied the hu- 
man frame, for he studied not merely to learn how the joints were 
hung, but what was the mainspring that moved them. lie studied 
the body to find the soul, and through all research God came very 
close beside him, and sent his angels and messengers to minister unto 
the searcher after truth. 
The student found that the soul, though for a little time in the 
body, was never of the body. That the body was but a garment 
worn for a few brief years, for the sake of an experience that could 
be gained in no other way, then laid aside for a better-fitting attire. 
And whatever wonders he wrought in word or deed, he said constantly, 
" The Lord himself, when I was in great doubt, allowed me the pri- 
vilege of conversing with spirits and angels, which I have ever 
since enjoyed." 
To Hahnemann came also the divine gift of magnetic control and 
healing, and he hid it under a yet weaker pretense than I had ever 
employed. 
lie found that he could work greater and more rapid cures with- 
out medicine than with it; and yet he argued to himself, " If I give 
no medicine, people will not employ me, the regular faculty will not 
consult with me ; I shall lose caste and be called a charlatan so he 
struggled along, evading his drugs by one trick or another, until the 
idea came to him to pretend to give medicines, and yet employ them 
in quantities so small that they would have no sensible effect. 
I think his theory of giving a medicine that would produce upon 
a person in health the symptoms of the disease he intended to cure 
was at first a mere pretense ; but he worked it up into a sort of phi- 
losophy to satisfy credulous inquirers, and it was really accepted as a 
new school of medicine. 
Hahnemann knew that the power transmitted through his agency 
came from a higher source than any chemical preparation, any min- 
eral or vegetable drug, but he would not own it. He was mediuin- 
istic, but weak. Of his followers, the most of them at the present 
day give modified allopathic medicines in somewhat smaller doses 
than the regular practitioners ; some use the eclectic or botanic rem- MESMERISM. 
61 
edies ; and a few, a very few, trust to the spirit to assert its dominion 
over the human organism. 
But a young physician not long since had a patient, a babe sick 
with some slight weakness of the bowels and persistent diarrhea. 
After exhausting his skill and patience with other remedies that 
had no effect, he gave it (he said so himself) "a very minute dose of 
morphia, about a sixth of a grain." 
That man, physician as he calls himself (?), did not know enough 
about allopathic remedies to know that a sixth of a grain of morphine, 
though a minute quantity, is not a minute dose. The child died from 
stoppage in the bowels. 
A lady boasting a few days ago of how sick she had been, and 
what great skill it required on the part of her physician to cure her, 
said that he assured her he had been through the whole cornucopia 
before he could find a medicine that suited her case. 
The fact that the lady meant pharmacopoeia, and merely mispro- 
nounced a.word, is not half so ridiculous as the statement itself, which 
shows how exact a science homeopathy is. 
Nay, it is not a science. It is a maudlin pretense, an insult to 
ordinary intelligence, and a weak and cowardly fraud. If a person 
believes in the spirit, and in the control which the spirit can exer- 
cise over the physical frame, then by the power of the spirit they 
can heal without drugs or the semblance of drugs. 
I would have all magnetizers and mesmerizers, all clairvoyants 
and psychometrists remember that if they hope to work with any suc- 
cess they must have faith in the spirit-power that guides them, and 
they must not evade a confession of that faith by any weak subter- 
fuge, for their power will fail them if they do. 
lie honest and truthful, seek ever for the light, and the light shall 
be given you; and freely as you have received so freely give, by the 
power of the spirit. SIXTH SECTION. 
CONSUMPTION. 
JAMES RUSH. 
ULMONARY Consumption is a disease of great fre- 
quency, and it is said, upon good authority, that in 
all civilized nations it produces from one sixth to one 
tenth of the total mortality in ordinary times. It is 
uncertain whether there is any part of the world or 
any race of men exempt from consumption, it having 
been found in the extremes of both hot and cold cli- 
mates, in India, Australia, Iceland, Van Diemen's 
Land, and Patagonia. It is a disease that has a ten- 
dency to increase with the increased aggregation of 
the human family. Hence it is most frequent and 
most fatal in thickly-settled towns. It is sometimes 
found in children, often in old people ; but peculiarly affects those 
just stepping to manhood or womanhood. It is often hereditary, 
being, it is said, most frequently inherited from the mother. 
Many medical statisticians insist, and bring a long array of facts to 
prove their position, that the intermarriage of cousins is one prolific 
cause of tuberculous or pulmonary consumption. This is a subject 
of which we do not care to treat in this place. There may be no 
physiological reasons why cousins should not marry ; there are pow- 
erful magnetic reasons, and these we will explain in another section. 
But there are certain aggravating causes which superinduce con- 
sumption. Among these, habitually working or living in close, ill- 
ventilated places, especially when there is much dust or much damp- 
ness. Pure air and sunshine are the great magnetic agents to pre- 
vent consumption. But, when once the insidious destroyer has 
gained a hold upon the human system, it is one of the most difficult 
to battle with. 64 
CONSUMPTIOX. 
The general symptoms of consumption arc too well known to need 
any accurate description here. These, in their very earliest stages, 
often escape attention from their obscurity, and the slow, in- 
sidious way in which they attack the sufferer. In almost every case, 
it appears first like a slight cold or an attack of catarrh. This, pass- 
ing without notice, grows worse, and the symptoms more decided. 
Shiverings occur, a sense of general chilliness followed by oppressive 
warmth, and, especially in the night, copious perspiration. A quick, 
hacking cough, pains between the shoulders and about the shoulder- 
Fig. 13.-This cut illustrates the front view of the Lungs, the three lobes of the right, the two 
Jobes of the left; the diaphragm below, the Pleura Pulmonalis, Pleura Costalis, the Larynx and 
Trachea above. 
blades or below the collar-bones. These indicate a pressure upon the 
lungs, that the air-cells are not properly filled with air, that the blood 
is not properly purified, and that the heart can not do its legitimate 
work. The absorption of fine dust in stone-cutting, the inhalation 
of minute particles of steel in cutlery, or other metals in other 
smith-work, will cause this stoppage in the lungs, and produce con- 
sumption. But, in order to cure it when once it has asserted itself, 
no power yet discovered can act with any degree of certainty as a CONSUMPTION. 
65 
remedial agent, excepting inhalations which go directly to the lungs, 
and assist those delicate organs in throwing off their accumulated 
weight of extraneous substance. 
Medicines taken into the stomach can only be useful in regulating 
the action of the secretive organs, and assisting the digestive organs 
to do their work. 
A varied and wholesome but light and unstimulating diet; much 
exercise in the open air, especially in the sunshine, and cool, well- 
ventilated sleeping apartments, are the best adjuncts and assistants 
to the treatment by inhalation. 
There is also a way in which an atmosphere may be created about 
a person similar in all beneficial results to residence in a warm cli- 
mate ; but it necessitates confinement to a single room, or suit of 
rooms, in cold weather, and for this reason is better adapted to the 
Institute, or medical conservatory, than to the private house. (See 
how to prepare a medicated air-chamber for domestic use, at the end 
of the section.) 
In a large Medical Institute, it would be easy to have a num- 
ber of pleasant adjoining apartments kept at an equable tempera- 
ture, and always at summer warmth. These should be cheerfully 
but simply furnished, with more or less moisture in the air, enough 
to keep plants growing and in a healthy state ; for there is no better 
barometer than the condition of a plant to tell if the air in a room is 
sufficiently vitalized with oxygen and magnetized with sunlight. 
Steam-baths or vapor-baths, graduated to meet the wants of each 
individual, are powerful adjuncts in the case of consumption ; but if 
not used with proper judgment and discretion, will tend to hasten 
decay and death. 
Experience alone can safely determine in what way these baths 
should be used. They may be used with decided benefit by the pa- 
tient alone; but in many cases, that benefit will be largely augment- 
ed by the attendance of a healthy and vigorous person, who should 
rub the patient thoroughly, gently at first, until it is known what de- 
gree of friction can be safely and beneficially borne. If the bather 
or attendant has, in addition to good health, a kindly sympathy with 
the patient, so much the better and more beneficial will be the 
result. 
It is, alas ! too true that many patients are sent to foreign lands to 
die, ostensibly for a change of air and climate, but really because the 
physician is satisfied that they can never recover, and wishes to save 
himself from the stigma of having them die upon his hands. 
It is a curious fact that hysteria often arrests and even cures con- CONSUMPTION. 
66 
sumption. In many cases, the spasms of hysteric fits stop the breath- 
ing for a short time, and prevent the air leaving the lungs. In this 
way it is forced down into the lower air-cells, which become expand- 
ed and throw off their accumulated load of mucus. The lungs are 
thus expanded and made more active. Heart-disease, asthma, and 
swelling of the tonsils have sometimes the same or similai' effect, by 
retarding the breathing, filling the lungs over-full, enlarging the 
chest, and thus causing a reaction that arrests the process of disease. 
Children born of consumptive parents should be brought up in the 
plainest possible manner, having plenty of light, nutritious food, little 
meat, no coffee, no stimulants save fresh air and exercise ; an abun- 
dance of fresh milk, pudding and milk, mush, rice, green corn, all 
sorts of grains and fruits ; plenty of out-door exercise, which tends 
to give full chests, large lungs, and vigorous constitutions. 
Children under seven years of age should never be kept more than 
one hour in the same position without a chance to run about, stretch 
their limbs, use their joints, and fill their lungs with fresh air. The 
chairs or benches upon which they sit should always be low, and pro- 
vided with backs. The desks before them should be high in com- 
parison, rising even to the armpits of the child, so that they need 
not sit stooping, in order to read, or write, or study. 
They will, of course, soon be fatigued by this position before they 
are accustomed to it ; but if they are allowed to stand, walk, or run 
about frequently, this fatigue and weariness can be easily overcome. 
It is well for grown people also to accustom themselves to sitting 
at a high desk or table, thus bringing the work up, to keep the form 
in a perfectly erect position. After a little practice, this will be 
found a more comfortable position, as it is far 
more healthy than stooping. 
In the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, where 
consumption is almost an epidemic, the one 
class of persons said to be entirely exempt 
from the disease is the fish-women who carry 
fish in the streets for sale. They go a distance 
of more than two miles down to Leith Har- 
bor early in the morning, fill their baskets 
with fish, and then hurry all the way to Edin- 
burgh, where they sell the fish in the streets, 
often walking for six or eight hours with the 
baskets on their heads. This practice makes 
them straight, with full chests. 
One of the best exercises for delicate per- 
Fig. 14.-The advantage of 
carrying burdens on the head 
to prevent consumption. 67 
CONSUMPTION. 
sons, and especially for those in any way predisposed to consumption, 
is dancing. 
No exercise should be carried to the point of or al- 
lowed to produce debility. But, for young and old people to meet 
together in pleasant, social intercourse, and then to dance; the exhila- 
ration of the moment, the sound of the music, the steps that must be 
taken, even the light touching of hands, the magnetic contact, the 
smile and pleasant word passing from one to another ; all these tend 
to make the blood flow faster, and to bring the whole system into a 
more healthy state. 
Consumption, in its first stages, can even be cured by dancing, 
commencing with a few mindtes at a time, and continuing and in- 
creasing it for longer periods, as the strength will allow. 
Pleasant company is one important requisite ; but the very mo- 
tion itself is healthy and invigorating. 
One of the best preventives of consumption is a cool, dry skin, 
bathing in cold or slightly warm water, rubbing the skin thoroughly 
with a dry towel, and then wearing loose clothing, with cotton next 
the skin, and a free circulation of air allowed, 
Many people wear shoulder-braces to support the chest; but we 
have always found that an earnest will and good common sense is the 
best shoulder-brace. 
A person should be careful never to contract the habit of stoop- 
ing, either from debility, or from standing or sitting in bad positions. 
Round and stooping shoulders were formerly, and perhaps they 
are at the present day, in England, considered decidedly vulgar, 
marking ignoble descent, and denoting weakness and want of indi- 
viduality. 
There are boarding-schools where, if children have high or stoop- 
ing shoulders, strong shoulder-braces are put on them, and passed 
down the back outside the dress, where a weight is attached, and the 
child is placed in a standing position for a period varying from fifteen 
minutes to an hour, two or three times daily, until its shoulders are 
brought into the required symmetry. They may be worn until the 
disposition to stoop is entirely overcome, and a fine figure and grace- 
ful carriage are fully established. 
Remember, ladies, that we use health and beauty as synonymous 
terms. Every lady is beautiful, every woman is womanly, who has 
a good circulation of warm, red blood, strong lungs, flat back, good 
digestive powers, strong secretive organs and an active brain. All 
these for beauty, though we remember a sailor's description of a 
beautiful woman, bent on some errand of mercy, when he said, "Her 68 
CONSUMPTION. 
foot is as light as the wave-lifted ship ; for it swings from the heart, 
and not from the hip." 
Ladies, if every motion of your lives could be so described, if 
the hands reached out from the heart to do good and the thoughts 
sprang forth from the heart to help others, one fountain of beauty 
would be kept alive forever. 
For the motive is the mainspring of life. 
Strange to say, there is a fashion in medicine as there is in dress 
and other adjuncts of human life. There was a time, even within 
the last threescore years, when it was the fashion to bleed people for 
incipient consumption ; and I knew a young physician who, realiz- 
ing that consumption was hereditary in his family, looked for it 
anxiously in his own case, resolved to cure it if possible. 
It was when blood-letting was a popular remedial agent used, 
and I have known that poor fellow to be bled twenty times within 
a month. It was such a relief, he said ; it made him breathe more 
easily, cooled the fever that seemed burning him up, and relieved 
the pain in his chest and back. But when the fever was quite cooled, 
and the pain entirely relieved, nature had no strength left to 
restore the wasted vitality ; and the victim of that experiment passed 
on to another sphere where he could afford to smile at his well- 
meaning ignorance, as men smile at the enthusiastic mistakes of 
boyhood when they have reached mature life. 
A process of treatment for consumption, some time fashionable, 
has been counter-irritation. This is produced by the use of blisters, 
croton-oil, and tartar-emetic. These sores and blisters, besides being 
excessively painful and causing great suffering, tend greatly to 
reduce the strength of the patient at a time when no strength should 
be spared. 
An ordinary soft, coarse towel, folded four thicknesses, wrung 
out of hot water, will, when applied to the chest or below the shoul- 
der-blades, or to any place where pain is located, relieve it as soon 
as a blister, without producing any injurious consequences whatever. 
The cloth may be renewed and worn all the time, or only at night; 
but the habitual pain will soon cease. 
Better than water treatment, immeasurably better than blisters, 
plasters, or irritants of any kind, is the warm, gentle, magnetic hand, 
hovering over the painful or diseased organs, and relieving all suffer- 
ing as if by magic. Even the warm, quiet room, the equable tem- 
perature and confinement, should never be resorted to when the 
patient is able to go out of doors and exercise in the fresh air with 
any visible benefit; for there is a magnetism in the fresh air, and CONSUMPTION. 
69 
especially in the unobstructed sunlight, that no artificial means can 
supply. 
Sometimes a case of chills and fever will break up all consump- 
tive habit and actually cure consumption. Still, it would not be a 
safe or reliable method of treatment to contract any one disease for 
the sake of curing another. 
There is also one possible cure for consumption, which we would 
suggest to every one for at least a thorough trial. It is the cultivation 
of the voice, either in singing or declaiming. Singing is best, as 
song is produced by the glottis, and speech by the mouth ; or per- 
haps a more correct statement would be that the larynx is the organ 
of song, and the mouth, tongue, and other organs merely giving 
audible articulation. 
The narrower the glottis is made, and the more tightly the 
muscles are strained about it, the more rapidly they will vibrate 
and the higher will be the musical note emitted. While, therefore, 
song is laryngeal, speech, which is a modification thereof, is oral, or 
produced by the mouth. Both speech and song use the lungs to 
their utmost capacity, if properly trained and directed. Every 
tiniest air-cell is filled and emptied with regular and decided force ; 
and when we make the consumptive patient sing and dance, we offer 
at once pleasantest amusement and most powerful remedial agency. 
Among the gymnastic exercises that we would recommend for 
weak lungs and consumptive patients generally, is a raising of the 
arms as high as possible above the head repeatedly, especially after 
eating. (See diagram of chest-expander at the end of section.) 
Another good exercise is to throw a blanket upon the floor, lie 
flat down at full length upon it, and roll over and over. This brings 
every muscle into action, causes the blood to circulate better, accele- 
rates the breathing, and strengthens the lungs. 
If the skin is cold and unexcitable, flannel may be worn with 
safety and perhaps with benefit ; but in nine cases out of ten, warm, 
soft, cotton clothing, especially next the skin, is far more desirable. 
Says that quaint philosopher, P. B. Randolph, " The proper 
study of mankind is woman; and precious few are they who really 
know any thing about her; though millions of our whiskered bro- 
thers imagine that of all studies in this mundane life of ours they 
have most perfectly mastered her. But a greater mistake was never 
made since creation began and the morning stars sang together for 
joy. Among other errors concerning her now prevalent is the 
absurd idea that, sex excepted, she is precisely what man is in all 
respects; while the truth of the case is, that she is naturally his oppo- 70 
CONSUMPTION. 
site and counterpart, mentally, socially, physically, aesthetically, phy- 
siologically, anatomically, magnetically, electrically, psychologically, 
chemically, and mechanically. 
" Mentally she knows by one brief, quick thrill of inspiration or 
intuition what man learns by a long process of reasoning. 
" Socially, she is like sunshine, brightening and beautifying all 
within her influence ; while man is like a sponge, absorbing every 
thing that he can reach. 
" Physically, she is inferior in strength ; but in endurance, forti- 
tude, courage to undergo and victoriously to bear pain, she rises far 
above him. 
" Aesthetically, she is generous where he is selfish. 
"Physiologically, the difference in texture and quality is too 
apparent to need explanation. 
" Anatomically, she is wide in the pelvis, where man is narrow ; 
and narrow in the shoulders, where man is wide. 
" Magnetically, a natural nurse, caring for all helpless and 
tender things ; while man prefers rather to get out of their way and 
give them space. 
" Electrically, she is receptive or negative, while man is forceful 
and positive. 
" Chemically, she eats the same food that man does, and drinks 
the same general fluids in different quantities and proportions ; but 
she makes a far different use of them ; for while man converts them 
into muscular force, woman changes them into nervous power and love. 
" Mechanically, woman is all ovals, while man is all circles. 
" And when it is said that man is the creative element, that he 
does the inventing, makes all the improvements, builds cities, forms 
states, and governs empires, woman is busy nurturing and feeding, 
inventing and building up and governing the men who make these 
things. 
" Be careful then of women ; give them good homes and pleasant 
surroundings, fresh air and love, that the children may be born 
strong, pure-hearted, affectionate, tenacious of life, and without here- 
ditary predisposition to consumption. " 
It will take several generations yet to root out unhealthy practices, 
and overcome general tendencies to evil; for all weakness and dis- 
ease is in itself evil. The establishing of good homes for con- 
sumptive patients, and a general course of diet and treatment insisted 
upon and continued, will break up consumptive tendencies and stop 
their transmission from one generation to another. 
It should be a matter of principle with people who know that CONSUMPTION". 
71 
they inherit, or are strongly predisposed to, consumption, that they 
transmit the disease no farther. 
The natural instinct of parentage, the desire for propagation, 
should be subordinated to the best good of the human family. 
And this brings us to a question more fully discussed in another 
section, and upon which we have already expressed the opinion that 
the bearing of children should always be within the control and sub- 
ject to the discretion and judgment of the mother. 
But if any person of known consumptive tendency or predis- 
position does, through any mistaken view, accept the responsibility of 
parentage, let the fact be constantly borne in mind that such child is 
born with a constitution weakened in every way, and thus more liable 
to attacks of disease of every kind. 
The abnormally delicate mucous membrane will easily become 
inflamed, and, with less power to throw off all unhealthy secretions, 
will thicken as the inflammation increases and cause croup. Attacks 
of lung-fever will become frequent, and each congestion will be 
liable to fill the inflamed air-cells for the last time. 
All cutaneous diseases, such as measles, chicken-pox, and rash, 
will be intensified and made more dangerous to the consumptive 
child, because the lungs, being weak, will delegate to the skin a large 
portion of their work in carrying waste matter out of the system, 
and any feverish condition closes the pores and thus stops the action 
of the skin. 
Be careful then that the child who inherits consumption have 
every possible advantage that artificial means can give to counteract 
the natural tendencies of the disease. 
See that the sleeping-room be high up from the ground, light, dry, 
and airy. That the bed be hard and clean, and of vegetable rather 
than animal structure ; husks, straw, or moss being better than 
either feathers or hair. 
A springy bed is not objectionable, and if the skin be chilly and 
inactive, a brisk rubbing before going to bed should be habitually 
resorted to. 
A night-gown of thick, soft canton-flannel, or other cotton mate- 
rial, is better than woolen, and so is cotton under-clothing, unless 
a very cold and inactive condition of the skin prevails, when soft 
red flannel may be worn and changed frequently. 
The reason why red flannel is preferable to white is that in 
dyeing the material is thoroughly boiled, which gives the threads of 
wool a chance to shrink and contract to their fullest extent. Of 
course, allowance is made for this in weaving the cloth, and therefore 72 
CONSUMPTION. 
whatever openings or interstices there may be between the threads 
remain there, and the flannel wears thinner and thinner. 
But white flannel is manufactured with a view to special bleach- 
ing and stretching, and so every time it is washed or even dampened 
with perspiration, it shrinks more and more, until it becomes close 
and firm, retaining the insensible perspiration and constantly weaken- 
ing the skin. Cotton is generally much better to wear next the skin, 
as it is less irritating, does not cling so closely, and thus allows a 
free circulation of air, which to a child is a most important conside- 
ration, as the skin is thus made firm and healthy for the whole 
future life. 
And really the skin needs air almost as much as the lungs do. 
Exercise is another important means of strengthening a naturally 
consumptive child, especially exercise in the open air and in the 
sunshine. The magnetism of these two curative agents, fresh air 
and sunlight, is nature's purest wealth. 
These should be indulged in all the year, no matter how cold or 
how hot it may be. All invalids of a consumptive tendency should not 
only live, as it were, in the open air as much as the weather and season 
will allow, but they should mingle much with or work with animals ; 
hence milking of cows conduces greatly to health-to arrest the pro- 
gress of the disease by the magnetism imbibed : this is particularly 
imparted by young animals having a superabundance of life. 
Drinking or rather 
sipping the milk, while 
fresh and warm from the 
cow, should habitually be 
practiced in all cases 
where the use of milk as 
an article of diet seems to 
agree well with the sto- 
mach ; this may be sip- 
ped when no oppression 
or headache follows. Should such symptoms be manifested, try it 
with a spoonful or two of lime-water to one tumbler of milk. 
As milk possesses all the material elements requisite to build up 
the body, it will prove exceedingly nutritive in most cases finding 
an inability to bear much solid food. 
But the value of air and exercise can be greatly enhanced by 
proper position and filling the lungs to the best advantage. These 
special directions about children should be remembered also in every 
Fig. 15. CONSUMPTION. 
73 
adult case, and in the management of the disease after it has become 
plainly developed and even far advanced. 
The only difference to be observed between treating an appa- 
rently well person to prevent consumption, and a suffering patient to 
cure it, is in the artificial atmosphere and the process of inhalation. 
Cold inhalations are usually best, and it is rarely, very rarely, 
that warm ones need be used. Steam of all kinds should be carefully 
avoided, not only by consumptive patients, but by all people in any 
way subject to weakness of the lungs. All directions for creating 
and maintaining an artificial atmosphere that will be at once health- 
ful, invigorating, and comparatively inexpensive, may be obtained 
Fig. 16. 
by applying by letter to the author of this work, answering the 
questions he will send, and stating as plainly as possible the symp- 
toms most prominent in the individual case to be treated. The pre- 
paration of a room or suit of rooms, if convenient, in which a 
warm and equable temperature may be maintained for weeks or 
months together, is a far more simple process than is usually sup- 
posed, and infinitely better for the health and comfort of a patient 
than journeying to a warmer climate, enduring the fatigues and in- 
conveniences of travel and the contact with unsympathetic strangers, 
which, to a magnetically sensitive person, is in itself a poison. 
This cut illustrates the medicated air-chamber of the Institution, 74 
CONSUMPTION. 
but can as easily be furnished in the home of every consumptive, 
from special directions. The atmosphere is blended with medicated 
vapors of gums and balsams and healing medicaments, evaporated 
from a stove; hence the patient has a balmy air in which he can sit 
or stay, read and enjoy himself with his friends and family, without 
the awful sacrifice and suffering encountered on being sent away, too 
often to die abroad. 
There is a false and thoughtless idea that air, to be pure, must be 
cold, especially in winter. A moment's consideration will show how 
stupid this is. 
A room may be thoroughly ventilated every four hours, if neces- 
sary, and yet have no draught created and no cold or damp air ad- 
mitted to any part of it. 
Simply by using an adjoining room as a heater and regulator. 
Close the doors between the two rooms, then open the windows of 
the vacant room until the air is thoroughly changed and freshened. 
Close the windows, brighten the fire, and wait until the temperature 
in the vacant room is exactly like, or a trifle higher than, that which 
the patient occupies. Then open the door, and slowly but not less 
surely the warmed and dried air will creep in, taking the place of the 
weakened and vitiated atmosphere of which the patient has become 
so weary, having exhausted all the healthy magnetism long before 
the entire quantity of oxygen is used up. 
The cold, medicated inhalations we will not attempt to describe 
here, as they are varied to meet each individual case, and written di- 
rections will be promptly forwarded to any address, accompanied by 
the ingredients to be used, or the preparation in fluid or solid form, 
as the symptoms may demand. 
Dr. Stone's triumphant announcement that " Consumption is 
curahlef is no idle boast. 
Himself his own first patient, he tried experiments that had never 
been tried before, until he became fully convinced that he held in his 
own hands the key which should yet unlock the cruel fetters by which 
this most insidious and relentless foe has for so long a time bound 
his helpless victims. 
Time and experience have richly and abundantly proved that the 
Doctor was not mistaken in his calculations. 
Thousands of letters, filled with the warmest thanks and heartiest 
prayers for his welfare, crowd his desk, dictated by those whom he 
has saved from that most dreadful death, lingering consumption; 
other thousands are every year destroyed to make room for later 
tributes, and the cry is, " Still they come." CONSUMPTION. 
75 
He has wrought a good work. The beautiful ideal home he has 
established is but a nucleus, a yet imperfect model of other homes 
yet to spring up all over the world, where the best and truest laws of 
magnetic health and power may be studied and practiced. . 
There was a theory, that was scarcely more than a superstition, 
among the red men of the forest, that in the immediate vicinity of 
every baleful or poisonous plant grew its antidote, and that wherever 
nature had produced aught that could injure man, side by side with 
it she had set some blessing or benefit to counteract the evil effect. 
Thus the stinging nettle grows beside the dock, and the active 
irritation of the one is quickly allayed by the soothing juice of the 
Fig. 17.-The Ideal Home for the Consumptive. 
other. On the great arid plains, where every spring of water is strongly 
impregnated with alkali, the sage lifts its dusty, blue-green leaves, and 
offers health and strength anew to disordered digestion and weakened 
liver. It may be but a whim and not a manifestation of the great 
law of correspondences; but it suggests that, as the American climate 
is especially productive of lung diseases, special protection against 
and cure for them should also be provided. And in America should 
we find the true Hygienic Home. 
It is not as a mere matter of advertisement that we would call 
attention to the great improvements that have been made in the treat- 
ment of consumption within the last twenty years. 
Some physicians use tar as a principal ingredient for healing the 
mucous membranes by inhalation. 76 
CONSUMPTION. 
But there is an ingredient far more subtle and powerful, that lurks 
in the very heart of the petrified light hidden below the surface of the 
earth, and only made useful and available by the labor and skill of 
the chemist. This subtle agent we have employed for the relief of 
suffering and the cure of consumption. 
Any person can learn how we apply it in the most effectual man- 
ner by sending age and symptoms and receiving full diagnosis of dis- 
ease, with directions for treatment at home, without, in any way, 
interfering with whatever work or business the patient may be able to 
attend to. 
Scrofula is often associated with consumption, probably on ac- 
count of its tendency to form tubercles, and the same treatment will 
often cure both diseases. 
Fig. 18.-The inhaling-tube and apparatus for inhaling or breathing the cold medicated vapors, 
as practiced and used by Dr. Stone, and furnished to all patients under treatment at their homes. 
But we will give a separate section to scrofula, and describe its 
nature, its general symptoms, and the means to be used for its cure. 
The consumptive patient need not despair of regaining health 
merely because symptoms of scrofula appear inseparably connected 
with the progress of his disease. 
Thirty years ago, a certain Dr. Fitch acquired a reputation for 
successfully curing consumption, and one of his principal remedial 
agents was a simple inhaling-tube, so arranged that it introduced 
more air into the lungs than could readily pass out, and, thus ex- 
panded, the diseased portions created new activity there, and actually 
assisted the process of healing the suppurated surfaces. 
We, too, offer the inhaling-tube to our patients, but with it we 
give a powerful vaporous anti-septic, which arrests the process of sup- CONSUMPTION. 
77 
puration, and the best known healing agent, which, finding its way 
to the minute tubercles with which the lining of the bronchial tubes 
is covered, sets up an immediate process of healing, and forms a 
delicate film over the abraded surfaces beneath which the recupera- 
tive organs can do their work. 
True, the lung once destroyed, will not grow again, like the mu- 
tilated claws of a lobster; but if one lobe be left intact, the progress 
of the disease may be stopped, the ulcerated surfaces healed, all effete 
or poisonous matter rendered harm- 
less and discharged, and the breath 
made sweet and pure again, so that 
life may be prolonged until some 
other cause intervenes to stop the 
action of the heart. 
We have written thus at length 
about the cause and cure of con- 
sumption, not only because it is the 
most prevalent disease in America, 
and one of the most universal 
throughout the civilized world, but 
also because we have given it special 
study, and intend, at some not dis- 
tant day, to cure it without any me- 
dicine save the establishing of 
healthy magnetic conditions, by 
which every diseased or weakened 
organ may claim from healthy food, 
fresh air, sunshine, and harmony, 
the sustenance needed to re-establish 
vigorous action and continued 
strength and power. 
Diseased lungs have various forms of manifestations, one of the 
most universal being the cough ; a spasmodic effort to expel some 
foreign or irritating matter. 
But the cough is not always an indication of disease in the lungs. 
It may be caused by irritation or inflammation of the throat, or 
by a simple weakness of the air-cells, so that they do not properly ex- 
pel the vitiated air. 
Fig. 19.-Tubercular Cavity in 
the Act of Healing. 
LARYNGEAL AND BRONCHIAL CONSUMPTION. 
The majority of the laity, or people unread in anatomy and physi- 
ology, are prone to great errors respecting what is really consump- 78 
CONSUMPTION. 
tion, supposing that it means literally consumption of or ulceration 
of the air-cells, in all cases. There is no idea more incorrect, none 
fraught with more direful results ; for by far the larger number of 
cases afflicting the respiratory organs, the air-passages, and at length 
terminate fatally, do not involve in ulceration or consumption the 
lungs proper, the air-cells, and yet convey the idea that thay are all 
one, belonging to the same category. (See plate of respiratory or- 
gans.) 
Fig. 20.-The Larynx, Trachea, branches of the trachea called Bronchia, and minute bronchial 
tubes, the seat of bronchial catarrh or bronchial consumption. 
Excepting to a physician of great practical experience, the symp- 
toms are constantly being confounded ; cough or shortness of breath 
attends both bronchial and tubercular consumption. There may be 
great dryness or tightness of the air-passages, or extreme expectoration, 
and expectoration of mucous, resembling to all intents and purposes 
pus itself, and yet not be pus or denote ulceration in the least, but to 
the skilled physician denoting an extremely abnormal condition of the 
glands of the surfaces only, of the tubes or membranes of the entire 
respiratory apparatus. 
Catarrh, in almost every case, has been the precursor of or premo- 
nition to this alarming condition; that is, the disease commenced with 
a cold in the head, and this primarily caused by specific virus back 
in the blood or fountain of physical life itself ; it was looked upon CONSUMPTION. 
79 
as harmless and self-curativ.e, while, in nine cases out of ten, it is but 
the egg of the viper, not being crushed when it could easily have 
been, and allowed to develop, while insidiously coiling itself about 
the victim, who, w'hen aroused to reflections, finds himself powerless 
to extricate himself. 
This then, is the fatal form of pulmonary affection in America, 
so erroneously associated with tubercular ulceration-when there is 
no ulceration, rightly known as bronchitis-and it is more especially 
where treatment by inhaling the improved system of cold medicated 
vapors of Dr. Stone has been so remarkably curative. 
Where patients are situated to conveniently 
visit the Institution for a personal investigation 
of their case, the different characteristic features 
are easily made known by the aid of modern in- 
strumental facilities; the double stethoscope, 
the laryngoscope, and pulmometer. 
Sometimes very slight peculiarities will show 
that the lungs are abnormally weak. We once 
knew an artist, a lady, fair and rather delicate, 
yet apparently healthy. If she held her palette 
as is the usual custom, upon the thumb of her 
left hand, keeping the left arm in a raised and 
constrained position, a slight hacking cough 
would soon occur, and if, thus warned, she did 
not soon let her arm drop, she would even go so 
far as to raise blood, owing to the exertion of 
the cough, which would rupture some slight 
blood-vessel. 
Immediately upon diagnosing her case, she 
was found to have inherited consumption, and 
its symptoms were already developing. She had 
habitual costiveness, an almost universal trouble 
with consumptives, and slight falling of the 
bowels, with other plain indications of coming 
disease. 
Taken so early, the progress of the disorder 
was at once arrested, and the lady lived to be 
old, but was never able to hold her left hand up in the constrained 
position described. 
We know another lady, now living, an active, ambitious writer, 
who can not hold her arm upon a table to write for ten consecutive 
minutes without producing a hacking cough. 
Fig. 21.-The Double 
Stethoscope. 80 
CONSUMPTION. 
She has tried every possible means for controlling this, but is at 
last obliged to take her work in her lap, sit in a low chair, and 
write with a pencil. She inherits weak lungs and a consumptive ten- 
dency, but understanding these facts so soon and so well, will proba- 
bly by care be enabled to escape pulmonary disease and early death 
thereby. 
When warned by irritation of the throat or slight cough that she 
has taken cold, she inhales the medicated vapors, takes a bath and a 
thorough rubbing, drinks from a pint to a quart of cold water, and 
goes to bed; wakes in the night to find herself in a gentle perspi- 
ration, takes another rub in the morning, inhales, and finds her head 
clear, her skin active, and a general feeling of all right prevailing 
through her whole system. 
This treatment may not do for every one; but the exercise of a 
little care and discretion, and some judgment, will soon decide for 
each one what their individual needs are, and what suits them best 
as simple relief or curative. 
Consumptive patients should try to cultivate a feeling of hopeful- 
ness, as that tends largely to assist the physical functions, especially 
in very sensitive persons. Remember that symptoms are not dange- 
rous, merely because they are plainly indicated, nor are they alarming 
because they are dangerous. 
" While there is life, there is hope," is not so true of any other 
disease in the whole catalogue that human flesh is heir to, as it is of 
consumption, because at a later hour than has hitherto been deemed 
possible, a truce may be held, a suspension of hostilities insisted upon, 
and peace restored. 
Then let no one despair. 
Modern science has done much and spiritual intuition far more 
toward subduing the treacherous enemy which has been so long the 
fear and dread of physician and patient alike. 
And learning to think, to reason upon, and understand one's own 
case and constitutional tendencies, is far better than any amount of 
medicine, either palliative or stimulating. 
All persons, but especially those with any known tendency to 
weak lungs, should make an especial study and practice of standing, 
sitting, and walking erect. 
You know that a post or pillar in a perfectly upright position will 
sustain an immense weight without injury; but let it be thrown ever 
so little out of the perpendicular, and half the weight it has been 
accustomed to support will crush it instanter. 
Remember that the lower limbs or legs are two strong jointed CONSUMPTION. 
81 
pillars, upholding the trunk or body. Through this runs the spinal 
column, rising firm, flexible, and wonderfully delicate to the neck, 
where it is met by the head. 
How much the human head weighs may not be exactly known ; 
but it is easy to see that it is a heavy weight to be supported by so 
slight a structure as the throat. See to it, then, that the spinal col- 
umn be kept in an erect position, to avoid all unnecessary strain it 
may have in up-bearing the head. Hold the throat as nearly straight 
as possible too, that the air may pass with the utmost freedom to and 
from the lungs, and that the lungs themselves may have full play 
and not be crowded upon by the shoulder-blades, or forced down 
against the heart and stomach. 
Practice any simple gymnastic or calisthenic exercises, and make 
the lungs do their part. 
Let every person make it their invariable habit to breathe through 
the nostrils and not through the open mouth, as many are in the habit 
of doing, especially at night when asleep ; also, to avoid sleeping 
with the arms raised over the head-a practice very productive of 
heart diseases; both of which can not be too severely condemned. 
One of the simplest apparatuses for expanding the chest and giv- 
ing mobility and strength to the lungs, the air-cells-, is that devised by 
Dupuytren, as here illustrated. (See plate, page 82.) 
The cost is so slight, the construction so simple, it can and should 
be found in the chamber of every consumptive, every invalid, and 
every one following an in-door or sedentary employment. In stormy 
or unpleasant weather, and during the winter months when the 
needed exercise and recreation can not be obtained out, here, with 
this apparatus many hours of the day should be occupied ; espe- 
cially just before retiring, should a half-hour or an hour be so spent, 
sufficient to produce gentle fatigue, which will conduce to tranquil 
and refreshing sleep, beyond any opiate or chloral hydrate to give. 
We have known several of our patients to increase their vital 
capacity 100 cubic inches in four months' time, as demonstrated by 
the pulmometer. 
This philosophical and ingeniously contrived instrument is con- 
structed on correct scientific principles. It consists of a glass 
reservoir for containing air, graduated into cubic inches, standing in 
a bowl of water, with a valve and stop-cock. The person testing his 
capacity instantly exhausts his breath at the time of putting the 
tube or mouth-piece into his lips ; the valve is at once opened, and 
the lungs arc filled exclusively from the air contained in the jar; 
water takes the place of the vacuum formed by the air passing out 82 
CONSUMPTION. 
Fig. 22.-The Chest-Expander. CONSUMPTION. 
83 
into the person's lungs. From experiment on many thousands, it 
has been demonstrated that the average capacity of males, in health, 
is 224 cubic inches, and of females, about 175 or 180 cubic inches ; 
accordingly it will be readily seen that the lessening or falling off 
in the vital capacity will demonstrate to a moral certainty either 
structural or functional disease. The incipient process of tubercle 
or scrofulous deposit in the minute air-cells of the lungs can be 
Fig. 23.-The Pulmometer, or Lung-Tester. 
detected by this scientific method earlier than by any other ; hence 
its wonderful importance in discriminating the true condition of each 
case, and in pointing out a timely aid to arrest its further progress, 
for the want of which vast many cases would be allowed to run to a 
melancholy fatality. Truly medicine is a noble art when it enlists 
the hand of genius, who by device and invention causes it to become 84 
CONSUMPTION. 
a healing art indeed, by staying the march of such a fated and dread 
malady. She will now take her place among her sister sciences in 
onward progress to new developments that will ameliorate the 
condition of suffering humanity, and cause joy and happiness to take 
the place of misery and woe. SEVENTH SECTION. 
SCROFULA. 
Meaning of the word-Manifested in indolent glandular tumors-Usually a 
disease of childhood-Wickedly hereditary-its tendency to hydrocephalus 
or dropsy of the brain-Barbarous remedies of the old-school physicians- 
Only proper cure, out-door life and magnetism ; a plain, nutritious diet- 
Judgment in frequency of food-Starvation diet of hydropathists will not 
do-Mesenteric consumption a form of scrofula-Treatment for-Rickets, 
another form-Indications and cure-Too little lime in bones-Medicated 
bathing for-The duty of every man and woman respecting propagation. 
HIS word is derived from the Latin Scrofa, which 
originally signified a raiser or breeder of swine; but 
afterward came to be used to signify a female swine, 
or breeding-sow. It is supposed to have some loath- 
some reference to pork, or swine's flesh, but it does 
not. 
True, the tuberculous deposits that usually indicate 
a scrofulous-condition of the system are often' found 
in swine, more particularly, perhaps, in the female 
when breeding; but the reason is a perfectly natural 
one. 
The pig is an animal that, from its very nature 
and habits, needs plenty of exercise, and, especially, contact with the 
fresh earth, which it turns up with its snout in search of its 
normal food. But the domesticated swine, closely penned in a small, 
damp, perhaps poorly ventilated place, adopts, from necessity, a 
sluggish, unnatural mode of life ; its lungs are not properly exer- 
cised, the blood becomes impure, and tuberculous deposits are the 
inevitable result. This is not the fault of the animal, but of its sur- 
roundings. 
Scrofula usually manifests itself in indolent glandular tumors, 
which occur more frequently in the neck than but are 
often found about the joints and tendons. 86 
SCROFULA. 
These tumors suppurate slowly, and are with the greatest diffi- 
culty scattered or healed. 
Scrofula is usually a disease of childhood or early life, and if it 
does not manifest itself before the age of maturity, a person may 
feel a tolerable degree of assurance that he will never be troubled 
by it. Still it often becomes worse as age advances, and develops 
more troublesome and distressing forms of disease. 
The general method of treating scrofulous swellings is, if they are 
hard and painless, to rub them with liniment that contains much 
iodine, or to paint them with tincture of iodine, thus trying to make* 
them disperse and scatter their diseased substance, to be carried 
along by the blood. 
If the swellings are soft, and seem likely to suppurate, that pro- 
cess is usually hastened by hot poultices and fomentations. These 
tumors are sometimes opened, and the unhealthy secretions allowed 
to escape. 
The treatment that should be adopted is that which will give 
most magnetic strength and vitality. The obvious demand of the 
system is for fresh air, earth, and water, the primal physical 
elements. 
A big pine-tree, whose balsam-freighted leaves or needles and 
cones have fallen in the same place for twenty years, is a better 
physician than all the drugs the apothecary can offer. 
Pull off the little one's shoes ami 
stockings, give him a spade or a hoe, and 
set him at work in the warm sunshine, 
with his bare feet in contact with the 
medicated earth. 
If he lies down to rest there when 
weary, so much the better ; only, if he 
fall asleep, be careful that he is covered 
a trifle more warmly, and does not take 
cold. Encourage exercise and exertion ; 
it will make the blood flow faster, keep the lungs at work, and carry 
away all unhealthy and abnormal deposits from the system. 
Scrofula, in every form, is wickedly hereditary, and should be 
guarded against in every way. 
It is in itself a sign of weakness, and of course weakness can 
not breed strength. Any thing that strengthens or tones up the 
system tends to eradicate scrofula. One well-known and quite suc- 
cessful agent in the treatment of scrofula is cod-liver oil, or the 
-purest and most translucent quality of sweet-oil, or olive-oil; but the 
Fig. 24.-Work Out-Doors. SCROFULA. 
87 
reason for this is, that the oils are very nutritious, supply little waste, 
and do not, like most forms of excessively nutritious food, clog the 
system, and stop the action of the secretive organs ; but rather, by 
keeping the bowels open, tend to the more rapid use of all the 
natural and healthy secretions. 
Oil and eggs, says a well-known French physician, should be used 
in scrofula as a regular article of diet, as well as a medicine. 
Eggs should be boiled for two or three minutes only, when they 
are soft and easily digested. 
They should then be salted slightly, and eaten with bread and 
butter, boiled rice, or other light, palatable food. 
The oil should be given gradually, commencing with one half tea- 
spoonful every third night, taken with a little lemonade, or wine and 
water. 
If it persistently produces absolute nausea, as it does in some 
stomachs, there is no use in looking for beneficial results from it; 
but if it can be taken and retained in the stomach, the dose may be 
repeated more frequently, and in larger quantities, until a table- 
spoonful may be taken every day, not only without injury, but with 
positively good results. 
Among other distressing and fatal disorders that scrofula seems 
to be the parent of, is hydrocephalus, or " water on the brain." 
This, too, associated as it is with scrofula, is merely an indication 
of weakness, a positive assertion that the secretive and excretive 
organs are not doing their work properly. The water that should be 
separated from the blood, and carried away by the kidneys, blad- 
der, lungs, and skin, is allowed to accumulate, and naturally 
seeks the head as farthest from any disturbance by the action of 
other organs. It is a disease of childhood, usually occurring at less 
than six years, and rarely after twelve ; sometimes commencing 
before birth even, thus rendering the confinement dangerous and 
difficult. It has been known to take place late in life, when the 
parting of the bones of the skull, and consequent swelling of the 
head by the inside pressure of the water, had become impossible. 
But paralysis or idiocy is sure to result from this. 
It is reported that Dean Swift died from hydrocephalus, and that 
for three years before his death he did not speak at all. 
The premonitory symptoms in this disease are, unnatural drowsi- 
ness, a rolling of the head from side to side, quickened pulse, fever- 
ishness, capricious appetite, and a morbid state of all the nutritive 
functions ; following these symptoms come pains in the head, gene- 88 
SCROFULA. 
rally sharp and darting, causing the child to cry out suddenly when 
apparently fast asleep. 
The head usually begins to swell soon after these pains occur, 
and then the physician really gives up all hope of saving the life of 
the little sufferer, though he seldom says so. 
If the parents are wealthy, and ready or even urgent to have 
hope kept alive until the latest moment, some most barbarous surgi- 
cal operations, or rather experiments, are often tried, such as blister- 
ing the back, opening the head by cutting through the scalp, to 
allow the accumulated fluid to pass off, or cupping and blistering 
behind the ears, or on the soles of the feet. 
Fortunately for the little one, the stage of sensitive agony is soon 
passed, and often these operations are performed on a body already 
senseless by paralysis or stupor, so that the sympathetic relatives and 
attendants are really the worst sufferers. Even spasmodic twitchings 
and convulsions are not always indications of suffering, as they often 
occur when the brain has become so nearly paralyzed that none of 
the senses have their normal action. 
But the propei- treatment for hydrocephalus is the magnetic 
treatment. 
Keep the hands and feet warm, rub the back downward until a 
thorough glow is visible, then put the patient in bed, with a hot 
brick wrapped in flannel or some equivalent for this at his feet, and 
enough warm coverings over him to excite copious perspiration. 
Keep him there for an hour, and upon taking him out, rub again 
briskly but gently. Be careful that the bowels and kidneys act 
freely, and encourage them to do so by any simple medicine. 
Hydrocephalus is one of the troubles that yields to a careful 
treatment by hydropathy. 
Packing in a wet-sheet for an houi- and washing off with cold 
water, the sitz-bath and the shower-bath are all beneficial, if cau- 
tiously and judiciously managed. 
Any thing that will help the kidneys, lungs, and skin to separate 
the serous or aqueous matter from the blood, and carry it out of the 
system. 
Any treatment that succeeds well with consumption may also be 
used to advantage with scrofula. 
For that reason, cold inhalations should be used to strengthen the 
lungs, quicken the circulation, and assist the action of the liver and 
other organs, as consumption itself is a manifestation of scrofulous 
disease in the formation of tubercles. 
The scrofulous patient needs light, rich food, in moderate quanti- SCROFULA. 
89 
ties at a time, but partaken of frequently, to prevent the diseased 
humor from exhausting the blood or feeding on the gastric and 
other juices that promote digestion. 
In this respect, the ordinary starvation diet of the hydropathic 
or Grahamite or vegetarian schools, is the worst possible treatment 
for scrofulous patients, as it keeps them in a constant state of torture 
and misery, suffering that worst of all horrors, the pangs of actual 
hunger. Gradually the use of meat as an article of diet will die out 
and be superseded by fruits and grains ; but there is no need of sacri- 
ficing valuable lives and precious health to that or any other merely 
fanatical idea. Nor is it an end so very greatly to be desired, when 
we look at ultimate results. 
The Chinese, for instance, live almost entirely upon a vegetable 
diet, and though they are quiet and inoffensive, though their 
tempers are not fierce, nor their passions ungovernable, yet, to use 
an expressive phrase, they do not amount to much. They are not 
great thinkers, true philosophers, or quick, intuitive inventors. 
Let us wait patiently then for nature to do her own work, while 
we each act conscientiously toward ourselves and each other. 
There are two distinct temperaments in which scrofulous diseases 
are equally liable to manifest themselves. 
These are the sanguine or serous, and the phlegmatic or melan- 
cholic. 
In the sanguine temperament, we find the fair delicate complexion, 
bright rosy cheeks, blue or soft gray eyes, hair fine, usually long, and 
of a light blonde or reddish color. The intellect is often precocious 
when the child is young, and the brain seems to develop rapidly. 
In the phlegmatic temperament, the skin is usually dark and 
coarse, either flushing easily or wearing habitually a dark, ruddy 
hue. 
In cases of this kind, the mind is usually dull and torpid, acting 
slowly, and with a conscious hesitancy or uncertainty. Children of 
known or even suspected scrofulous tendency should never be encou- 
rayed to study or make any continued mental exertion. 
If naturally forward and quick to learn, they should be restrained 
as much as possible ; if dull and averse to study, they should be given 
plenty of out-door exercise, pleasant, interesting sports, and every 
thing should be done to keep the mind pleasantly and happily em- 
ployed. 
Scrofulous constitutions often produce in children the narrow, 
projecting chest, which is called pigeon-breasted or sometimes 
chicken-breasted. 90 
SCROFULA. 
The only remedy for this is to take unusual care in expanding the 
chest, fully inflating the lungs, and throwing the arms back, to bring 
the ribs and sternum into a proper and healthy position, by daily use 
of the chest-expander and gymnasium, as figured in the cut. 
The abdomen is often abnormally enlarged, the limbs wasted, the 
circulation sluggish or languid, the breath hot, fetid, and unpleasant. 
The bowels are irregular in their action, with a constant tendency 
toward costiveness, alternating with severe and sometimes long- 
continued attacks of diarrhea. 
Fig. 24.-Form of Chest-Expander. 
For this, give warm drinks, and plenty of fruit with the diet; 
cover the whole person, especially the back and abdomen, with flan- 
nel, keep the extremities warm, and insist upon regular exercise until 
the whole body feels the glow of quickened perspiration. Rubbing 
with a soft flesh-brush or towel is good, and with a warm healthy 
hand is best of all. 
In all cases of scrofula, the epidermis is very liable to irritation 
and eruption. This more commonly occurs behind the ears, under the 
knees, in the bend of the elbows ; in fact, wherever any extra warmth 
or chafing is liable to take place, and the best local relief and cure 
for it now known is a plentiful use of a diluted solution of carbolic SCROFULA. 
91 
acid, or, better yet, a free use of carbolic soap, which is cleansing, 
healing, and purifying. 
The skin of the face too, being constantly exposed to the atmo- 
sphere, alternately heated and chilled, the pores become closed, and 
the waste matter that should pass off remains to cause small pustules 
and general roughness or harshness of the skin. 
A good local treatment for this very annoying form of irritation 
is, after washing the face with carbolic or other healing soap, to make 
a thin paste of common starch, apply it to the face wet, let it remain 
until dry, then rub off lightly with a soft towel. This application of 
starch may be used with benefit even when the face is not washed, 
as the gentle rubbing tends to make the skin firm and smooth, thus 
improving both its texture and appearance. 
The starch too fills the pores with a healthy vegetable substance 
which absorbs the insensible perspiration and can be readily re- 
moved. 
There are various othei- forms of scrofulous diagnosis, too nume- 
rous to be mentioned here ; but in whatever form they appear, they 
demand the same general treatment, varied to suit individual cases. 
It is best to watch children who seem in any way delicate, for 
indications of scrofula, and at once commence treatment of a hygie- 
nic and strengthening nature for it. Iodide of iron and similar 
drugs are usually used to strengthen the blood, but we do not 
approve of them. 
Sarsaparilla, dock-root, Peruvian bark, and other vegetable prepa- 
rations are far more healthy and less injurious. 
When scrofula takes the form of mesenteric disease, or mesenteric 
consumption, the mesenteric glands are the seat of the disease. 
There are more than a hundred of these glands situated upon the 
mesentery, which is a broad fold of peritoneum, the great serous 
membrane of the abdomen. 
The mesentery serves to hold the small intestines in their place, 
and the glands aid the process of digestion. When these are 
diseased, the food passes through the stomach and intestines without 
being digested, the body is not nourished, the patient grows feverish 
and emaciated in spite of a ravenous appetite. 
The abdomen is hard and swollen, and sometimes dropsical symp- 
toms appear. 
Nothing will so guickly arrest the progress of mesenteric consump- 
tion as good brisk magnetic treatment patiently followed. 
The rubbing of the abdomen with stimulating liniments or iodine 92 
SCROFULA. 
ointment, is known to have a beneficial effect ; but the persistent 
rubbing is more than half the cure. 
Fine sweet-oil or cod-liver-oil should be given if the patient can 
bear it, especial care should be taken of the bowels and kidneys, and 
the same general rules adhered to, that are given in other cases of 
scrofula. 
One more special manifestation of this terrible disease we will 
refer to here, and that is rickets ; more properly termed rachitis, 
from the Greek word rhachis, the spine. So called because a peculiar 
form of spinal curvature often results from this form of disease. 
The bones are all liable to 
imperfect formation and ab- 
normal softening, caused by 
lack of lime or earthy salts 
in the structure of the bones. 
The weight of the body often 
causes the bones of the legs 
to bend, and the bones of the 
pelvis become so distorted 
even in very young girls, be- 
fore the age of six years, that 
future child-bearing would be 
distressingly painful and even 
perilous to the life of both 
mother and child. With rick- 
ets often appears some form 
of hydrocephalus, so that the 
two diseases are often con- 
founded; and as they spring 
from one common mother, 
scrofula, the treatment for both should be the same, excepting that 
in case of rickets the child should be guarded against walking or 
running about much. 
The weight of the body should be kept off the limbs as much as 
possible, and even sitting for a long time in one position should be 
avoided. 
Lying down or reclining is the best position, and pillows of husks 
or grass are better than feathers, unless there is decided tenderness 
of the flesh or soreness of the joints. 
If the patient can bear sea-bathing during the summer and early 
autumn, it will prove very beneficial; but if it produces a continued 
Fig. 25.-Rachitis ok Rickets. SCROFULA. 
93 
feeling of chilliness, and there is no supervening warmth or glow, 
it must be discontinued at once. 
Bathing in salt-water or in water impregnated with alkali, as 
soda or ammonia, will prove an advantage in cases of feverishness 
and marked debility. 
For methods of treatment suited to each individual case, send 
description of leading symptoms, with age, temperament, sex, etc., 
of the patient to Dr. Stone, and receive medicines all prepared, with 
directions for using j also directions for magnetic treatment at home 
if desired, and surgical apparatus for supporting the spine, straight- 
ening and strengthening the limbs, guarding 
the ankles, which are especially liable to lo- 
cal inflammation and displacement of the 
joints, and all other needful assistance. 
It is always well to state if the disease 
be hereditary, if it proceeds from the father 
or mother, and what form of scrofula either 
or both parents have manifested. 
It is sometimes better to give the child a 
magnetic change by taking it quite away 
from home, giving it change of air and 
scene, and filling the mind with new 
thoughts. 
Stimulants should be avoided. 
Some physicians recommend a little 
beer, taken regularly every day ; but it is 
liable to act too much upon the liver, pro- 
duce biliousness, and cause a heavy, sleepy 
feeling, an almost painful flushing of the 
face, and constant pain in the head. This 
should be considered conclusive evidence that the system is not in 
a condition to assimilate a beverage so powerful either as a tonic 
or excitant. Some physicians strongly recommend the use of oysters 
as an article of diet, claiming that they contain lime enough to affect 
the blood. But this would depend much upon the physical condi- 
tion and age of the patient. 
Eggs, oil, fat beef and mutton, corn, rice, and wheat, I know to 
be good. 
If soups or broth be eaten, they should be made rich with the 
meat-bone and marrow, but seasoned slightly. 
Heating spices and condiments are bad for scrofula. Fish is 
good. The phosphorus that forms so important an element in fish 
Fig. 26.-Illustrating instru- 
ment to support the spine or 
weakened limb. 94 
SCROFULA. 
is also a principal ingredient in bones, and feeds the blood with bone- 
making substance. 
Scrofulous patients should live out of doors as much as possible. 
Sunshine and contact with the fresh earth being among the very best 
magnetic medicines to strengthen the blood, promote digestion, assist 
the action of the heart, lungs, and brain, as well as to give fresh 
vigor and strength to the secretive and excretive organs. 
But it is always best to consult some physician of known skill 
and experience when the symptoms first appear, as a few months of 
proper and judicious treatment and training may save a lifetime of 
misery. 
If death were the worst result to be feared, we would not attach 
so much importance to medical treatment; but years of deformity 
and torture are far worse than death', and it is to relieve the human 
family from such suffering, that we insist upon these two rules : 
First. It is the duty of every man and woman to see that they do 
not perpetuate hereditary scrofula. 
Secondly. They should look for the first symptoms of scrofulous 
tendency, and spare no time or trouble to eradicate every germ of 
the disease. 
William Hewson. EIGHTH SECTION. 
ODYLIC FORCE-ONLY ANOTHER NAME FOR MAGNET- 
ISM, THE FORCE OF THE SPIRIT. 
CARL REICHENBACH. 
D! YES. That was what I called it. I might have 
improved its orthography by adding another d ; for it 
was, of all things in the universe, the most decidedly 
Odd! 
And such a chase as it led me ; a perfect will-o'-the- 
wisp, flying in the face of every known, well-estab- 
lished, and firmly-believed-in rule, and yet constantly 
and persistently asserting itself ; peeping out at every 
angle and turn and corner in the strange superstructure 
of life, taunting but still evading me. 
I called it an imponderable agent, and wondered 
why scientific men did not take more notice of it when 
it explained so many hitherto mysterious and puzzling phenomena. 
I was, myself, sensitive to this peculiar influence, though my ex- 
periments were made with others. 
I think nothing but the most positive personal realization of the 
mysterious power would have made me continue my experiments and 
investigations so long. But I felt the magnetic influence of different 
metals and of mineral-springs, when none of the outward senses gave 
any indication of their proximity. I was deeply interested in geology, 
and seemed to feel the spirit of the rocks striving to express itself to 
the human understanding. 
Once, when I was with a dear friend who died, I saw a faint, 
luminous substance rise and gather above the lifeless form; but I did 
not see it take human shape. It seemed to pass off like a cloud, 
growing brighter and fainter by turns, as it rose and floated in the 96 
ODYLIC FORCE. 
I could see it pass through the wall of the room, still retaining 
its faint diaphanous lustre. 
It puzzled me very much and set me to experimenting with and 
writing about the new principle which I had discovered, and which I 
called Od, or Odic force. 
If I had, at that time, understood or believed in the existence of 
the individual spirit as separate from the body, it would have saved 
me much time and thought and trouble, much useless experiment, and 
many false deductions from wrong premises. 
I know now that the spirit is a separate entity, a real and perfect 
individualism, with a mission reaching far beyond its brief life on 
earth. 
I know, too (and that is why I try to express my thoughts in 
this way), that the spirit is the dominating power over all material 
things. 
I believed in a system of healing by " Odic forceand if I had 
remained long enough on earth, I should have endeavored to demon- 
strate that system and reduce it to a science. I am glad now that 
I did not do this. It would have been but another half-step, taken 
while groping blindly in the dark. 
I was an earnest student in Animal Magnetism; but I knew no- 
thing of Spiritual Magnetism. 
Whatever work I do now in the way of healing shall be to make 
the " Odic force," or animal magnetism (for they are really but two 
terms for one and the same principle), not the culminating essence 
of success, but merely the ground-work on which a brighter and better 
work shall be wrought. 
When people learn the true power of the spirit, the desire for sin 
and wrong-doing will be taken away from them, and every tendency 
of the heart will be toward progression and wisdom. 
Atheism is not worse in its way than the blind infatuation of re- 
ligious prejudice, which sets up a narrow boundary for the soul, and 
says, "Thus far and no farther shalt thou travel toward the light." 
And neither of these are so bad or prove such stubborn barriers 
toward human progress as the custom which endeavors to reduce to 
a scientific exactness the delicate and varied disorganizations of that 
intricate mechanism, the human frame. 
In my various experiments with a certain sensitive subject, a 
woman who would now be considered only a very ordinary " medium," 
but whose power seemed quite supernatural to me then, when I held 
up a bit of magnetized iron, she could see arising from it a faint, 
white flame ; but when I held an exactly similar bit that was not ODYLIC FORCE. 
97 
magnetized, she would shudder slightly as if suddenly chilled, and 
would see nothing. I have changed these so rapidly that I could 
not tell which was the magnet myself, and yet her keen power never 
failed to indicate instantly which one I was holding, often before it 
had been held up to view. 
I did not then know how simple and reasonable a solution might 
be given of the whole mystery. 
I did not know that the principle which I called " Odic force" 
was merely one manifestation of the spirit, while the whole material 
constitution of man is but another evidence of the same force or 
power. 
I studied geology and chemistry with more earnest zeal, and per- 
haps to better purpose, than physiology ; but some of the most im- 
portant facts in physiological science had not been discovered at the 
time when I inhabited a mortal form ; and though I was somewhat 
intuitive, I did not perceive the coming light in that direction. 
For instance, it has long been known that man, merely considered 
as a so far perfected animal, requires means for the perception of 
time, space, force, and quality. 
This is accomplished by the organs and nerves of sense, and they 
are usually ranged in the following order : 
The ear is the organ of hearing, by which time in sound is mea- 
sured ; the eye is the • organ of seeing, which measures or perceives 
space ; the nerves of sensation, which constitute the tactile apparatus, 
are distributed over the whole surface of the body, but concentrate 
most powerfully in some sensitive region, as the ends of the fingers. 
These are used for the perception of force ; and the mouth and nose, 
forming conjointly the organs of tasting and smelling, are used for 
determining the chemical qualities of bodies ; that of smelling ad- 
dressing itself to substances in the vaporous and gaseous states ; and 
that of tasting to such as are liquid, or may be acted upon and dis- 
solved by the saliva. 
But apart from all these mere outward senses is the great sympa- 
thetic nerve, of which I knew nothing. 
Strange as it may seem, this nerve or ganglion (for it is in reality 
a whole system by itself) has the power of regulating, equalizing, 
and balancing the nervous force ; even storing up, as it were, all 
transient and temporary excesses of nervous power, and thus being 
ready to supply all transient deficiencies. 
It would be interesting to the student, the anatomist, and physi- 
ologist, if I could give here my own detailed experiments and obser- 
vations since reaching the higher life, in regard to this strange store- 98 
ODYLIC FORCE. 
house of brain-material; but I have no space here for scientific de- 
tail. 
Suffice it to say, therefore, that this mystic gray ganglion of 
nerves, slow to awaken to irritation, or to convey sensation to the 
brain, is to my " Odic force" exactly what the bit of iron is to the 
magnetism that dwells within it-the body to the soul. All that 
was tangible or demonstrable or measurable about Od, per se, lay in 
that intricate and yet simple plexus called the sympathetic nerve. 
The rest flitted away with the spirit, and no human perception can 
follow it. 
Physiologists tell in how few seconds the cerebro-spinal fluid can 
be absorbed and reproduced in the brain in times of great nervous 
excitement or excessive mental exertion, or even of physical labor, 
when so performed that it acts with depleting influence upon the 
brain. And it is quite a stride toward the uniting of physical phe- 
nomena with spiritual effort, when they even try to give to brain- 
action a character not wholly muscular and nervous. 
Some writer says, " The cerebro-spinal fluid, the quantity of which 
has been estimated at two ounces, is very readily absorbed or ex- 
hausted, and as rapidly re-secreted. But the functional activity of the 
brain depends on its copious supply of arterial blood; it being com- 
puted that one fifth of all the arterial blood in circulation is sent to 
this organ. 
The act of adjustment, therefore, between the blood and the 
cerebro-spinal fluid requires a certain period of time for its comple- 
tion, and this affords an explanation of the fact that the brain can 
not be brought at once or instantaneously to its maximum action. 
Thus, as all persons observe, when we undertake any unusual 
mental or intellectual task, there is a certain preparatory period to be 
passed through with, which is usually termed " collecting or com- 
posing the thoughts." 
"Few topics," says the same writer, "are more worthy of the 
attention of the physiologist than that of the variable psychical 
powers of man ; and yet few have been more carelessly overlooked.'1'' 
The psychical powers of man : this is only another word for 
the spiritual power. It is only dodging the form of expression, and 
not changing the idea. 
The life that hides in the flint is brought out when it is sharply 
struck with a bit of steel, though steel and flint are both but cold 
and apparently lifeless masses. 
Two vines grow fruitless and barren on the two sides of a high 
wall, year after year ; but when they reach the top of the wall, and ODYLIC FORCE. 
99 
their tendrils intertwine, and the breath of their blooming mingles 
the one with the other, then the sterile flowers grow fruitful, and 
strange to tell, the autumn finds grapes purpling on both vines. 
This is the Odic force that puzzled me so, manifesting itself in 
mineral and vegetable life. 
In man we find yet higher possibilities ; and if to-day I felt 
assured that one wish, and only one, could be granted me, how 
earnestly would I pray that man and woman might mutually learn 
to respect their own highest impulses, and never to fall below them. 
The odylic force gives life to every red corpuscle afloat in human 
veins ; that throbs in the heart, revivifies in the lungs, and thinks in 
the brain ; that, seeking further expression, reaches out through the 
dim spaces of material life for its other self, the duality which 
shall make complete the unity of its imperfect existence, and then 
behold another life is evoked, another atom individualized. As the 
true aim of life is to be happy, to enjoy existence, so its ultimate 
perfection in result is to reproduce itself, to authorize the existence 
of other lives that may in their turn be happy and useful. Strange 
widening spiralty of time and progress, toward the infinite per- 
fection ! 
But when men learn that the times to which they attach such 
vague importance are merely the manifestation of a few strong 
minds grasping at and apparently controlling many weak ones ; 
when they remember that they may each leave print or picture on 
the plastic mould of to-day, to be hardened into imperishable ada- 
mant or wiped out forever as time breathes upon it, then will they 
learn that the present hour is the only hour worth cherishing, the in- 
dwelling active power and force the only force that can be counted 
on for sequences and results. 
No mortal, living in the material sphere, can comprehend the 
effort, the continued exertion, the long and patient progress, by 
which the disembodied spirits have learned to control the material 
forces which they have become separated from by that change 
called death. 
And one of the triumphs they have achieved is the power over 
disease. 
Faintly foreshadowed a hundred years ago, when the mysterious 
magnet was discovered ; frankly asserted by Swedenborg, when he 
talked far beyond himself; dimly hinted at by medical writers, only 
to be denounced as a delusion or ridiculed as a phantasm of disor- 
dered imaginations ; grasped at by science, but constantly evading 
that grasp ; appealing to the reason, yet refusing to be reasoned out 100 
ODYLIC FORCE. 
of sight; the spirit struggled on, content to know that the great 
problem of progress was being solved by their aid, either with or 
without their individual volition. 
Thus are we working still, and every passing year bears away its 
quota of superstition and prejudice to the realm of oblivion, leaving 
us more freedom, and consequently more power to act. The ideas 
that so vaguely teased and tormented us when we were in the ele- 
mentary condition of physical life are all as plain as printed words 
now. 
Who has not wondered when a child, what made the moon climb 
up from the sea, round and bright, or the sun slip down the western 
sky and hide away ? And who, grown to mature life, has not ceased 
to wonder at these things ? 
It is so with us. All through the earth-life, we wonder what is 
the relation of spirit and matter, and how we live, and why we die, 
and what next. Bid having reached the "nextf all is plain and clear 
to us. 
Having lived our allotted three or four score years of tuition and 
experience on earth, we pass on to a higher class, and many of the 
puzzling and seemingly inexplainable problems that perplexed and 
exasperated us become self-evident facts, demonstrated by the simple 
realization of our new existence. 
Ach weil! I can not explain this to you now. I can only ask 
the poor, groping scientists of the day to give over searching for new 
words and terms, in which to hide their mystified ignorance, to talk 
no more of odylic force and psychical effects or conditions ; but to 
accept the phenomena of life in all its subtle simplicity ; to study the 
manifestations of the spirit, both embodied and disembodied ; and to 
allow us to communicate with them, not in spite of every obstacle 
they can place in our way, but rather by aid of every advantage and 
assistance that they can reasonably render us. 
I did not intend, when I commenced this article, to write an essay 
on spiritualism ; but spiritualism is attracting so large a portion of 
attention from the public at the present time, that I let that be my 
excuse for drifting with the tide ; and I hereby assure all casual 
readers that a thorough and candid study of spirit manifestations, 
even as imperfect and doubtful of accuracy as they are now, will 
result in convincing any reasonable investigator that the embodied 
spirit has a power to act, without the use of its physical habili- 
ments ; and the disembodied spirit commands a realm of thought 
and life as yet unreached and unexplored, but waiting with a wealth 
more precious and a power more potent than any hidden mine ever ODYLIC FORCE. 
101 
held. This is the true "fountain of perpetual youth," for which 
Ponce de Leon sought in vain ; this the true philosopher's stone, 
that transmutes all the baser aims and purposes of life to the pure 
gold of spiritual truth and reason. 
All that I knew of magnetism when I lived on earth, and all I 
have learned since I came here, sinks into comparative insignificance 
beside that great fundamental fact, which, once established in the 
mind, changes past and future, makes life a blessing, and eternity a 
vantage-ground of usefulness. This fact is the existence of the 
spirit of man after the body is laid aside, and its perfect individu- 
ality and identity. Through the recognition of this power, comes 
the thorough control of all physical inharmonies that cause disease, 
as well as all mental idiosyncrasies that are in themselves manifesta- 
tions of a diseased condition. 
A good magnetic physician should have a realizing sense of the 
fact that he draws his suppdy of healing power from a higher source 
of intelligence than his own brain and will. Otherwise, he will soon 
become weak and exhausted, and fail to recuperate rapidly. 
The air is magnetic ; so is the earth ; and the sunshine, which 
is the emanations from the sun uniting with the emanations from the 
earth to produce light and heat, is permeated through and through 
with magnetic power ; blit it needs a wise and kind intelligence to 
apply that power properly to human wants and needs. 
This intelligence is possessed by the disembodied spirits overlook- 
ing the many blunders and mistakes they made in earth-life, clinging 
only to the few forward steps they took, and the many they tried to 
take, reaching onward forever toward a higher and better state. 
We have not infinite power or infallible wisdom; but we have the 
experience of earth-life and an extended field of observation here, 
by which we may go on studying and experimenting. 
Magnetology, psychology, and biology puzzled me much, because 
I tried to consider them all as mere manifestations of physical force. 
I did not recognize any distinct and separate spiritual force. If I 
had allowed that strange, prescient voice in my soul to speak, I should 
have been saved years of useless speculation and experiment, years of 
hopeless trouble in the way of terms and meaningless distinctions, of 
words and significations. 
I claimed that the odylic force was a new discovery. It was as 
old as the primeval voice that said, "Let there be lightf and there 
was light. 
So the voice of the spirit speaks to-day in the form of magne- 
tism, and says to the sick and suffering, " Behold the light." " Be- 102 
ODYLIC FORCE. 
hold your way made plain through the wilderness, from pain and 
weakness to health and strength. Behold the vigor of youth given 
back to the wasted springs of manhood ; behold the charm of girl- 
hood's freshness looking out from the weary eyes of the matron." 
" I am the way and the life," said the magnetic Healer long ago, 
who made the lame to walk, the blind to see, and even the appa- 
rently dead to rise again with a renewed lease of life. He spoke by 
the power of the spirit, and that power lives not for any special age 
or people, dies not at any stated time. It is ! 
It speaks to-day, it will speak forever, and " He that hath ears 
let him ear." NINTH SECTION. 
SOME ASTOUNDING REMARKS BY LAENNEC ON THE 
CAUSES FOR AND THE CURABILITY OF PUL- 
MONARY CONSUMPTION. 
COME, dear friend and brother, to add to such testi- 
mony as you have already received the little I have 
to say upon this momentous subject. Consumption is 
curable, as you have decided. But it is also pre- 
ventible. 
O my brother ! my heart aches, and it is enough 
to make many a harder heart than mine ache to look 
abroad over this beautiful world and see the unneces- 
sary suffering and sorrow in it, the shame and disgrace 
that comes of false lives falsely lived ; and to the 
women, to the mothers, must our appeal be made. 
It is true that medical statistics show that as many 
men (or nearly as many) die every year with consumption as women. 
But all those men were born of women, were dragged about in pro- 
cess of formation, nine tenths of them crowded down below a tight- 
fitting corset, and heated and smothered under superabundant cloth- 
ing about the mother's hips, while chilled and shriveled perhaps by 
lack of proper warmth about the throat and chest. 
I have the truth in my heart, mon frbre, when I tell you the dress 
of our women to-day is an abomination to the eye and a disgrace to 
the pure thought. In a time when (we hope for the honor of man- 
hood) men were more sensual than they are to-day, it was decided 
that women with full, wide hips were more inclined to sexual pleasures 
and excesses than those who were thin and narrow. As woman was 
then (and in a certain sense now is) the property of man, and de- 
pendent upon him, she learned that if she could be kept for the 
pleasures of the couch, she would not be expected to work so hard 
and long in the fields or at the fireside. So the rude blanket was 104 
PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 
draped in heavier folds about the hips, and cushions were slyly 
hidden there; and when they learned that lessening the size of the 
waist made the hips appear larger by contrast, tightly-fitting gar- 
ments were first introduced. So the idea has gained ground, until 
small waists have become a mania among women, and disgusting to 
the sight of every sensible man. And the evil reacted upon the 
authors of it ; for men found that the women who languished in their 
arms with slender waists and apparently wide hips, bore them weak, 
effeminate sons, with lungs undeveloped, and hearts of unsteady 
action. 
But still the error is not rooted out as it should be, as we hope 
it soon will be, and modest demoiselle and prudish madame, who 
would not for the world be thought to be making an effort to attract 
the attention of men, stilt themselves on high-heeled boots, and walk 
with a Grecian bend, in order to make prominent the lower portion 
of the body, as do the poor, misguided prostitutes who for the bittei* 
bread they eat pander with unholy zeal to unholy passions. 
Mind, I do not say sexual intercourse is itself unholy ; when 
prompted by right motives, it is the connecting link between spiritual 
and physical life, the language of love and of passional attraction, 
and should only be spoken by those who love each other. 
Perhaps you think I have wandered far from my subject; I only 
meant to say that consumption can be cured by using proper means, 
and can be prevented from being the hereditary cause it now is. I 
have looked far back for hidden causes, but I find them plain and 
true. 
So while you treat the effect, which is pulmonary consumption, 
try also to reach the cause, and give us good and pure and healthful 
motherhood. x 
I believe the inhalation of vapors is the only true way to medicate 
the lungs, and the Indian magnetic treatment the only way to equal- 
ize the life-forces in the human frame. TENTH SECTION. 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM A SUBSTITUTE FOR 
ANAESTHESIA. 
" I am sure that, by careful study and reasonable practice, magnetism can 
be made to take the place of all other anaesthetics." 
James Young Simpson, M.D. 
The discovery of the use of ether, nitrous-oxide, chloroform, and other anaes- 
thetics-Their relative merits compared with vital magnetism-Remarkable 
instance of magnetism in child-birth-The galvanic battery to prevent in- 
jury from anaesthesia-Principal elements necessary for a magnetic physi- 
cian-Principles laid down by Jesus of Nazareth-The first and highest 
recordiof magnetic treatment-Reasons why the same striking results are 
not obtained now-Mental anaesthetics-Sympathy the strongest, excepting 
love-Love latent in every being, waiting to be awakened-111 adaptation 
of certain temperaments-The highest aim of human life found in making 
others happy-The first step for a perfect ideal home is good health-Avoid 
vesication and application of morphia to denuded surfaces-Substitute the 
magnetic hand-Virtues of homeopathy only in faith- The brain not to be 
trifled with-Directions for choice of magnetic physician-An eloquent plea 
to substitute magnetism and electricity. 
WAS not so old a man when I passed away from the 
earth-sphere as most people supposed me to be-not 
quite three-score ; but I had lived a busy, active life, 
and had been quite successful in a way ; always trying 
experiments, many of them vague and unsatisfactory, 
but urged on by an unexplainable power and impulse 
that would not let me rest. After I had discovered 
the anaesthetic power of chloroform, and had seen it 
supersede, to a very decided extent, the use of sul- 
phuric ether, I was still unsatisfied. 
I had used ether for a year, in all protracted or 
dangerous cases of midwifery ; also using chloroform, 
which I manufactured myself, as an outward application for cuts, 
bruises, and some kinds of inflammation. 106 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
The use of ether to render a patient insensible to pain was in no 
way my discovery, nor was I first to use it. 
One Dr. Jackson, a chemist in Boston, published a letter early in 
1847, in which he says, "Being impressed with the remarks of Sir 
Humphry Davy concerning the remedial agency of gaseous matters," 
he tried the effect of the vapor of ether upon himself, with some 
satisfactory results. 
In addition to the claim of Dr. Jackson, came, almost simultane- 
ously, a statement from Dr. Wells, a dentist at Hartford, Connecticut. 
He stated that he was led to believe that surgical operations could be 
performed without causing pain fro the patient, from the fact that, 
under any intense excitement, physical injuries, even of a very serious 
kind, seemed to attract no attention whatever ; as in the case of a 
man being wounded in battle without knowing it, or severely injured 
when deeply intoxicated without any sensibility of suffering. From 
these considerations, he was led to inquire whether the same or 
similar results would not follow the inhalation of some exhilarating 
gas, the effect of which would rapidly pass away without leaving any 
bad consequences upon the system. 
He therefore procured some nitrous-oxide gas, and inhaled it him- 
self ; having a tooth extracted while under its influence, he felt no 
pain, and this he claims as a discovery. But during the same year, 
Dr. Morton, a dentist in Boston, gave an account of an experiment, 
or rather an experience, of his own, which involved the same theory. 
He said that a patient came to him, nearly frantic with pain from 
an ulcerated tooth ; that he had not slept for several nights ; his 
nerves were weakened, his gums and lips swollen and inflamed. 
Knowing that the rapid evaporation of ether produced a sensation 
of coldness, and his only desire being to reduce the inflammation and 
relieve the pain so as to be able to make an examination of the teeth, 
he commenced bathing the face with ether, at the same time giving 
his patient a napkin saturated with ether, to hold to his lips, which 
were also swollen and inflamed. 
Soon the head fell back to an easy position in the chair, the eyes 
closed, the breathing grew light and regular, and the pain seemed to 
have subsided. 
Thinking for the moment that these symptoms were caused by the 
nervous reaction that sometimes takes the form of utter prostration, 
upon the sudden cessation of pain, and intent only upon finding what 
was to be done to the teeth, the dentist dropped his towel, parted 
the jaws whose muscles were relaxed, made the examination, used a A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANAESTHESIA. 
107 
probe on one side of the mouth, drew out a huge decayed molar from 
the other, and then paused to gaze in astonishment upon his patient. 
The eyes were still closed, the hands drooping, the face wearing a 
look of repose not like sleep even. " It is a trance," said the be- 
wildered dentist, " and how will it end ?" 
But even as he puzzled over the question, a nervous thrill and 
shudder crept through his patient's frame, the mysterious appearance 
passed off, and consciousness returned. 
In reply to the doctor's questions, the patient steadily averred 
that it was breathing the liniment that had made him fall asleep; he 
had felt his consciousness slipping from him, and thought he was 
dying. 
He refused all further experiment, walked unsteadily out to the 
fresh air, and, though he trembled with nervous weakness for several 
hours, no further ill results were felt from this first wonderful acci- 
dental experiment in anaesthesia. 
Dr. Morton experimented some with cats and dogs, and in a few 
days found a patient who submitted, not without much fear and 
faltering, to a regular trial of inhalation of ether, and the effort 
proved a complete success. This trial and its result were recorded in 
the medical history of the world in uneffaceable characters. 
In two or three weeks, the news was being discussed in England ; 
and a few days later, I tried the same agent in a case of midwifery. 
After the first experiment, I found what a dangerous weapon we 
were using. 
Ether was crude in composition, uncertain in action, and variable 
in result. No one knows, no one ever will know, how many lives 
were lost, how many patients fell victims to syncope, how many brains 
were affected more or less permanently, and how many lungs injured 
by those first experiments with sulphuric ether. But every experi- 
ence was a stepping-stone to knowledge and wisdom, and so we 
wrought on. 
For nearly a year, I made constant, careful use of this mysterious 
agent, and then discovered the superior advantages of chloroform, to 
be used in the same way as an antesthetical agent. 
The advantages are, that chloroform is more powerful, more 
manageable, and less exciting than ether, giving the physician much 
better control over the patient, and over the administering of the 
drug. 
It is also safer, when properly and carefully used, especially when 
used to relieve rather than to prevent pain. It can be administered 
in very small doses, merely quieting the patient for a few moments, 108 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
or the doses can be repeated at such brief intervals as to continually 
allay nervous irritation without producing actual unconsciousness. 
I have often used it in this way for neuralgia, when hot baths could 
not be easily procured. Especially in cases of spasmodic neuralgia, 
where the pains are recurring at intervals, it is well to give slight 
whiffs of chloroform, and when the pain passes, apply hot compresses 
or bandages to excite the most healthy circulation, and rub the parts 
most affected lightly over the bandages and toward the heart. But 
in using chloroform in cases of midwifery, I learned how important 
it was to have the mind and will act in correspondence with the effect 
I wished to produce. Sometimes, before the pains grew regular, I 
would give a slight dose of chloroform, and allow its effects to pass 
away, noted at every stage, not merely as an experiment (though it 
was often useful in determining the sensibility of the subject, and 
the amount that could be safely given), but principally to assert my- 
self, and show my perfect control over the drug and its entire harm- 
lessness when properly treated, and administered so as to establish 
the full confidence of the patient. I could then, when the pains were 
coming on, pour a little alcohol on a sponge, add a little chloride of 
lime, place it near the patient's face, put my hand on the back of the 
neck or low down the spine ; the pain would come on and pass off, 
and the patient apparently no more conscious of it than if a full 
dose of chloroform had been administered. 
This I have done hundreds of times, but each time it seemed 
merely like a new accident. 
I could discover no law by which such peculiarity was produced, 
neither any condition which would satisfactorily explain it. 
I think I can understand it better now, though I do not feel quite 
sure that I can explain it satisfactorily. 
I remember one case of a child-bearing woman, who had been for 
three consecutive hours suffering the most intense agony. The child 
was living and apparently vigorous, but the woman herself was 
young, small, and weak. 
We feared to use chloroform, knowing that her lungs were dis- 
eased, and fearing asphyxia. 
We had already held a consultation, and decided that nothing 
could be done except to remove the child by instrumentation. 
This idea nearly threw the young woman into convulsions, and we 
were obliged to pacify her as best we could, without in any way re- 
lieving the incessant pains that were racking her, when suddenly her 
husband, who had been away and just returned, entered the room 
where she lay. A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANAESTHESIA. 
109 
He went directly to the bed, took her two cold hands in his own 
strong, warm clasp, brushed her hair back from her temples, where the 
blue veinslay like cords, rubbed her back, and placed one hand low on 
the right side of the abdomen. 
In ten seconds the child was born alive and well, in ten minutes 
the little mother lay quiet and restful on her pillow, and the result 
which medical science had failed to produce in hours of questioning 
experiment, was wrought instantly by some strange sympathy which 
has as yet found no place in materia medica. 
The mechanical action and visible expression of this sympathetic 
current we call magnetism. It was this I was looking for, and striv- 
ing to understand. 
I think the good work which magnetism is yet to do is in part to 
take the place of amesthetics. 
Already the most powerful agent to arrest syncope and prevent 
injury from anaesthesia is the galvanic battery, and many physicians 
never administer chloroform without a fully-charged battery near at 
hand. 
The principal elements necessary for a magnetic physician are a 
strong will, perfect self-control, and an earnest desire to do good and 
help every one. 
We read that in the olden time Jesus of Nazareth healed by laying 
on of hands, and chose his disciples for the same power and purpose 
of healing ; and the lesson he constantly taught was, " Love one 
another ;'r" Bear ye one another's burdens "Judge not," etc. 
Always the spirit breathing through his words and pervading his 
acts was the same that heralded his birth and proclaimed the new 
dispensation he came to teach, "Peace on earth, good-will to all." 
This is the first record we have of magnetic treatment, and the high- 
est form it has ever taken. Of course, it is entirely unreasonable for 
any person to undertake, in the present state of society, to do any 
such work as that recorded of the gentle Nazarene. 
Individual interests are so strongly marked, so persistently pur- 
sued, that the person, man or woman, who consecrates himself or her- 
self to work for humanity, turns that self into a perpetual martyr, 
and soon recognizes the fact that the kindest acts, devised by the 
purest motives, are most liable to be misunderstood, scoffed at by the 
ignorant, slighted by those who need them most, and often argued 
out of sight by the truly wise and kindly, who are so interested, each 
in his especial work, that they do not recognize the good in others. 
But while we can not all become universal philanthropists, or devote 
our lives to healing the sick without hope of fee or reward, we may 110 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
each do something toward understanding the wants and needs of 
human kind, and toward 
alleviating the sufferings 
that confront us at every 
turn in the path of life. 
For this purpose, it is 
essential that every one 
should understand the best 
and simplest methods of 
alleviating pain and suffer- 
ing, both mental and phy- 
sical. 
There are mental anaes- 
thetics. 
Sympathy is the strongest of these, excepting always love, which 
is stronger for every purpose than any other power known in nature 
or art. 
There is an affection which is not passional, and a passion which is 
not truly affectional, and either of these forces may prove a very 
strong attraction to draw individuals toward each other. But the 
union of passion and affection, the exquisite blending of emotional 
sentiment with the strongest sensuous desire, the temperamental 
adaptation -which gives to two people the desire at once to possess 
and be possessed, which floods the senses with delicious joy in each 
other's presence, and completely annihilates the outside world-this 
is love. And rarely as it may be found on earth, still it does exist, 
in all its wonderful and mysterious strength, in every human nature, 
waiting but the coming of the counterpart to waken it to life. And 
this is what raises man above the brutes, and makes him near akin to 
the angels-this spiritual adaptation and selection. I do not say, nor 
do I mean to be understood as believing, that some one man was 
made as an especial and foreordained mate for each one woman. 
But there are certain temperaments that can only be kept tranquil 
and happy by union with certain other temperaments ; and there are 
natural antagonisms, existing often in the same family, that utterly 
defy all attempts at harmony, either in thought, word, or deed. 
Some of these can be overcome, at least in their outward mani- 
festation, but the inward principle remains the same ; and after all, 
the question arises, if, in the short space of time allotted to any 
human life, it is worth while to take the time and trouble that might 
bring pleasanter results in other ways, by contributing something to 
Fig. 27.-The Good Samaritan pouring in 
the Oil and Wine. A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANESTHESIA. 
111 
the sum of human happiness, merely in the discipline of the mind to 
endure what it can never enjoy ? 
This brings forward the undeveloped idea of spiritual anaesthe- 
tics, the studying of spiritual needs, the faithful understanding of 
what causes spiritual suffering, and the best way to remove said 
causes. 
If a knowledge of magnetism, its powers and uses, was more uni- 
versal, the subject of mental and spiritual anaesthetics wrould not 
seem so ridiculous as it does now, and mental and spiritual diseases, 
even apart from the physical, would not be slighted and disregarded 
as they now appear to be. 
It is the highest aim of human life to make at least one person 
happy ; and if that one person is one's self, the aim is still worth 
working for. But usually the highest happiness can be found in 
making others happy, and this has not been kept a secret these 
last two thousand years. 
Almost every body realizes this, and works for it too, in one form 
or another. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ideal homes, or schools, 
or institutes are planned in busy or ambitious brains, many of 
which could not be made practical or available under the most favora- 
ble circumstances. 
But the very fact that they do exist as ideals proves that some of 
them may yet be wrought out in reality, and the first step to be taken 
for the formation of perfect homes is to do as much as possible for 
the establishment of good health. When people have learned how 
to live rightly, every school will be in itself a health-institute, where 
proper rules of hygiene, exercise, and food will be taught and en- 
forced. But until then, we must have especial homes and institutes 
for the recovery and preservation of health. 
And in these must be studied, taught, and practiced, along with 
all simple formula) for medical and surgical treatment, the laws of 
magnetism and electricity. These should be taught theoretically and 
practically, with whatever improvements may have been made in 
batteries and other electrical-machines, and, by constant experiment 
in all harmless and useful forms of magnetic treatment, I am sure 
that, by careful study and reasonable practice, magnetism can be 
made to take the place of all other anaesthetics. I call upon physi- 
cians to use, as Dr. Warren says, their hands and their common- 
sense more, and their drugs and their instruments less. 
Let every doctor take an interest in his patient, and consider that 
human health and happiness, as well as life and death, are at stake ; 
and being anxious to keep a condition of mental harmony, the whole 112 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
will and mind will be intent upon soothing and assisting the sufferer, 
and thus all natural means will be called into action for overpower- 
ing the disease, and all the benefits of amesthesia are obtained, with- 
out any of its ill effects. 
Fig. 28.-A Grapery and Garden for the Invalid. 
And there is magnetism in the sunlight, in every breath of wind 
that blows across the fresh earth or in from the great salt sea. There 
is magnetic strength in the very grass that covers the prairies, and 
powerful healing properties in the pine woods. 
Consumptive patients should have a bit of garden to work in, 
that the hidden currents of magnetism may find their way up from 
the mellow earth. And if a person is threatened with apoplexy, let 
him remember that the best cure for such trouble is the pine forest, 
the worst possible aggravation of it being the hot-house life and 
excitement usually attendant upon the business cares and late hours 
of city life. 
Let every one remember that there is a strong curative principle 
in nature, which needs first to be allowed to work, and then to be 
encouraged and strengthened. One of the latest monstrosities in the 
way of medical treatment is thus described in a modern journal as a 
cure for neuralgia, " Raise a blister on the part most affected, then 
rub the skin off and apply morphine," etc. etc. Of course, the sensi- 
tive cutis vera thus exposed, with its multitude of delicate absorb- 
ents, takes up the poisonous drug, and filters it into the blood. Tern- A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANAESTHESIA. 
113 
porary relief is obtained by this process, but permanent injury is 
wrought to the whole system. How much better would it be to 
apply the warm hands of a good 
magnetic physician to the part 
most affected, and start anew the 
retarded blood-currents that are 
causing all the pain ! Then, 
when the local trouble is remov- 
ed, a quick, brisk rubbing of the 
whole person will go far toward 
preventing another attack. And 
it is always well to prevent 
trouble of all kinds when pos- 
sible. 
It. will be a grand achieve- 
ment of mind over matter, when 
all physical antesthetics give place to magnetic power, and health can 
be gathered from the primal elements, without the intervention of 
drugs. I have no faith in homeopathy, with its infinitesimal doses 
and high potencies, save that the tiny pellets and weak dilutions 
may carry with them some element of faith to the mind of the 
patient. 
I have before spoken of the curative principle in nature. When 
homeopathy gives virtually no medicine, and yet keeps the mind of 
the patient in a quiescent state by pretending or appearing to admin- 
ister potent agents, then nature has the best and most favorable op- 
portunity possible for establishing her own harmonial relations, and 
thus building up and strengthening the diseased and weakened organ- 
ism. In this way, homeopathy does its own beneficent work, being 
humanity's earnest protest against the system of universal drugging, 
which had become more destructive to human life than the diseases 
the drugs were intended to cure. 
Protests are seldom reasonable ; and as, if one wishes to straighten 
a stick that has been long bent, he bends it the other way ; so soci- 
ety, wishing to remedy an evil, rushes to the opposite extreme. But 
the golden mean of reason will be reached at last, and the world 
will acknowledge the step that homeopathy has helped it to take in 
advancement. 
The constant experiments being made with anaesthetical agents 
tend more and more to the ethereal and intangible forms, by which 
the same or even better results may be obtained than by the older 
and cruder materials. One can not help foreseeing that the ultimate 
Fig. 29.-The Magnetic Hand. 114 
VITAL AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
of this will be a reliance upon the mental power, without the inter- 
vention of any mechanical agent. Until then, let anaesthetics be used 
with the utmost caution and care. Remember that they directly affect 
the brain, the very stronghold of consciousness and reason. And the 
brain is, of all organs in the human body, the one that must not be 
trifled with. If the action of the heart is stopped for any length of 
time, if air is denied to the lungs or food to the stomach, in a way 
to stop their action-that is the end. Death comes, a merciful angel, 
to terminate all physical suffering, and allow the soul to change 
spheres, and go on untrammeled in its strife for light and search for 
wisdom. 
But the normal action of the brain may be destroyed, all capacity 
for conscious enjoyment of life may be annihilated, all acquired 
knowledge swept away, all natural talent obliterated, and yet the 
machinery of mere material life run on smoothly and perfectly for 
years, in a way that is worse than death. 
I do not intend to say that permanent insanity is often caused 
by anaesthetics ; but I have known cases of softening of the brain 
that I had good reason to think were superinduced by a careless or 
improper use of anaesthetical agents. 
And magnetism has always this advantage, that it can do no 
harm, and the instincts of the patient may always be trusted in re- 
gard to its beneficial effect. Any magnetic treatment that is deci- 
dedly unpleasant may not be beneficial ; still, it will not be inju- 
rious, unless the patient is very nervous, and has most unreasona- 
ble prejudices. In that case, it is best to allow even whims that 
border on absurdity to have some weight in deciding the treatment 
to be pursued. 
If it is possible to have a choice in physicians, and if one is more 
agreeable to the patient than another, the most harmonious one 
should always be selected, as there may be some temperamental 
adaptation, which, without obtaining recognition by any of the out- 
ward senses, has nevertheless an influence upon the springs of vital 
life and health that ought not to be disregarded. Kindness and yet 
unvarying firmness are especially desirable in a magnetic physician, 
when anaesthetical results are desired ; and patience and equanimity 
of temper should always be maintained. 
In conclusion, I have only this to say, that, in view of all experi- 
ence and observation that has so far been mine, I warn every one that 
too much care can not possibly be taken in the use of anaesthetics, 
and it is better to substitute magnetic or even electrical treatment at 
all times. A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANAESTHESIA. 
115 
If the patient have any tendency to weak lungs, especial caution 
should be used; but this branch of anaesthesia will have a separate 
chapter devoted to it. (See Section on Consumption and Cure by 
Cold Medicated Inhaling Vapors, by James Rush.) 
James Young Simpson. ELEVENTH SECTION. 
ON DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, OR DRUNKENNESS 
AS A DISEASE. 
American people very immoderate in both eating and drinking-Want of indi- 
viduality of character for self-government-The great object of life is to 
use brain-power to the best advantage-Three forms of appetite-Appetite 
for strong drink hereditary often-A thorough knowledge of its effects- 
No man would treat a dog as he treats himself-Effects of alcohol upon the 
kidneys in deposit of calculus-Abnormal action-Nephritis or inflamma- 
tion of kidneys-Coma follows the retention of urea-Inflammation of neck 
of the bladder exceedingly painful-Dropsy-Bright's disease-Albumen in 
urine-Secretory functions obscure-Hydrocele-Children should be kept, 
from stimulating drinks-Importance of chemical analysis of urine- 
Softening of the brain result of spirit-drinking-Magnetic treatment very 
important. 
T IS well known, and almost universally acknowledged 
by writers and thinkers, that the American people- eat 
and drink too much as a very general rule. Food is 
indulged in for the taste in the mouth, and drink is 
taken into the stomach for reasons even less tangible 
and real. 
A frank and fearless woman, talking one day to a 
man whose habit of drinking was fast ruining his 
powers of body and mind, said,1 " It is too bad that 
you like whisky so well." 
To which the man replied, " But I do not like 
whisky. I never drank a glass of whisky or any 
other liquor in my life because I liked it." 
" Then what in the name of reason do you drink it for ?" asked 
the woman. " I supposed you liked it as I like chocolate, and that it 
was only your misfortune that whisky was more injurious than 
chocolate. Do you drink it only for the effect it produces ? for the 
way it makes you feel ?" 118 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
" Oh ! not for that even," was the reply. " I do not crave the 
stimulus of ardent spirit, nor do I feel either the need of or a desire 
for the excitement it produces." 
" Then tell me why you drink, knowing as you must know, as 
every sensible man does know, that it injures you." 
The man sighed deeply and said, " Oh I it is part and parcel of 
social life. Others drink, and I join them. One must do something 
to make the time pass lightly." 
The woman looked astonished ; but there are too many men in 
this country, and in fact, in all other civilized countries, drinking 
because it is part and parcel of social life ; because they are 
expected to help along the evening's entertainment, and the chosen 
beverage is poisonous and stultifying. 
Fig. 30.-Tea-Plant of China. 
If Young America would be content with beer, as Young Ger- 
many is, and accustom itself to it as gradually and constantly, it 
might be as little injurious to the one as to the other. But the only 
true way to overcome the evil of drunkenness in the future is by 
education in the present. 
All children should be taught that the great object of life is to 
use their brain-power to the best advantage, and that the brain, when OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
119 
unduly stimulated, loses its power of acquiring knowledge, of think- 
ing good thoughts, of experiencing real happiness. Says Dr. Foote, 
" A correct understanding of the effects of various liquids com- 
monly used as beverages will enable thinking people to understand 
how much they have to do in the production of nervous derange- 
ments and blood impurities." 
It is estimated that every person drinks about fifteen hundred 
Fig. 31.-Coffee-Plant. 
pounds of liquid per annum. Of course, many largely exceed this. 
But it becomes important that the habitual beverage should contain 
as little poisonous matter as possible, as all poisons are liable to be 
deposited in the process of filtration, which goes on in the stomach, 
the secretive organs, and blood, as fluids are being passed through 
the system. 
The ordinary Chinese tea, which is universally used as a beverage, 120 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
contains gum, sugar, tannin, and theine. It is slightly nutritious 
and exhilarating, having a direct effect upon the nerves. 
A Chinese writer who lived, studied, drank tea, and died, long 
before the year one of our usual computation, thus wrote in 
regard to the tea of his day, which is supposed to have differed no 
whit from that drank so liberally at present: 
" It tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude 
and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, 
lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties." 
Some people are so constituted that tea, even weak tea, and much 
more when taken strong, will render them nervous, wakeful, irrita- 
ble, and uncomfortable. But these are the exceptions ; for tea 
generally acts as a mild and gentle stimulant, aiding digestion, and 
assisting the circulation of the blood. 
Next to tea, coffee is the most universal beverage used, and, being 
slightly more stimulating and narcotic than tea, it is slightly more 
Fig. 32.-Theobroma, Cocoa. 
injurious. Still it has more nutritive qualities, and it is a well- 
established fact that people who drink coffee can not eat so much 
food as those who do not, other things being equal. 
Chocolate is often classed in the same category with tea and cof- 
fee, being, as usually prepared, still more nutritious than either of 
the others. It is especially good for people who have weak nerves, 
or are liable to suffer from indigestion, being light and soothing in 
its effects, passing readily into the stomach, and assimilating easily 
with the gastric juices. 
The only trouble about its more general use with invalids is, that 
a large proportion of. milk is used in preparing it, and weak or 
delicate stomachs can not adapt themselves to rich animal secretions, 
like milk and eggs. OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
121 
Chocolate itself is a manufactured article, being the product of 
the seeds of trees of the genus Theobroma (this is a Greek word, 
signifying food of the gods). 
The fruit of these trees is somewhat like a cucumber in shape, 
six or eight inches long, yellow, turning to red on the side next the 
sun. The rind is thick and somewhat rough, the pulp sweetish and 
not unpleasant; the seeds numerous, resembling a small almond or 
large bean in shape, with a thin, pale-brownish skin or shell, covering 
a dark-brown, oily, aromatic, bitter kernel. 
This kernel is very nutritious, its principal constituents being the 
soft, solid oil called cocoa-butter, which forms more than fifty per 
cent of the whole shelled bean ; about twenty-two per cent being 
starch, gum, mucilage, etc., and seventeen per cent being gluten and 
albumen. 
They contain also a crystallizable principle called theobromine, 
somewhat analogous to caffeine, but more nitrogenous. If cocoa be 
used regularly as a beverage, it will soon be found to supply the 
need of both food and drink, to a great extent. 
Following tea and coffee in general use comes lager-beer and the 
lighter kinds of ale. These, when not used to excess, are healthful, 
invigorating, and strengthening. Alas ! that they too often are 
used in excess, and prove a curse rather than a blessing. Whisky 
and the long train of alcoholic drinks follow the fermented liquors, 
and the tide of folly and ruin flows fast and wide from the distillery 
to death, or to that destruction of the mental, moral, and physical 
natures which is so much worse than death-drunkenness. Truly 
if any phase of human weakness and imperfection may be called a 
disease, the curse of the inebriate deserves what small excuse that 
name can bring to soften, though it may not pardon, his imbecility 
and his crime. 
There are three forms of appetite which lead to the passion of in- 
toxication. 
The first, the most difficult to deal with, the hardest to control, is 
hereditary predisposition. This may be manifested early in life, or 
only later years and temptations may develop it. But once it has 
gained an ascendency, and what power can stay its course ? Only 
the strongest will, the severest self-control, and the most steadfast 
patience. 
The second phase that inebriation takes is where the appetite has 
been indulged or even forced and coaxed until it has acquired a 
need, a craving for stimulants that nothing else can satisfy. 
A total putting aside of all spirituous drinks, a brief, fierce 122 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
struggle, some true and faithful friend to lean upon, if possible, and 
a victory is won that brings back the freshness and vigor of early 
youth, and gives a man the privilege of being proud of himself. 
The third form of drunkenness is that brought on by excitement; 
only occasionally the flood rises high enough to overwhelm reason 
and drown consciousness ; only at long intervals, perhaps, when 
merry friends are about, and the wine-cup circles freely. But when- 
ever and wherever a man loses command of himself, he loses some 
portion of his own self-respect, and he can never again so bravely 
and determinedly challenge and demand the respect of others. The 
treatment for occasional drunkenness, as a disease, should be a 
thorough knowledge of its evil effects on brain and nerve and bone 
and muscle, and then a calm and deliberate conviction that excess of 
any kind does not pay. Following this, it seems as though any man 
might have strength of will and common-sense enough to keep from 
committing an act that can have very little charm in itself, and tends 
to such disastrous and ruinous results. 
JVo man would treat a dog with such persistent cruelty as he treats 
himself when he drinks to intoxication. 
If he was going to poison a dog, he would at least try to admin- 
ister enough of the drug to terminate fatally and at once, or as soon 
as possible. But a man who should give a dog sufficient poison to 
nauseate and stultify him, and then when he had partially or ap- 
parently wholly recovered from its injurious effects, repeat the 
process again and yet again, until the poor brute might be said never 
to have the use of his normal faculties, would be considered only 
one step removed from a fiend, and would be actually liable to arrest 
and prosecution by law, for cruelty to animals. 
But the one animal who can never in any way, or at any time, 
escape from the cruel dominion of man, is himself ; and he seems 
never to consider how great is the responsibility that rests upon him 
in caring for himself, or how severe and certain is the penalty for 
self-abuse or self-neglect in any form. 
In addition to the direct influence which alcoholic drinks have 
upon the brain, depleting, irritating, and exhausting it, there follows 
the indirect but no less certain action upon the kidneys, causing in- 
flammation, inaction, frequent deposit of calculus, and other distress- 
ing troubles. 
It is not denied by any person who has given thought and atten- 
tion to the subject that alcohol is really the most vital and life-sus- 
taining principle in all grains, fruits, and vegetable productions 
generally. And a small quantity of alcohol, taken in the form of OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
123 
beer, ale, diluted wine, or even rum or whisky, drank slowly with 
the food and allowed to pass gradually into the stomach, will stimu- 
late digestion, warm the blood, and assist the secretive organs. 
But the excessive use of alcoholic drinks causes an abnormal 
action of all these organs, and it is this which all persons should 
especially guard against. 
The symptoms which attend inflammation of the kidneys, or 
nephritis, are a deep-seated pain in the small of the back, on one or 
both sides of the spine, often extending downward toward the 
inside of the thigh. 
This pain is increased by pressure, by coughing, by sitting down 
suddenly, or by falling, as well as in various other ways. 
The urine is high-colored, se- 
creted in small quantities, some- 
times attended by severer pain, 
and deposits a sediment varying 
in color from a whitish albumi- 
nous secretion to a pink, red, or 
brownish deposit. 
There is fever and occasional 
nausea, with this form of dis- 
ease ; the retarded secretions 
cause distention of the glands, 
the kidneys refuse to go on with 
their work of separating the 
waste and unvitalized particles 
from the healthful fluids, the 
blood becomes vitiated, and 
other diseases follow. 
The treatment should be a wet bandage applied around the body, 
thickened at the back where the pain is most apparent, drinking 
plentifully of cold spring-water, and perspiration excited over the 
whole surface of the body ; a brisk rubbing, both local and general, 
should be administered, twice each day during acute attacks, and two 
or three times per week, if the disease has become chronic and less 
painful. 
Every thing should be done to promote the secretions ; the diet 
should be light and nourishing, and no stimulants of any kind should 
be used. 
The patient should have free access to the sunlight, take both 
sun and Turkish or hot-air baths ; should exercise as much as possible, 
and, if the urine is passed with difficulty or pain, a weak decoction 
Fig. 33.-Morbid deposits as seen in the urine 
under the microscope, indicating triple phos- 
phates, lithic acid, and amorphous matter. 124 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
of buchu or uva ursi leaves, should be taken in doses of about one 
wine-glassful every two hours, until a change takes place, and relief 
is gained. 
If no urine is separated from the blood, coma or a death-like 
stupefaction is the result, and death itself soon follows, caused by a 
retention of urea or carbonate of ammonia in the blood, which thus 
becomes impure, and acts as a poison to the brain. But very fre- 
quently the kidneys go on with their work of secretion, and the urine 
is passed to the bladder, and there retained, sometimes for several 
days, failing to pass off on account of inflammation or ulceration of 
the neck of the bladder. 
This is an exceedingly painful but usually not a dangerous 
disease. 
(Read the very interesting case of Mrs. Haine, reported in the 
Twenty-second Section-Cases of Cures.) 
Sometimes the use of the ca- 
theter is desirable. This is a tube 
made of hard rubber or silver, 
varying in length from four to six 
inches for a female, while the male 
catheter should be from ten to 
twelve inches in length, small, per- 
fectly smooth, and slightly curved. 
When, by the careful use of the 
catheter, the bladder has been 
emptied of its contents, the bowels 
should be evacuated by some mild 
but persistent laxative, and cooling 
and healing drinks used in connec- 
tion with warm sitz-baths, and rubbing of the back and loins. 
Both of these occasion the severest and most excruciating pains, 
but in themselves have very rarely proved fatal. 
One distressing trouble often occurring to people who live seden- 
tary lives, and especially who partake of stimulants to excess, is the 
formation of calculus, or stony substance, either in the kidneys or 
bladder, which are known as Urinary Calculi, or in the bile-ducts or 
gall-bladder, called Biliary Calculi. 
The surgical operations by which these concretions are removed, 
often proved fatal in former times, when instruments were of a more 
primitive and imperfect manufacture, and even now these operations 
are attended with more or less danger. 
Prevention is better than cure for these troubles, and as no sailor 
Fig. 34.-Manner of taking the 
Bath- OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
125 
or miner, rarely a farmer, and never a gymnast, was known to suffer 
from calculi, it is but reasonable to conclude that active exercise, 
plain food, plenty of bathing, and copious draughts of cold, soft- 
water, are the best means for keeping the kidneys busily at work and 
the bladder well rinsed and cleansed. 
But if the urinary discharge shows a tendency to deposit a fine 
gritty substance that feels like sand and looks like grains of Cayenne 
pepper, there is reason to apprehend the formation of calculus, though 
these symptoms are generally known as gravel. 
And if a person, having been for any previous time affected with 
gravel, should feel a very severe, even if transitory, pain, or if the 
urine is bloody or thick, or if it passes with difficulty, or if agonizing 
twinges, commencing in the loins, sting downward 
into the thigh or groin, it is probable that a stone 
is already forming in the kidneys, and preparing 
to make its way to the bladder. 
I know of no better remedy at this stage of the 
disease than that which Dr. Warren suggests in 
case of any predisposition to apoplexy or paralysis, 
"An ax and a pine forest, or, where this is not 
practicable, a pick and a shovel, a bank of gravel, 
and a road to build." 
This at least should be remembered, that vio- 
lent exercise is the surest prevention and some- 
times the best cure for any collection or concretion 
of foreign substance in any of the secretive organs. 
The allopathic faculty prescribe opiates only, 
and these deaden the pain but act viciously upon 
the brain, and most disastrously upon the secretive 
organs. 
But it is best to learn as soon as possible what is the nature of the 
concretions forming or gathering in the kidneys. 
Fig. 35.-The ax for 
health and exercise. 
[We have been purposely clear and as specific as practicable, in 
our prescriptions for the many painful affections of the kidneys and 
urinary organs, with the hope of successfully reaching many sufferers 
distant from immediate professional aid. But we must conscien- 
tiously advise all such sufferers to heed the timely indications, and 
have their case scientifically investigated and certainly diagnosed, by 
forwarding a specimen of the morning's urine for chemical analysis. 
For it will be particularly observed that the sediments or morbid 
deposits in the urine may be and often are perfectly opposite in their 126 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
Fig. 36.-Microscope. OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
127 
nature, and therefore requiring opposite modes of treatment; the 
white sand indicating an undue waste of phosphoric acid; the phos- 
phates, or elements that largely compose the brain and nervous sys- 
tem, proving an over-taxation or an alarming conflict of the verv cita- 
del of life ; while the pink or red sand denotes disorder of the stomach 
and function of assimilation, a rapid waste or disintegration of mus- 
cle, the fibrinous structure of the body ; while again, the dark or 
mixed muddy sediments most certainly indicate a defective function 
of that large gland, the liver, liver complaint, biliary calculi, which 
often terminates in the most excruciating agony, and even death 
itself, by blocking up and entirely obstructing the ducts ; while again 
oxalic acid and lime are surely indicated by the dark and amorphous 
accumulations. 
Now, it will be readily seen that in all such cases the complica- 
tions are too intricate for one unskilled and unversed in animal chem- 
istry to think for one moment of treating himself with any degree 
of certainty or success. To do so must be a blind shooting in the 
dark, a groping after an object that can not be seen. No course of 
treatment for these affections can be prescribed, with the certainty of 
removing the cause in the blood, or in the nutritive functions, without 
a chemical analysis being made. 
Says Dr. Bird, the distinguished author of Urinary Pathology, 
"The examination of the urine, in disease, is now regarded as one of 
the most important aids in diagnosis, and which it would be alike 
injurious to the welfare of the patient and the credit and reputation 
of the practitioner to avoid." 
The Institution possesses a microscope of -wonderful power, by the 
aid of which the most minute atom can be detected ; and as each 
chemical agent or elementary principle crystallizes in accordance with 
a law of organic chemistry, the nature and condition of each case is 
diagnosed to a certainty ; the treatment at once based upon calcula- 
tions of ultimate success and restoration. 
Those hitherto intractable and incurable diseases (so considered), 
diabetes and Bright's disease, become known in their incipiency, and 
yield kindly to our administration. One of the most aggravated 
cases of Bright's kidney, that of Mr. Burgess, of Marathon, N. Y., 
was cured in ten weeks under the prescription of this Institution at 
his own home, after having been a long time unsuccessfully treated 
by three physicians of his neighborhood, who at length hopelessly 
abandoned and consigned him to an early grave. 
Patients, therefore, in the most distant parts of the country can 
be as readily and successfully treated at their own homes, without 128 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
being seen even, as though they were at the Institution. Let one 
ounce of the urine first passed in the morning after the digestion of 
the preceding day, the blood-urine-urina sanguinis-be put into a 
strong vial, well sealed, and then securely packed in a tin box, accom- 
panied with the fee of three dollars (S3), and forwarded registered 
per mail, or by express, with all transportation fees pre-paid; stating 
age, sex, name, and post-office address, county and State. In due 
time, full report will be made and returned, giving the result of the 
analysis with full particulars as to the nature of disorder, the treat- 
ment required, or the causes to be avoided. 
Let the victim of such maladies look calmly and philosophically 
at the subject. He should consider this, namely, that there are some 
five or six great functions necessarily maintained in the animal econo- 
my, all tending to counterbalance each other in sustaining the sys- 
tem in health, in harmony-the lungs, the skin, the liver, the kidneys, 
and the bowels, to say nothing of the spleen and pancreas. 
Bear in mind that, when any one of these is suppressed, some 
one or all of the others are compelled to an increased or an unnatural 
duty, to make up for the deficiency of the failing function. When 
the pores are closed by sudden cold, how soon the secretion of the 
kidneys is disturbed ! The same when disintegration is going on in 
the lungs, the urine is then loaded with urates or triple phosphates. 
The lover of good eating, of choice, high-seasoned dishes, who 
simply eats because it is delectable, to please the palate, little con- 
siders that he is imposing an unmerciful task upon the kidneys to 
free the blood of a load of effete matter which he is wickedly throw- 
ing in, simply to gratify the pleasures of sense, and not because it is 
needed to repair or sustain the temple which belongs not to himself, 
but which he has only in trust for a more lofty development and 
discipline of the immortal spirit. To him, euen, we come, at his own 
door, and endeavor, in the spirit of humility, to impart a knowledge 
of hygiene to govern his future career, that he shall be no longer 
" slave to his appetites," and deserve the traitor's gyves, but become 
a fit temple for a sound mind. 
We insert here a cut of the various apparatus and case of reagents 
made use of by the Institution in prosecuting the examinations by 
chemical analysis and otherwise. 
[Physicians situated in distant parts of the country in want of 
such, can be furnished at reasonable charges, and the same forwarded 
per express.] 
If red sand is deposited in the urine, it indicates an excess of uric OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
129 
acid. But if the phosphates of ammonia or magnesia are in excess, 
limy or alkaline deposits will be the result. 
Fig. 37. 
The treatment for these two sedimentary deposits is exactly 
opposed, the one to the other. 
If uric acid be found, the patient should take weak alkalies, as 
soda-water, bicarbonate of soda in small doses, diluted lime-water, or 
small quantities of magnesia. 
If, on the contrary, alkaline deposits be discovered, the patient 
should take fruits and vegetable acids freely ; acetic acid having been 
found especially adapted to act upon the secretive organs. 
A pleasant and at the same time efficacious remedy for alkaline 
excess in the blood is a half-pint of lemonade, with from three to ten 
drops of spirits of turpentine, alternating with from six to twenty 
drops of sweet spirits of nitre, taken every night and morning. But 
when a calculus of large size is really formed, there is probably no cure 
for it excepting its removal by lithotomy, which is a process too 
entirely surgical and scientific to be described here. 
The disease usually known as Bright's disease of the kidneys is 
only an aggravated form of a much older trouble, treated before the 
days of Dr. Bright (an English physician, who made diseases of the 
kidneys, and particularly this disease, a specialty), and then called 
consumption of the kidneys. 
It is caused by a weak and feverish condition of the body, more 
frequently by strong drinks than any other one trouble, and is fre- 
quently associated with enlargement of the heart. 
The symptoms are a dry, feverish skin, white, furred tongue, 130 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
pallor and languor on the part of the patient, drowsiness, and loss of 
memory. The urinary discharge becomes thick, turbid, and albumi- 
nous, and the blood is poi- 
soned by impurities that can 
not pass off in the excretions, 
owing to the congested state 
of the small ducts. 
Examination after death 
has shown that in the early 
stages of this disease the kid- 
neys are surrounded, and in 
some cases filled, by fatty 
deposits ; but later this fat, 
as well as the body of the 
kidney itself, is carried away 
in the excretions. 
The treatment should be 
of the most vigorous kind- 
sitz-bathing, rubbing, abun- 
dant exercise in the fresh air, 
drinking plentifully of cold, 
soft water, or hot cocoa or chocolate-any thing that will bring 
the blood to the surface and cause it to circulate more freely, or ex- 
cite perspiration, and thus carry off some of the gathered impurities 
by way of the skin. The food should be plain and abundant, the 
bowels kept open, acid fruits should be used freely, and it is some- 
times beneficial to bathe the back with hot vinegar, following this 
by profuse sweating and a water or Turkish bath. 
[See Twenty-second Section for a most interesting case of cure of 
Bright's disease of the kidneys, in the person of A. L. Burgess, in 
which the hot-air or Turkish bath was made use of conjointly with 
other treatment, with the most astonishing results.] 
Dropsy is a disease that results from inaction of the secretive 
organs, and causes the effusion of a watery fluid from the blood, 
which is deposited in the cavities of the body. This watery fluid 
should be eliminated from the system by means of the kidneys, the 
pores of the skin, and the lungs. In order to effect this result, mag- 
netic treatment should be resorted to immediately, and it will fre- 
quently occur that a dropsical patient being rubbed thoroughly by 
magnetic hands will discharge two or three pounds of water through 
the skin alone. The kidneys should be stimulated by a decoction or 
tea made from one ounce of dried bean-pods steeped in a quart of 
Fig. 38.-Section of a Kidney in a state of disease, 
representing a condition very often found after 
death, called Bright's Disease, or Consumption of 
the Kidneys. OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
131 
soft water. A few drops of lemon-juice added to a wine-glassful of 
the tea should be taken every six or eight hours, and then alternated 
with a tea made from buchu leaves. 
The bowels should be kept open, and two movements daily in- 
sisted on. 
Hydrocephalus signifies drop- 
sy of the head, and is a disease 
incident to childhood. 
It is an effusion of water on 
the brain, occurring before the 
sutures of the skull have united, 
and thus allowing the head to 
swell. It is usually fatal. The 
only hope of recovery lies in 
change of air, increased activity 
of the secretive organs, and good 
magnetic treatment. 
If dropsy in the head occurs 
later in life, at a time when the 
skull will not expand, the pres- 
sure of water on the brain causes 
death very soon, sometimes pre- 
ceded by apoplexy and occasion- 
ally by coma. 
Hydrocele is a form of dropsy 
that manifests itself by a swelling 
of the testicles, or rather by an 
effusion of water inside the membrane or sac that covers the testi- 
cles ; for the testes themselves are often quite healthy, even through 
an aggravated attack of hydrocele. The swelling is usually soft and 
not painful, sometimes causing a feeling of weight and . slight un- 
easiness, which should be relieved by wearing a suspensory bandage. 
The treatment is the same as that recommended for general 
dropsy, and care must be taken to keep the strength up and give as 
much tone and vigor to the blood as possible. 
The secretive organs are all obscure in construction, and their 
action is intimately dependent, each one upon all the others. The 
brain especially needs that all the secretions be healthy and active, 
that the blood may be pure and highly vitalized for the manufacture 
of nerve-fluid. And it is better not to overload the blood with im- 
purities which must first pass through the secretive organs and then 
be excreted from the system. 
Fig. 39.-Cut inserted to show the very im- 
portant function of the skin. 132 
DRINKS AND THEIR EFFECTS, 
There are direct diseases of the brain brought on by drinking 
spirituous liquors, of which softening of the brain is one of the most 
frequent in occurrence, as well as one of the most difficult to treat. 
This, with its kindred maladies of apoplexy, epilepsy, and several 
others, is spoken of in a chapter devoted to the brain and its func- 
tions. 
But we can safely say, as a 
general rule, that no person with 
tolerable health, and less than 
fifty years of age, should ever 
partake themselves, or encourage 
the use in others, of any kind of 
alcoholic drinks. Never any 
thing stronger than ale or beer, 
and that but sparingly, one or 
two glasses per day, to promote 
digestion and aid in the secre- 
tions that are but too frequently 
retarded by sedentary habits, 
breathing impure air, and living 
fast. 
After a person has reached the age of fifty years, there is seldom 
any increase of strength or vigor. The faculties seem at a stand- 
still for perhaps ten years, before they begin to decline. It is now 
that a person, having lived temperately and plainly for half a century, 
can feel the invigorating effect of a glass of wine, or is ready to re- 
ceive the assistance to brain and nerve which some such slight stimu- 
lant gives. 
From this time onward there is no danger of injurious habits be- 
ing acquired; the appetite is well under the control of reason, and 
the addition of a small quantity of alcohol to the daily food will be 
a benefit and not an injury. 
Children especially should be kept on a non-exciting and non- 
stimulating diet. No meat should be given before the age of three 
to foui' years, and it would be much better if none were used before 
seven ; even then only plain, boiled meats with bread, ripe fruit, and 
plenty of milk and water, should be allowed. 
It is of the utmost importance that all secretions and excretions 
be carried on regularly and thoroughly. Any thing which tends to 
promote this result is to be used with care and judgment, never to 
excess ; for excessive secretions are as bad for the health as when re- 
Fm 40-This cut illustrates the benefit of 
magnetic treatment, and bemg rubbed by mag- 
netic hands. OR DRUNKENNESS AS A DISEASE. 
133 
tarded, or nearly so, being weakening, depleting, and difficult to con- 
trol when once established. 
But every person, by devoting a reasonable amount of time and 
thought to the study of their own constitution, can learn what best 
assists them to health and comfort. This course of conduct should 
be pursued by all, and thus one of the learned professions would be 
cheated of nine tenths of its victims. 
Eliphalet Nott. 
Section of a Kidney in a State of Health. TWELFTH SECTION. 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
The heart the most important organ-The arteries carry the blood from the 
heart-The capillaries-The veins-Arterial blood more highly charged 
with magnetism-Diseases of the blood-Cold hands and feet-Rheuma- 
tism-Globules-Neuralgia-The best remedy-Tobacco cause of rheuma- 
tism and nerve-ache-Syphilitic horrors-Cancer-Canker-Turkish baths 
the remedy-Analysis should obtain to determine the nature of the blood- 
Piles or hemorrhoids-Apoplexy-Paralysis-Electricity-Palsy-The lym- 
phatic glands-Carbolic soap-Magnetism better than the knife-Mothers 
should anticipate and remedy in conception. 
HE circulatory organs are the heart, arteries, veins, 
and capillaries. 
The brain and nerves have also a system of cir- 
culation, but these have been treated in another 
place. 
I have chosen to speak upon the subject of the 
blood and its circulation, because during earth-life 
I was especially interested in surgery, and I can 
not help seeing now that many a dangerous and 
fatal operation might have been avoided, and the 
patient restored whole to health and vigor, if I had 
used my education and instruments less, and my 
common-sense and intuitions more. 
However, I did what I could for science and humanity, and am 
glad to own myself still a student in the school of nature and reve- 
lation. 
As T have stated, the heart is the first and most important organ 
in the circulatory system. 
The arteries carry the blood from the heart and distribute it to 
all parts of the system, however minute or remote ; and the fine, in- 
finitesimal capillaries gather the exhausted blood in its impure state, 136 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
and feed it in some miraculous way into the veins, which carry it 
back to the heart, whence it is forced into the lungs, purified there, 
returned to the heart, and again sent forth on its mission of promoting 
the growth and repairing the waste of the human frame. 
The arteries are smaller than the veins ; but the blood moves 
more rapidly in them, and is more highly charged with magnetism 
so that any loss of arterial blood depletes the system more, and is 
Fig. 41.-Diagram of the Heart and Lungs. 
more difficult to recover from than a loss of the same amount of 
venous blood. 
There are many diseases of the blood brought on by improper 
living, that might be remedied by strictly following a few simple 
rules of diet and breathing. 
The clothing should be loosely worn, and the extremities kept 
warm by active exercise or extra coverings, but circulation should 
never be impeded by tight boots or gloves. Cold hands and feet 
indicate an unequal circulation, which means rush of blood to the 
head, nervous disorders, eruptions of the skin, etc. 
[I can see now the circulation of the blood, which once puzzled and 
interested me so much, can see the tiny red globules forced out from THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
137 
the heart, with vitalized living centres, and each globule inclosed in 
a fine thin sac ; as they enter the large arteries, each globule pressing 
against its neighbor, forces them into a flattened or disk-like form : 
and where the arteries divide and become smaller, the disks burst, 
separate into finer globules, each with its thinner sac ; and the old 
sac is deposited as effete matter, to be carried off as an excretion by 
the natural secretions, either through the kidneys, the pores of the 
skin, or in a still finer state by the breath. 
Sluggish circulatory and secretory action allows these effete parti- 
cles to remain in the kidneys, where, by the chemical action of the 
fluids, they take the form of calculi ; or in the lungs, where they are 
deposited in the tiny tubercles, causing irritation, inflammation, and 
subsequent ulceration, until the soft tissue of the lung is torn in 
shreds by the violent and spasmodic effort of expectoration, the finer 
blood-vessels are ruptured, and no healing or hardening principle 
being applied, of course decay and death are inevitable. 
I must tell you, in a future paper, my ideas of the magnetic influ- 
ence of the sun upon the circulation of the fluids in the human body. 
To a person who writes a great deal, who is in the habit of exhaust- 
ing the brain, and drawing heavily upon the vital forces, the presence 
of sunlight in the room is actually cash consideration, and one worthy 
of attention. 
It is action-action-action that humanity needs. We talk about 
the blood being weak, when in reality the heart and lungs are only 
inactive, and the circulation goes on sluggishly, and the blood-disks 
are too lazy to change their coats often enough to keep in a healthy 
state, and, instead of casting them off at the proper time and place, 
they wear them out and leave them in minute shreds, and they clog 
the flattened arteries that pass near the bones, and cause neuralgia- 
nerve-ache indeed : if the blood were all right, no danger of the 
7 O 7 O 
nerves making the disturbance they do in this world. 
I assure you, my friend, that any thing that tends to keep up a 
healthy action of the heart and lungs is the great remedial agent 
against pulmonary disease of any kind. J. Hughes Bennett.] 
One of the worst diseases connected with the circulatory organs 
is rheumatism. 
This is sometimes attributed to the nerves, and sometimes con- 
sidered as a disease of the bones ; but in reality it is occasioned by 
weakened blood and imperfect circulation. 
The blood forms in globules, each globule inclosed in a frail, deli- 
cate sheath or covering ; but as the globules enter the arteries, they 
are forced against each other, and become flattened or disk-shaped. 138 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
In case of sudden or repeated chills, the arteries passing over or 
near the joints become contracted, the blood-disks accumulate for a 
time, causing inflammation and swelling, severe pain, and sometimes 
ulceration. 
When the blood commences to gather in this way in the arteries 
or veins, it stops for a while, and then forces its way through the 
congested tubes, causing a terribly acute pain, which is often known 
as neuralgia. This frequently attacks the head. 
But instead of being a disease of the brain or nerves, as is often 
supposed, and in fact, as the name indicates, being, literally translated, 
nerve-ache, the trouble can usually be traced to the net-work of veins 
and arteries found over and near the temples, or other and less sensi- 
tive parts of the head. 
The first, best, and in fact only, proper remedy for rheumatic or 
neuralgic affections is magnetic treatment-steady, soft, persistent 
manipulations, merely touching the inflamed portions with the tips of 
the fingers at first, but gradually, as the inflammation subsides, fol- 
lowing along the muscles, pinching and rubbing them firmly, and at 
last brisk, sharp slapping that will bring the blood to the surface and 
make it circulate freely in every tiny vein and artery, washing away 
all impurities, and thus leaving the blood-vessels clear and clean, and 
far less liable to again become clogged or stopped by imperfect circu- 
lation. 
Various other causes than sudden cold will produce rheumatism. 
If the blood is depleted by continued or repeated attacks of vene- 
real disease, severe inflammatory rheumatism is quite sure to appear, 
and leucorrhcea in the female will sometimes produce the same result. 
Fever or dyspepsia, or the excessive use of tobacco, or any over- 
exertion, either mental or physical, is liable at any time to result in 
rheumatism. 
Dr. Foote,1 a comparatively young physician, living in New-York 
City, who often calls upon himself the gathered anathemas of the 
"Faculty," by his irregular practice, relates an incident that hap- 
pened several years ago in Troy, N. Y., which illustrates our idea of 
magnetic treatment, as it should be applied to cases of inflammatory 
rheumatism. 
He says, " A gentleman hobbled up-stairs to my rooms to consult 
me regarding rheumatism in one of his knee-joints, which had been 
very painful, and .which had made his limb stiff for more than a year. 
" The knee was red and swollen, and excessively sensitive to the 
touch. 
" I examined it a long time, and very carefully, following the THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
139 
muscles for several inches with my fingers, where I could reach them, 
to discover, if possible, any contraction or rigidity. 
" I then gave him my opinion, and he left, promising to call again 
soon for medicine, and seeming pleased with my diagnosis. 
" lie had scarcely been gone ten minutes when he returned, and 
with a look of indescribable relief and surprise, he asked, 
" 'What have you done to my knee, doctor ?' 
"Of course I did not know what I had done to it, and his remarks 
astonished me, as he declared he had both descended and ascended 
the stairs without pain or inconvenience, and at the same time gesticu- 
lated with the limb, moving it backward and forward to show its 
mobility and strength." 
This was a case of unintentional magnetic treatment, and speaks 
well for the doctor's interest in his patient, and kind good-will 
toward a suffering stranger. 
Fig. 42.-This Cut illustrates how the Leg was cured by Magnetism. 
It also points most distinctly to the course of treatment that 
should be pursued in all cases of rheumatism and neuralgia. 
There are other diseases of the blood, not so easy to reach by 
magnetic treatment; all the enormous catalogue of woes known by 
the universal name of humors, and among these the most pitiable, as 
well as the most blamable, is venerea, with its attendant syphilitic 
horrors. 
For all the lighter forms of this disease, where it has been con- 
tracted by want of cleanliness, or by contact with inflammation and 
irritation, we recommend local treatment. 
Injections every thirty or forty minutes, made with carbolic soap 
and warm, soft water, and frequent washing with the same, is the 
best local application, and next to this a weak solution of sulphate of 
zinc. 140 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
It will be many years before the use of cubebs and copaiba is 
abolished, as a specific for venerea; but sandal-wood, oil of turpen- 
tine, or some of the balsams, which operate readily upon the kidneys 
and induce more rapid secretion, and so cause as it were a washing 
process from the inside, are now quite extensively used, as is also 
buchu, a medicinal plant somewhat resembling in fragrance and flavor 
the little herb called pennyroyal, which finds constant favor with 
New-England nurses ; and uva ursi, or bear-berry, sometimes called 
mountain cranberry, is used by the Indians for this strange visitant 
which civilization has brought among them. It is also used for 
dropsy and all diseases of the urinary organs ; but good magnetic 
treatment will cure twice as many cases of dropsy as all other forms 
of treatment combined, besides relieving all it can not cure perma- 
nently. 
For cancer, before it has suppurated or 
commenced discharging, a magnetizer can 
O O' o 
place one hand on the hard lump that always 
precedes the breaking out of the sore, and by 
holding the hand perfectly still and allowing 
the perspiration to gather under it for twenty 
or thirty minutes each day, the lump will 
gradually disappear, taken up by the absorb- 
ents and discharged partly by the secretory 
organs, and partly by the lungs. 
Of course, much effete, waste matter must be left in the blood 
after such a gathering has been dispersed ; but by proper care and 
diet this can be disposed of, and the whole system restored to purity 
and health. 
There is a troublesome form of humor in the blood, more annoy- 
ing than dangerous, sometimes called canker, and sometimes by other 
names, which appears on the mucous membrane usually, but some- 
times on the cuticle, in small irregular pustules, red at first, but 
gathering watery fluid from the blood; a small white centre forms, 
and unless opened by artificial means, never discharges any matter, 
but gradually dies away, leaving a crimson scar. 
Within the mouth, nose, and throat these pustules are so softened 
by constant moisture that they spread over a larger surface, and often 
present dead white surfaces an inch or more in length, from which 
much inflammation often proceeds. 
This trouble should be treated first with a course of Turkish 
baths, steam-baths, or abundant hot-water bathing, alternating with 
a dip in the sea occasionally. 
Fig. 43.-Bucnu. THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
141 
It is next to useless to take any form of drugs, internally, for this 
trouble, and a great deal worse than useless to apply poisons to the 
surface, as is often done. 
Botanically, a yellow root called gold-thread is used in decoction 
as a drink for canker ; and alum, being a powerful astringent, is often 
used to harden the mucous membrane and heal the abrasions already 
made. Sometimes canker reaches to the stomach, and causes a burn- 
ing sensation, that can be allayed by drinking mucilages, of which 
the best is a tea made of slippery-eZm bark, with a little gum-arabic 
added. 
Sometimes canker eruptions indicate that the blood needs acidu- 
lating, and can be corrected by a fruit diet; sometimes that lime is 
needed, which can be supplied by eating eggs, oysters, and similar 
articles of food. 
But abundant bathing 
and magnetic treatment are 
best. 
For aggravated cases 
of venereal and syphilitic 
affections, the patient must 
commence a thorough 
course of dieting, bathing, 
and exercising, for the pur- 
pose of purifying the 
blood. 
We shall be glad to see 
medication used much less, 
and common-sense much 
more, for this as well as 
other diseases. 
G-out is much like rheumatism in its manifestations, excepting 
that it is more severe and concentrated. 
The same general directions will apply for it, excepting that the 
food should be much simpler, and contain a larger supply of waste 
material. 
Hemorrhoids or piles are often said to be a disorder of the blood, 
but any thing which induces extra heat in the lower part of the body 
will cause these. 
Sitting for a long time, especially on softly-cushioned chairs or 
sofas, walking too much, or excessive sexual intercourse, are the ordi- 
nary ways in which this disease is superinduced ; but eating improper 
Fig. 44.-The Ascending Douche and Spray. 142 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
food at improper hours, and allowing costiveness to become habitual, 
is a great aggravation of the same. 
To cure this distressing malady, commence with the food. 
Eat beef or mutton only once a day, no pork, and as little season- 
ing as possible. 
Drink water, cold or hot, weak black tea, without sugar, no coffee, 
alcohol, wine, or othei' stimulant. 
Eat coarse, light food, mush, grains, corn-bread, and vegetables. 
Bathe freely-sitz-baths being a specific for this trouble. 
What is still better than the sitz-bath is the ascending douche 
(see cut); for it affords the ready means of applying cool or tepid 
lavements directly to the piles, the inflamed membrane of the rectum, 
abating the heat, the soreness, 
the swelling, by causing the 
blood in the capillaries to be 
carried along or absorbed, and 
at the same time producing a 
daily healthy movement of the 
bowels, and obviating costive- 
ness, which has been the great 
cause. The douche is a self- 
injecting apparatus, operated 
with one hand with the utmost 
facility, and so small and con- 
venient that it can be taken on 
a journey, in a carpet-bag, and 
used in the bed-room or private 
apartment at leisure, thereby 
obviating necessities the trav- 
eler is so liable to, that produce general illness, headache, and the 
painful affection in question. 
Have the back rubbed and the bowels thoroughly kneaded by a 
good magnetizer every night, and apply a wet bandage to the spine. 
This will reduce the inflammation, and allow the healing process to 
go on regularly and steadily. 
Exercise every day in the open air, and, if it be a possibility to 
do so, walk on the grass, sit down where the sun shines or has been 
shining warmly, and take every pains to induce healthy and natural 
circulation. 
Apoplexy is a very decided indication of trouble in the circula- 
tion. 
Its symptoms are, increased fullness of the blood-vessels about the 
Fig. 45.-Chopping in the Forest. THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
143 
head and neck, a tendency to obesity, disinclination for active exercise, 
occasional feelings of dizziness, and sometimes loss of memory and 
temporary failure of the mental faculties. 
The best remedy for this disease is an ax and a pine forest, with 
the privilege of camping out until the last tree is felled. (See Fig. 45.) 
Next to this is a shovel and a bank of fresh earth, or a good 
strong horse and a journey across the continent of twenty miles a 
day, with a not very easy saddle. There is probably no exercise so 
beneficial as horseback-riding ; for much walking exhausts the mag- 
Fig. 46.-Magnetic Exercise. 
netic forces of the system, if they are deficient; but in riding a 
horse, the animal does the work, and the rider takes the exercise, and 
not only do the stomach, liver, and other internal organs get whole- 
somely jostled, but every muscle of the arms and limbs partakes of 
the invigorating shaking. 
Then, too, the horse is a regular battery for the generation of 
animal electricity. The vapors from his nostrils and the steam from 
his body are loaded with magnetic life. The busy brain-worker, 
seated upon the saddle, is enveloped in an atmosphere of vital mag- 144 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
netisin, which his attenuated body drinks in as the parched earth 
takes in the evening shower. 
If neither of these plans are feasible, good faithful magnetic 
treatment every day for three months will correct the abnormal ten- 
dency, and restore an equable circulation. 
Careful attention to diet, light, plain food, and plenty of exer- 
cise will then make the cure permanent, and relieve the mind from 
all uneasiness on that point. 
Paralysis is a different form of disease altogether. It can not 
really be said to be caused by the blood or the circulation, and yet it 
is so little understood that it is hard to classify it. 
Heart-disease is of course intimately connected with the circula- 
tion, but is mostly dependent upon the nervo-electrical forces, and 
has been treated under the head of nerves and their offices. 
Paralysis can only be arrested by magnetic treatment, aided by 
electro-galvanism. It can usually be prevented by careful attention 
to the laws of health : plenty of exercise in the open air, good food 
in moderation, careful avoidance of stimulants, strictest abstinence 
from all unnatural sexual excitement, frequent bathing in cold water, 
brisk rubbing of the whole surface of the skin by the bare hand. 
A hard bed is essential; and next to a good magnetic physician the 
best remedial agent for coming paralysis is a good horse. Even 
horseback exercise may be carried to excess, but is not very likely 
to be. 
Any one who dreads paralysis should wear the hair long enough 
to shield the base of the brain, and always light, well-ventilated hats. 
Use the w?7Z-power with a steady and strong determination to over- 
come physical weakness by spiritual strength. 
Palsy is a species of paralysis; one way in which the brain 
grows weak and weary, and protests against over-work. For this the 
patient should put the feet in hot water, put cold water on the head, 
rub the back of the neck, and exercise the will-power as much as 
possible. 
The one great bugbear of the blood in old and young, to which 
we have not alluded, is Scrofula. 
We shall be glad when some other name is substituted for this, 
to represent the general troubles that refuse to be classed under 
any other head. 
The word is unpleasantly suggestive, and yet means nothing. It 
is usually applied first to an enlargement of the lymphatic glands, 
especially those situated about the throat, arm-pits, and groins. THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
145 
The first appearance of papular scrofula indicates a weakened 
condition of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels. 
Swelling or enlargement of the glands shows that the carriers are 
not doing their work properly, that they are sluggish and indolent, 
and quantities of waste matter are accumulating that should be 
carried off more rapidly. 
, To aid in this carrying-off process, magnetic treatment should be 
resorted to as soon as the swelling appears. Local and general mani- 
pulations should be commenced immediately, and continued until 
rapid and regular circulation has carried off the accumulated impu- 
rities. 
Some author says that " Wherever there is a minute artery to 
deposit a living particle of matter, there is also a lymphatic vessel 
or venous radical to remove it as soon as it shall have finished its 
especial office." 
This only shows, to all who give the subject any thought, that 
the action of the lymphatic vessels counterbalances that of the 
nutritive system, and thus the form and size of the body can be har- 
moniously preserved only by all these different forces acting in con- 
cert. 
TFAen the lymphatics exceed the nutrients in power, the body ema- 
ciates. When the nutrients are strongest, plethora is the result ; 
and yet the general health may be prolonged apparently for years 
under some irregular action, by which either class of these vessels 
may be nearly paralyzed. But discomfort and constant uneasiness 
are usually the result of any such partial or one-sided action ; and 
the true way to keep the balance of power even is to assist nature 
by the simplest possible means, either to keep in the right path or to 
readily return to it when any accident or untoward circumstance 
has turned her aside for a time. 
If a person manifests predisposition to scrofula, he must eat 
light, rich food, to supply the nutriment which the system needs, and 
then stimulate the absorbents and secretory organs to carry off the 
waste. 
But if there be already sores discharging their acrid, watery, and 
sometimes offensive secretions, the treatment must be cautious ; and 
the patient must exercise the most careful supervision over his or 
her general health and condition. 
Magnetic treatment should be continued, in order to strengthen 
the system, the whole person should be bathed frequently in warm 
water, and, if possible, electro-chemical baths taken at least once 
every week. 146 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
All sores should be washed with carbolic soap-suds two or three 
times every day, and covered with finely-pulverized dry earth, or a 
fine muslin bag should be made large enough to cover the surface of 
the sore, and filled with equal quantities of dry earth and finely- 
pulverized charcoal. 
Wash the sore thoroughly, dry it with a soft linen cloth, and 
cover it with the bag of earth, allowing it to remain on for twenty- 
four hours if no inflammation or irritation ensues. 
Carbolic acid is the best disinfectant that has yet been discovered, 
and one of the best healing agents that can be used for outward 
application. It has the cleansing properties of tar, and is more 
soothing than the finest oil. 
But, whatever may be the state of a scrofulous sore or swelling, 
never have a knife or scalpel near it. And never have a limb ampu- 
tated for white-swelling or fever-sore, or any other cause than abso- 
lute necessity of crushed bone and severed arteries. 
I say never. I mean if you have a good magnetizer at hand, or 
can by any means procure the services of one. For magnetism is 
better than the knife in ninety-nine out of every hundred cases. 
To eradicate scrofula from the system, live properly. To prevent 
its appearance in your children, take good care of them, both before 
and after their physical birth. 
Do not wait until unmistakable symptoms have manifested them- 
selves, but commence as soon as conception has taken place, to live 
for the little one; to feed it properly, avoiding stimulants, eating 
light food, rice, and grains and mucilages, and for meat good sweet 
beef and mutton and poultry ; to breathe fresh air, that its blood 
may be pure ; to wear suitable clothing, that it may not be kept too 
cold or too warm ; to keep the nerves steady and the temper equa- 
ble ; to seek pleasant society ; to think pleasant thoughts ; for all 
these things have their effect in forming the new life and making it 
worth living. 
Nursing mothers can not be too considerate of the awful respon- 
sibility that rests upon them ; and but few people are aware how 
easily the blood is vitiated-ah ! completely poisoned-from an 
unhappy, perturbed state of the mind. 
Thousands of innocents are annually immolated on that fountain, 
designed by Omnipotent Wisdom to be the spring and font of life. 
The milk of the nursing mother instantly partakes, by a vital and 
chemical law, of every condition of her mind ' for her blood is 
instantly affected. Hence the nervous, feverish excitements, the THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
147 
spasmodic pains, convulsions, cramps, and even the mental anguish 
of the nursing babe. 
To show the fact, it is only necessary to repeat the incident related 
by Carpenter, in his Physiology, of the woman whose husband was 
attacked by some maddened soldier, flourishing a sword, which she 
sprang forward, seized, and wrested from him at the most imminent 
danger of her own life. At the time her babe was sleeping sweetly 
in the cradle, to which she in a little time after thoughtlessly gave 
nurse, when in twenty minutes it was dead, her milk proving as 
poisonous and deadly as prussic acid. 
This instance should afford a most appalling lesson to all women, 
and especially to mothers, namely, to keep a quiet, harmonious state 
of mind under all circumstances-to leaky self-government. 
Cancer, too, a blood disease, coming from blood-poison, than 
which no sound in the English language next to pulmonary con- 
sumption becomes more melancholy and heart-sickening to the 
human ear, proceeds primarily, in 'the very large majority of cases, 
from a disturbed, inharmonious, fretful, passionate condition of the 
mind. 
In others, where through misfortune or through grief, the spirits, 
once so buoyant, are utterly dejected and depressed, the canker-worm 
of care, with slow and insidious progress, eats into some less vital 
organ, and altering its structure and vitiating its faculties, gradu- 
ally undermines the fabric of the constitution, and establishes a 
painful, an incurable, and ultimately a fatal disease. 
Some years since, a preceptor of ours being in London, whilst 
engaged one morning in conversation with the late Sir Astley Cooper 
in his study, a subject was announced who had come from Norfolk 
for that justly eminent surgeon's opinion and advice. His keen and 
practiced eye at once discerned the malady ; and before he put a 
question to the elderly and melancholy object that had entered the 
room, Sir Astley asked me if I could name his disease ? I admitted 
my inability beyond that of a constitution thoroughly impaired ; on 
which Sir Astley said he was much mistaken if the poor man was 
not laboring from carcinoma of the rectum, and that probably his 
mind was ill at ease. On examining the patient, the accuracy of his 
diagnosis was most fully confirmed. He then observed how fre- 
quently that disease ensued on mental distress. 
The disease is, however, by no means confined to the rectum. 
The female breast and uterus are particularly subject to scirrhus 
from the same cause. 
" I should have observed," says Sir Astley Cooper in his lectures, 148 
THE BLOOD AND ITS DISEASES. 
when speaking of the causes of this disease, " that one of the most 
frequent is grief or anxiety of mind. It arrests the progress of 
secretion, produces irritative fever, and becomes the forerunner 
of scirrhous tubercle. How often have I found," he continues, 
" when a mother has been watching, night after night, with anxious 
solicitude, the pangs and sufferings of hei- child, and has had the 
comfort and gratification of seeing its recovery, that in a short time 
after this, she has come to me with an uneasiness of the breast, which 
on examination I have discovered to be scirrhous tubercle. Full 
three fourths of these cases arise from grief and anxiety of mind. 
It is the state of mind and body which predisposes to this disease. 
The mind acts on the body, the secretions are arrested, and the re- 
sult is the formation of scirrhus. Look, then, in this complaint, not 
only at altering the state of the constitution, but relieve the mind, 
and remove, if possible, the anxiety under which the patient labors." 
Remember that pure blood is to the human frame what pure 
water is to the earth and its inhabitants ; not the source of life, 
but so intimately connected with it that no life can go on without 
its agency ; and the nearer it is to absolute purity, the stronger and 
more perfect is the life it helps to sustain. 
Then try to avoid every thing that vitiates the blood, and to 
appropriate every thing that vitalizes and strengthens it. 
Learn to gather magnetism from the atmosphere that surrounds 
you, from the strong, healthy, generous people you come in contact 
with, and be always ready to impart it to those who need-to the 
weak and weary, the exhausted and discouraged. 
So shall you supply spirit as weD as material substance to your 
heart and daily life. Valentine Mott. THIRTEENTH SECTION. 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS-DYSPEPSIA 
AND ITS HORRORS. 
Clare of the teeth-Use of carbolic soap-Importance of lime in food-Hot 
drinks and confectionery bad-Toothache a divine monition-The salivary 
glands-Gastric fluid, its importance-Food, and time of eating regulated by 
discretion-Vegetable and animal foods, both may be necessary-Pork 
unhealthy-Generates scrofula, trichinae, and tape-worm-People do 
partake of the nature of the food they eat-Grains of all kinds the most 
natural food-Neglect of the secretive functions the prolific cause of disease 
-Costiveness, its cause and remedy-Vital magnetism the best remedy- 
The function of the skin, its great importance--The alkaline bath, its use- 
The pack-Dyspepsia, its horrors-How cured-Importance of sunshine- 
Exercise, its importance-Anger and fear to be avoided-Bilious persons 
should avoid milk-Buttermilk healthy-Animal fats to be avoided-Fruits 
should form a good share of the breakfast-The food should be most nutri- 
tious, and of the best quality-A magnetic ride after dinner to be taken- 
Sleep before twelve, its importance-The Turkish bath, its effects-To be 
used discriminately-The medicinal vapor-bath. 
HE digestive organs, or those which convert the food 
into blood and tissue for the support, growth, and 
nourishment of the body, are the mouth, teeth, sali- 
vary glands, pharynx, (esophagus, stomach, intestines, 
lacteals, thoracic duct, and liver. (See cut.) 
The mouth is an irregular cavity, containing the 
instruments of mastication and the organs of taste. 
It is continuous with the pharynx, but separated 
from it by the palate, which can be elevated or de- 
pressed so as to close the passage or leave it free. 
The teeth are composed of bony matter, but in 
composition, nutrition, and growth are unlike the 
other bones of the body, as they are exposed to the immediate action 
of atmospheric air and foreign substances, in the way of food and 
drink. 150 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
The bones of the system generally, when fractured, unite ; but 
there is never a permanent union of a tooth when broken. 
The teeth require a great deal of care and attention. They 
should be brushed cleanly with a soft brush and a little nice soap 
every night, and rinsed cleanly afterward. Tar-soap or carbolic 
soap is very good for this 
purpose, being hardening for 
the gums, healing for any 
slight abrasion or irritation, 
cleansing for canker or other 
sores, and effectually destroy- 
ing and removing all tartar, 
thus purifying the breath and 
strengthening the lungs. 
The food should be chosen 
with reference to supplying 
plenty of lime, to keep the 
teeth as well as the other 
bones of a firm consistency, 
and plenty of silicate for sup- 
plying enamel with which the 
teeth are covered. 
Toothache, though a dis- 
tressing trouble, has its own 
mission of usefulness in the 
protection of health and life. 
A minute vein and artery 
and a tiny nerve are found in 
the centre of each tooth. 
Boys and girls drink hot 
and unwholesome drinks, and 
eat candy and other improper 
food, which cracks the enamel 
on the teeth, and exposes the 
nerve, thus increasing its sen- 
sitiveness. 
They go out insufficiently 
clad, allow their feet to be- 
come cold or wet, stop the invisible perspiration that is constantly 
passing off through the pores of the skin, the blood rushes to the 
head, every artery and vein is congested and presses against the 
nerve, and the imperfect tooth throbs and aches to give warning 
Fig. 47. THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
151 
that some law has been violated, and that care must be taken in the 
future of the teeth if not of the lungs. 
And decaying teeth have saved more young people from con- 
sumption than all the medicines ever made for that purpose. 
When toothache is fairly inaugurated, nothing is better than 
magnetism to draw the blood from the head, warm the extremities, 
and restore the nervous equilibrium. 
The salivary glands arc six in number, three on each side of the 
face. 
It is not necessary to tell the Latin names here, as we are only 
trying to deal with plain English. 
The pharynx is a membranous sac, extending from the base of 
the skull to the top of the trachea, and is continuous with the oeso- 
phagus. 
From the pharynx are four passages. 
One opens upward and forward to the nose ; the second, directly 
forward, to the mouth ; the third, downward to the trachea and 
lungs ; the fourth, downward and backward to the stomach. 
The membranous linings of all these passages are affected in the 
disease called catarrh, which we have treated in another place. 
The oesophagus is a large membranous tube that extends behind 
the trachea, the heart and lungs, pierces the diaphragm, and termi- 
nates in the stomach. 
The stomach is situated in the left side of the abdomen, immedi- 
ately below the diaphragm, and is provided with a multitude of 
small glands, in which is secreted the gastric fluid, one of the most 
important elements in the whole digestive economy. 
The intestines or alimentary canal receive the food from the 
stomach, and convey the waste matter out of the system by excre- 
tion. 
It is very evident that one important consideration toward pre- 
serving health is to eat proper food, in proper quantities, and at 
proper times. 
Most writers upon these subjects insist that food should be taken 
at regular intervals by all ; but feeling the highest respect for 
personal individuality, we think that by the exercise of reason and 
prudent judgment, every person of mature age can choose his own 
food and his own time for eating. 
Sufficient food can be eaten once in every twenty-four hours to 
support life, and keep the health good; still we do not say that no 
person should ever eat more frequently than once in twenty-four 
hours. 152 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
Many people contend that only a vegetable diet should be used, 
and illustrate their opinion by stating that in tropical climates the 
natives live exclusively on a vegetable diet, and are healthy and 
happy. The only reply we can offer to this argument is, that in 
tropical climates there is generally very little call forbrain-work, and 
the nervo-electric currents can attend upon the stomach undisturbed 
by other demands. 
But in colder climates, where life requires more thinking and 
planning, more exertion of brain and muscle, it is well for the ox and 
sheep to do their part and convert some of the juicy grasses and 
odorous blossoms into a more condensed and nutritious form. For 
all flesh is grass in a certain sense, though we may have some choice 
in the way in which it is prepared. 
Fig. 48.-This cut represents the Tania Solium, or Tape-worm, which was dislodged from a 
patient after being its subject for nine years, and having been reduced to the brink of the 
grave by its pernicious effects. 
Pork has fallen into disfavor, principally from the unwholesome 
way in which it is raised and fed. - 
In the West, the great corn-raising and pork-raising district of 
the United States, there are immense distilleries, where the heart and 
life of the countless tons of grain are stolen out, for the manufac- 
ture of ardent spirits. And upon the heated and unhealthy refuse, 
hundreds and thousands of hogs are yearly fattened. 
Sometimes the hogs are kept in a half-wild state, and fed on nuts, 
until every particle of their unfattened, flabby flesh is filled with a 
vegetable oil, rancid and not fairly digested. 
Always these creatures are poisonous, unhealthy, and the worst 
forms of scrofula are developed by eating of their flesh, which, in THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
153 
its very best condition, will be filled with minute larvae and rapidly- 
growing worms almost as soon as the life-blood leaves it. 
No person should eat pork, in any form ; for the risk of being 
poisoned by it is incalculable. 
The tape-worm has ever been the bane of feeders on swine's flesh; 
but, as seemingly to indicate a providential displeasure or rebuke 
against eating meat fed upon such vile trash, hogs have become, 
within a few years, exceedingly infested with another parasite, 
rendering the danger of eating such meat of extreme peril, not only 
to health but to life itself, so much so, that thousands of people have 
been its victims, dying, in many instances, in the most horrid agony. 
Well-authenticated cases of deaths have been published all over 
the country ; but to give a practical evidence of the danger, we will 
reproduce the following as a warning to all feeders on swine's flesh : 
" A dreadful case of trichinisis has just occurred in Utica. 
George Mechlin, a young German, died of it last Sunday, and 
Charles Pomerina and wife, and William Deisenholt, are suffering 
from its effects. About a week before being attacked, they had 
feasted on raw sausages and imperfectly cooked pork-chops. Portions 
of the muscles taken from Mechlin's shoulders and thighs after his 
death, were examined under the microscope, and immense numbers 
of minute living worms, known as trichina spiralis, were found 
wriggling about in the flesh. In a piece of the muscle not larger 
than a pin's-head, three or four of these deathly living atoms could be 
plainly seen with a glass of four hundred magnifying power. In 
appearance they resemble the smallest kind of a tape-worm, and the 
majority of them were coiled up in the form of the letter S and the 
figure 8. The movements of the living creatures were like those of 
half-torpid angle-worms." 
Another powerful argument against the use of pork as an article 
of diet is, that people do partake of the nature of the food they 
habitually eat. 
And as the hog is the type of filth and selfishness, probably no 
person is ambitious to emulate it or share its fame. 
Grains of all kinds are the most natural food for man, supplying 
every essential element for muscle, bone, and tissue, with sufficient 
stimulating power to feed the brain and nerves. 
But from successive generations of meat-eating parents, we can 
not expect to see the habit suddenly abolished by the children. 
Therefore all we can do is to raise our voice against it, and to 
endeavor to point out what is better, more rational, and more 
healthful. * 154 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
But one very prolific cause of disease in the human family is the 
neglect of the secretive and excretive organs, by which all waste mat- 
ter is carried from the system. 
The principal organs of excretion seem to be the 
intestines or bowels and the bladder. And upon their 
healthy action depends the comfort of the whole 
system. 
Young people should especially insist upon an 
evacuation of the bowels as often as once in twenty- 
four hours, and of the bladder much more frequently. 
The improper food that interferes with digestion 
is one prolific cause of that most frequent and dis- 
tressing trouble known as costiveness. 
It can always be remedied by proper care in the selection of 
food ; avoiding all stimulants, eating good ripe fruits, grain, rice, etc. 
If medical treatment becomes absolutely necessary, try magne- 
tism first of all • a vigorous and thorough rubbing of the back and 
chest, kneading of the bowels, and rubbing and bathing the feet. 
Sometimes a shock of the battery will bring life and action again 
to the torpid muscles that are fast verging toward paralysis ; for 
paralysis is often preceded by costiveness, and great care should be 
taken on this account. 
Excessive use of laxative medicines will, by reaction, produce 
excessive costiveness or constipation ; and undue excitement of the 
sexual organs is also a prolific source of trouble in this direction. 
Diseases of the kidneys and bladder 
often result from trouble with the digestive 
organs. These, if assuming a chronic form, 
should be treated with vital magnetism and 
hydropathic accompaniments. 
If they are acute attacks, it is well to 
take a few drops of turpentine (spirits) with 
lemon-juice, in the morning, repeating the 
dose of three or four drops and a tea-spoon- 
ful of juice every two hours until relief is 
obtained. 
Magnetism will relieve the pain and dis- 
tress caused by inflammation of the urinary 
organs ; but when nature has been abused, 
and her laws violated for years, she often 
demands some assistance in keeping up the healthy action of the 
digestive and secretive organs after it has been re-established. 
Fig. 49. 
Fig. 50.-Vertical Sec- 
tion of the Kidney. THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
155 
It is such cases as these that require a long course of magnetic 
treatment, in order to change the entire electrical currents of the 
whole system, and give new vitality and strength to the blood, thus 
carrying off or driving out impurities. 
The third and altogether most important process of excretion, or 
carrying off the waste matter from the system, is by means of the 
skin. (See cut illustrating the silent radiations.) 
Millions of tiny pores cover 
every inch of surface, and de- 
mand breathing space. These 
pores carry off more effete or 
waste matter from the blood 
than all the other forms of ex- 
cretion ; and to keep them in 
active operation, bathing should 
be frequently resorted to. 
The warm alkaline bath is 
most cleansing when, the pores 
are stopped. This can be used 
by adding a table-spoonful of 
ordinary soda, or a tea-spoonful 
of ammonia, to every gallon of 
warm water, and stirring until 
they are thoroughly dissolved. 
Then bathe slowly, wetting every 
part of the surface of the whole 
body thoroughly, and using at 
least a sitz-bath if a plunge-bath 
is not available. It is best, after 
taking an alkaline bath, to wring 
a towel in clear cold water, and rub the surface briskly for a few 
minutes ; then rub dry, and keep quiet until the pores have had time 
to resume their action. 
It is well to take an alkaline bath upon retiring at night, and a 
slight bath of cold or tepid water upon rising in the morning. The 
pack is really one of the most simple and useful forms of medicament, 
being simply to lay three or four blankets on a straw mattress, wring 
out very dry a coarse sheet from clear cold or slightly warm water, 
wrap it about the patient, let him lie down upon the blankets, and 
fold these closely over the sheet, wrapping them from side to side, to 
exclude the air and excite perspiration as soon as possible. The 
Fig. 51.-Electrical exhalations of the skin.-The 
importance of its healthy function. 156 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS 
length of time which a person should remain in a pack varies with 
different constitutions and different diseases. 
Fig. 52.-Wet-Pack. 
Fig. 53.-Going from the Pack 
to the Douche. 
After becoming accustomed to this form of treatment, it will not 
be injurious to remain packed for an hour every day. But it is best 
to be very careful at first about sudden exposure and taking cold. 
The digestive organs can often be relieved, the blood made to 
circulate more freely, and the horrors of dyspepsia cured by free 
applications of water and the magnetism to be derived therefrom. 
But the same result can be reached more readily and more naturally 
by animal magnetism ; by rubbing the ichole surface of the skin briskly 
with warm healthy hands. 
No person, however magnetic, can receive so much benefit from 
rubbing themselves as from being rubbed by another person. 
The sun-bath is also useful in aiding digestion; and a quiet walk 
in the sunshine after dinner, is better than bitters or any stimulant. 
People generally are too much afraid of the sunlight. They 
darken their windows with curtains and blinds, and shield their bodies 
with too abundant clothing, their faces with vails and shades, their 
hands with tight-fitting gloves. 
All these things tend to weakness rather than strength. The very 
air is purer and more healthful when the sun is shining, and sun-stroke 
is extremely rare unless the blood has been already overheated by 
exciting drink or undue exercise. 
But any exercise is better taken in the day than the night-time. 
Even in a stormy or wildly windy day, the latent magnetic powers 
of the whole system are brought into action to resist the force of the 
elements, and with proper protection and sufficient will-power, there 
is very little danger of taking cold. And walking or running is THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
157 
strongly conducive to good and rapid digestion, while any mental 
excitement, as anger, grief, or fear, will act as a sudden and effectual 
check upon the digestive process. 
If the stomach feels oppressed with a sensation 
of over-fullness, raise the arms above the head as 
high as you can reach, five or six times in rapid 
succession, then close the hands lightly and strike 
the chest several times. 
In short, every one, especially every child, 
should learn some simple gymnastic routine, and 
practice it every day. If it is possible to have 
music to accompany the motions, it will lend inte- 
rest and add precision to the exercise. If every 
girl should vary this amusement by practicing for 
a few hours every day with the broom, the duster, or the garden- 
spade, and every boy with the hoe, the hammer, or the plane, it 
would be still better for them. 
The horrors of indigestion need scarcely be enumerated here. 
They can readily be detected by the sallow, unhealthy complexion, 
the nervous, irritable manner, loss of appetite and of memory, and 
other attendant evils. 
To remedy these the patient should rise early, exercise for an hour 
out of doors or in a well-ventilated room before breakfast, then eat 
plentifully of some light, nutritious food, made up chiefly of grain 
in some form, and ripe fruit. 
A person who is inclined to biliousness should not use milk as a 
beverage or even an article of diet habitually, as it tends to make a 
torpid liver still more torpid, 
and causes drowsiness and a 
feeling of fullness and some- 
times of dizziness in the head. 
But buttermilk is especially 
good for inactive liver and 
kidneys, and should be freely 
drank by all who can obtain 
it fresh and pure ; most of its 
oily substance having been 
removed in the butter, and a 
large proportion of acid de- 
veloped, which aids in digestion and assists in the healthy action of 
all the secretive and excretive organs. It may be useless to refer 
again to different articles of food and their action upon the system ; 
Fig. 54.-Walking or 
running for health. 
Fig. 55.-Spading and Working in 
Garden for Health. 158 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE OEGANS. 
but as healthy magnetism is the one object to be most heartily 
desired, one can not be too careful about what they eat. 
All animal fats are non-conductors of electricity, and they are 
not in the true sense of the word digested, but rather melted in the 
stomach and absorbed by the blood, making it thick and apparently 
rich. But the richness often becomes over-abundant and is deposited 
on the surface of the body immediately under the skin, where, the 
pores not being able to discharge it rapidly enough, it collects, form- 
ing-every body knows what-pimples, boils, abcesses, ulcers, tumors, 
cancers, and the rest of the list. 
Some people will aver that they have always eaten large quanti- 
ties of fat, and yet suffer from none of these evils. 
This indicates that they have very active digestive and secretive 
organs, and usually very porous and coarse-grained cuticle that allows 
impurities to escape readily and rapidly. Very active work, either 
of brain or muscle, acts as a sort of 
combustion, using up or consuming 
the purest part of all fatty or oily 
substances, and still leaving the im- 
purities to be disposed of in other 
ways. 
If a person will eat vegetable fats 
and oils, the best antidote for them 
is the acid contained in ripe fruits ; 
lemons, tomatoes, apples, grapes, or- 
anges, peaches, the very luxuries of 
life. 
No table should be considered as 
furnishing a complete breakfast with- 
out abundant supply of fruit. There is a magnetism in their 
abundant juices that nothing else can furnish. And when a person 
considers how rapidly the food of to-day becomes the blood, muscle, 
and bone of to-morrow, it is certainly worth while to see to it that 
the food is of the best and most nutritious quality. 
But after breakfast, when the daily work and cares of life demand 
attention, the patient should still bear in mind the trouble he is striv- 
ing to cure; should not exercise to exhaustion, or remain quiet either 
sitting or standing more than two hours at a time. Let your occu- 
pation be varied as much as possible, and always alternate rapid and 
vigorous exercise with quiet rest. 
Be sure to eat dinner or the heartiest meal in the middle of the 
day, some time between twelve and three o'clock. Let it consist of 
Fig. 56.-Fruits for the Break- 
fast-Table. 159 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
fish, well cooked, of beef not under-done ; always substitute mutton 
for pork, and poultry for sausage; eschew pies and rich pastry, and 
eat rice, wheat, hominy, or fruits for dessert. The latter part of the 
day should be spent more quietly than the earlier portion ; that is, 
for invalids or sick people. A walk, ride, or drive after dinner may 
be beneficial, and pleasant, cheerful society will bring new magnetic 
life and vigor to the weary or dyspeptic brain. 
The supper should be light, and tea, if it must be drank, taken 
very weak and in small quantities. 
The evening should be passed quietly and the patient retire early, 
as it is well known that sleep obtained early in the night is much 
more strengthening and refreshing than that of later hours. 
Fig. 57.-This cut is designed to show the magnetism that exhales from horses, and the invigo- 
rating effects of riding after or mingling with horses, or other young animals as well. 
It is an old axiom that'one hour of sleep before midnight is worth 
two after it. But probably this proportion is somewhat exaggerated. 
We have given the dyspeptic no stated rules about bathing, but 
we want it borne in mind that water is full of latent magnetic and 
electrical currents ; that besides its mechanical action in opening the 
pores of the skin and allowing the impurities and exhalations to escape, 
it also has healing and strengthening powers in itself which are not 
to be slighted. Solitary bathing is beneficial, but not to be compared 
with the bath accompanied by good magnetic treatment, a vigorous 
rubbing from head to foot. 
They who have invented and perfected the now popular Turkish 
bath have this idea, though vaguely hidden and unexpressed to the 
popular mind. 
They know that in the rubbing, more than in any combinations 
of water, steam, and vapor, lies the great curative principle; and 160 
THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
they are careful to select strong, healthy attendants, who will not 
suffer from the great loss of magnetism which must take place by 
coming in contact with so many different people. 
But the Turkish bath, though already so popular and growing in 
favor, should be used with great care and discretion. 
The sudden, powerful, and continued action of the secretory 
glands in such profuse perspiration is very weakening. 
The repeated opening and closing of the pores of the skin by alter- 
nate applications of heat and cold, relaxes the fibres of the cuticle 
and exhausts the oil-follicles, thus rendering the system more sensitive 
to after-changes of temperature. 
But all this is but an abuse, and should not result from the 'use 
of the Turkish or any bath, only as it may be given under the direct 
control of an experienced medical man for the accomplishment of 
some urgent result in equally urgent conditions-to overcome sud- 
den congestion, throw off an acute attack of cold, or relieve intense 
pain, as in neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, etc. 
The Turkish or hot-air bath, given at rather a moderate, graduated 
temperature, certainly affords one of the most convenient and ready 
means of removing chronic diseases affecting the blood or local parts, 
Fro. 58.-The Turkish Bath. THE STOMACH AND DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 
161 
as in chronic rheumatism, calculary affections of the kidneys, known 
to modern medical science, and Dr. Stone has performed some of the 
greatest cures in Bright's disease known on record by its aid ; and 
under his specific, plain directions, can be adopted with facility at the 
home of the patient at a very moderate expense. 
It is well, in order to prevent taking cold, to rub the chest with a 
few drops of oil after the severity of the bath. 
But the plain VAPOR-bath can be used at any time with impunity, 
and the medicated vapor-bath, combined with magnetic treatment, 
is one of the best remedies for impure blood, imperfect digestion, and 
all diseases of the secretive organs. 
We can not better close this chapter upon one of the most preva- 
lent and annoying of all physical troubles, than by advising every 
person to use their own judgment and intelligence, to study the causes 
which lead to the distressing disarrangement, and see if it is not possi- 
ble to remove or modify these. 
Avoid drugs and stimulants, use only natural remedies to assist 
nature, and you will be rewarded by increased vitality, and greater 
power to resist as well as to overcome disease. 
Robert James, M.D. FOURTEENTH SECTION. 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
Undesired maternity a curse-Women to be fit for mothers should be healthy- 
Must reform themselves-Proper dress, food, pure air, exercise, and em- 
ployment-A divine impulse to be heeded-Abortionism horrid-The darkest 
blot on modern civilization-Man and wife both cheat each other-How ? 
why ?-The heart always capable of love-Marriage a most solemn obliga- 
tion too little considered-How can most happiness be gained?-Wrong 
impressions of life-Should be well versed in the anatomy and physiology 
of her system-Maternity should not be crowded-Too little time to think- 
Magnetic nurse. 
OMANHOOD and maternity is 
the subject I have chosen upon 
which to give a few of my 
thoughts, because I consider it 
of the utmost importance to the 
whole human family, and espe- 
cially to woman. 
Undesired maternity is truly 
a curse in itself, and most disas- 
trous in its results. 
But woman can not desire 
maternity, or any thing else pure 
and healthy and natural, while 
she is weak and diseased in mind 
and body, wearing improper 
clothing, eating improper food, 
and breathing impure air. 
In order that women should be fit for mothers, they should first 
become strong, healthy, happy women ; with hearts full of love for 
their kind, full of hope for the future, full of confidence in them- 
selves. 
Fig. 59.-Motherhood. 164 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
There are mistaken notions of duty in regard to these matters, 
which I do not propose to discuss now and here; but I believe the 
truth should be plainly spoken at all times. We can not expect to 
make any very radical change in the general life of womanhood, 
with its present artificialities and weaknesses ; but to the few whose 
eyes our words may reach, whose hearts they may appeal to, we 
would say, First, reform yourselves ! 
Wear loose, soft dresses, that do not impede your movements, 
that can not be easily tumbled or torn; eat light, nutritious food in 
abundance ; exercise freely every day in the open air ; see to it you 
divide the day as nature evidently intended it should be divided, 
using "one third for labor, one third for recreation, and one third 
for rest." 
Then, when you have grown strong and happy, the natural desire 
for maternity will assert itself. 
Then there will be a diviner impulse for life and love ; and you 
will plan and think, not how the little life may be destroyed and you 
made free, but how you can best serve and love and cherish it, that 
it may be made free. 
That horrible and unnatural practice, called Abortionism, is one 
of the darkest blots on our modern system of civilization. It is 
trifling with human life in a double sense. 
One of our grandest human poets says, 
" They enslave their children's children 
Who make compromise with sin 
and every one does that who directly interferes with any natural law 
to the direct detriment of humanity. 
Men and women have equal share of blame in the perpetration of 
this monstrous crime ; but it seems sometimes as though it was 
woman's dumb appeal against being made a slave of; being forced, 
either by direct mental or physical power, or by a wrong sense of 
duty, to do that against which her nature rebels and her soul cries 
out with loathing. 
It is a sad subject. 
Two young people, with innocent hearts, pure motives, and good 
intentions, meet, become interested in each other, are mutually at- 
tracted to each other, feel a desire to unite their interests, to spend 
their time in each other's society, to benefit and bless each other, and 
so, according to the modern usages of society, the two stand before 
witnesses, and before God, who is the highest witness, and promise 
to love each other until death shall sever the bond. WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
165 
Time passes. In ninety-five cases out of every hundred, they 
drift apart, and the bond becomes irksome to one or both. Yet they 
wear it on, for custom, form, or actual law, and supposed necessity. 
And they each cheat themselves and the other of much that is 
bright and beautiful in life, much that they might enjoy if they 
understood their own needs and nature's better. 
But how to remedy all this is the subject now most engrossing 
to the thought of every true philanthropist. 
In a work of this character, I can not treat the subject of mar- 
riage except from a merely physiological and material stand-point. 
And that does not half express the true significance and importance 
of the whole principle which underlies society. 
All I can do here is to advise people to have patience ; to grant 
such freedom as they desire to enjoy ; to do nothing secretly with an 
idea of deceiving, but to be true to themselves, and then they will be 
true to all. 
The days of loving are not ended merely because youth has de- 
parted. The heart that is ever capable of a true, earnest, honest 
affection never outgrows the power of loving and appreciating love. 
The object of this affection may change ; one may love several 
different people in different ways, and for different qualities, without 
interfering with each other, or there may be one love, par excellence, 
which absorbs the whole life and soul for the time being. It is this 
last that usually forms the basis of marriage in its present form. 
We say usually. We know there are hundreds and thousands of 
marriages contracted every year with as little affection involved or 
even pretended, as in an ordinary business transaction. 
And if they were but considered as business transactions, to be 
quietly and honorably annulled when they have served the purpose for 
which they were entered into, or when the parties most interested 
learn how utterly impossible it is for them to serve such purpose, then 
the soul-sickening cry of " unhappily married1" would in many in- 
stances be hushed. 
No man would enter into a business copartnership with either a 
man or woman, and bind himself by solemn pledge and promise that 
such partnership should continue through life. How then can man 
and woman dare assume that holy relation, which not only affects 
themselves and their own happiness, but is at any time liable to create 
new life, for joy or sorrow, and promise that such relationship shall 
exist unchanged while they live ? 
They promise, the one to love, cherish, and protect; the other, to 
love, honor, and obey, until death. 166 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
They do not know whether they will keep this promise or not. 
They do not know whether they can keep it or not. Their hearts 
may be honest, their motives pure ; but ah! how little they know of 
one another-how little of themselves ! How the wearing-out process 
of time may change them, one or both ! 
And now they pretend to quarrel with the word "obey," and 
stipulate that it shall be left out from the marriage ceremony. 
Do they ever consider how much easier it is to obey than to love ? 
Obedience is possible by a mere effort of the will; but it is very 
doubtful if love can at any time be compelled into service. 
But in the face of all trouble and difficulty, people will marry. 
And once married, the natural sequence presents itself, and the ques- 
tion arises, " How can most happiness and harmony be gained within 
the marriage relation 
Women are naturally more faithful and trustful than men. They 
have less desire as well as less opportunity for variety; but they 
grow weary sooner-physically weary. 
Men go out into the world, meet their fellows, and gather mag- 
netic strength and vigor, while women stay more at home, live within 
themselves or the little circle gathered about them; and often this 
life reacts upon their physical constitutions and brings an unexplaina- 
ble lassitude and languor. From the present condition of woman's 
health and surroundings, child-bearing is attended with unnecessary 
pain and suffering; from a wrong and unnatural state of society, 
false ideas of beauty and propriety, and a desire to make themselves 
attractive, women acquire wrong impressions of life and what is re- 
quired of them. Often they dread the pain and danger of child- 
birth so much that they come to dread the very thought of sexual 
intercourse. 
Many a husband not conscious of any change in his feelings 
toward his wife sees her shrinking from him, hears with wonder the 
few pitiful appealing words in which she begs him not to disturb her, 
or worse, the constant fretting and scolding that tell too plainly of 
weakness and disturbance in the nervous system, but suggest no reme- 
dy therefor. 
He does not realize how incompetent she is to supply the mental 
and affectional stimulus, the elixir of life, which he demands and 
really needs. 
Perhaps neither of them know how truly the spiritual may domi- 
nate over the physical; how, putting selfishness aside, the wife may 
grow stronger, the husband more refined, by being patient with each 
other's faults and peculiarities-how love may become the true WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
167 
harmonizer, and faith in each other the true bond of union between 
them. 
The husband is usually first to go astray. He throws off the 
restraints of business when the day is ended, and drinks or smokes, or 
both, knowing that every glass of intoxicating liquor, every whiff of 
smoke, tends to make him more repulsive to the wife at home. " But 
she does not care for his society," he says, " why should he trouble 
himself about her?" 
The wife stays at home and frets and pines. Sometimes (it is the 
exception and not the rule) she too finds pleasure in other society, and 
a sort of armed neutrality is established between them; but all con- 
cert of action and harmony of life is thus destroyed. 
Many women bear children who are utterly unfitted as well as un- 
willing to do so. Many more resort to that horrible, health-destroy- 
ing, life-endangering process of abortionism. 
Unwilling maternity is a fearful curse, and maternity being, next 
to true womanhood, the highest and holiest mission of woman, the 
object of making it a blessing in every sense should be carefully 
studied. 
Maternity should be entirely under the control of the mother ; sub- 
ject only to her wishes and her judgment. But it is not right for her 
to fill her system with poisonous drugs for the sake of regulating the 
monthly periods, nor are cold vaginal injections safe, especially when 
the flow of blood is quickened by excitement or the whole system over- 
heated, as is often the case. 
There is a solution, simple, cleanly, safe, and sure, which can be 
used by any one without material inconvenience, and which will 
effectually prevent conception. 
[Although Dr. Warren has given the formula from the most phi- 
lanthropic and humane motives, we prefer to omit printing it here 
from prudential considerations, arising from an unenlightened and 
ungenerous special enactment, interfering with the natural, inborn, 
organic rights which sacredly belong to every individual. For, as Sir 
Benjamin Brodie very cogently remarks in a still later communica- 
tion, " But there are sickly and groaning thousands who are not fit to 
become mothers, and yet, having accepted the marriage relation, know 
not how to escape maternity ; for these there should be some pre- 
ventive agency, simple, cleanly, safe, and sure, which they could use 
at their own option. Any person who brings to meet this proposition 
the charge of immorality will be met on their own grounds promptly." 168 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
We will hold the formula in print, with clear and explicit direc- 
tions for those who need.-Ed.] 
When the solution is ready for use, take a soft, fine sponge, about 
as large as an ordinary walnut. Draw a fine strong cord through it, 
and fasten firmly. Wet this sponge thoroughly in the solution, and 
place it in the vagina. 
It will do no harm to wear it for ten or twelve hours without re- 
moval; but it is well to withdraw it after the act of coition, and be 
sure to wash it thoroughly before inserting it again. 
If the sponge seems to be an irritant, or if the vagina is inflamed 
or the womb ulcerated to painfulness, it is well to use a bit of linen 
instead of the sponge. Old, soft linen is best. Take a piece two 
inches square or even longer, gather it loosely, and fasten with a 
strong thread or fine cord as you would the sponge. Wear it in the 
same manner, take it out and throw it in cold water, that it may be 
thoroughly cleansed. 
This solution acts as an astringent, is very healing and cleansing, 
will cure inflammation or ulceration wherever it may be applied, 
strengthens the ligaments that hold the womb, thus curing or pre- 
venting prolapsus, and so invigorates the mucous membrane as to 
render the secretions healthy and natural, thus remedying all tendency 
to leucorrhoea. 
A free use of this solution will cure the lighter forms of venerea, 
and prevent contagion in that way. 
I am sorry to say that many women have suffered innocently from 
contagious diseases of which they little knew the origin. And the 
considerate, physician seldom enlightens them. 
While we would not create suspicion or dissension between 
husband and wife, we would have every woman sufficiently educated 
in regard to the anatomy of the human system, to know where and 
how the different organs are situated, what their peculiar functions 
are, and what diseases are most liable to affect them. 
They should learn the wonderful mechanism of the human eye, 
and the no less wonderful mechanism of the kidney. They should 
learn that the healthy action of the mucous membrane about the nose 
and throat will prevent catarrh, and that similar action of similar 
membrane in the vagina and womb is necessary to prevent leucor- 
rhoea. 
They should know how to regulate their drink and diet to cause 
a healthy action of the bowels as well as of the secretive organs. 
And they should each and all know how to care for and assist a 
woman in childbirth, and how to wash and dress a baby, at any age. WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
169 
They should always bear in mind that motherhood is at once the 
most noble, the most useful, and the most natural mission for woman 
to fulfill; that, upon the rising generation and their proper training 
and education, the strength of the nation and the welfare of the 
world depend. 
Girls and boys should all be taught the rudiments of physiology 
and anatomy, by thorough study. They should also become fami- 
liarized with the first principles of phrenology and physiognomy, 
by general lectures and conversations on these subjects. 
They should learn that no subject is impure or indelicate when 
properly considered. And the bearing and rearing of children should 
be always held in pure and sacred esteem. 
In the present condition of health of the average American 
woman, no one ought to have more than four or five children, and 
the most of them not more than one or two. 
And many a young mother looks with sad, despairing eyes upon 
her little flock, feeling too weak to care for them, wondering what 
will become of them in the future, when she is dead. 
This is one fault of our present isolated households. 
Their whole existence depends upon the will and the work of the 
one man and one woman who have founded it ; often only upon the 
one man, the woman being considered as a mere attachment to his 
dignity. 
There should be more harmony of feeling, more concert of action 
among people of similar tastes, that they may rely upon each other 
for sympathy and assistance, in times of trouble and need. 
A woman should not be expected to do all kinds of work, but 
should be allowed, as men are, to choose an occupation that they are 
fitted for, and that they can enjoy, if they must go out into the 
world and earn their own sustenance. 
There is a story told of a young woman in England, many years 
ago, who had a special and wonderful faculty for learning lan- 
guages. 
This talent was so remarkable that she was presented to the king 
as a person who, without any teacher, had learned to read in seven 
different languages. 
The king listened quietly, looked at the girl with some interest, 
and remarked, "Yes, but can she spin?" As though the principal 
and most important consideration of a woman's life was, not learn- 
ing, or perseverance, or remarkable gifts, but-spinning ! 
If a young man of similar attainments had been presented to 
the same king, we wonder if he would have asked, " Can he 170 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
plow ?" or " Can he make shoes ?" And yet, why should not every 
man be expected to cut and stitch his own coat, as well as every 
woman to fashion with her own busy fingers, or personally superin- 
tend the making of her own and her children's garments ! 
Women have, as a general thing, too little time to think. 
The day is divided by many cares, trifling perhaps and insignificant, 
but each one demanding its quota of minutes until the hours have slip- 
ped away ; and no time is allotted to self-improvement, none to earnest 
thought and culture, none to the jotting down of useful facts or 
newly-acquired information for future use. Even the children, 
dearly as they are always loved at heart, seem to be looked upon as 
necessary evils rather than the real blessings they are. 
And the mother forgets the divine plan of which her sorrows and 
sufferings form a part. 
Nature always does her best with the materials at her command ; 
and every new baby is a new possibility of wonderful and beautiful 
development in the future. Therefore it should be the mother's 
constant aim and effort, when she finds the strange process of form- 
ing a new being is going on, to make her own life ns pure, as happy, 
and as harmonious as it can be made. 
She should seek pleasant society, read pleasant books, exercise 
much in the open air, avoid all morbid and melancholy subjects, eat 
light, nutritious food, take plenty of rest and sleep, avoid stimulants, 
use no wine or ale, porter, beer, or coffee, and try in all things to 
prove herself a rational being, striving to do the work of her life as 
well as possible. 
We do not try to tell her what part the husband and father 
should take in this work of perpetuating and improving humanity. 
We leave it to his conscience to suggest the kindness, the sympa- 
thy, the affection now needed ; and to his judgment to carry out 
such suggestions in a manner that will reflect credit alike on his 
head and heart. 
For the various derangements and diseases incident to child- 
bearing (most of which are caused by improper food and clothing), 
there is nothing better than magnetic treatment. And to insure an 
easy and safe delivery, magnetism should be freely applied. Treat- 
ment with both cold and warm water is beneficial, if properly 
applied ; but an injudicious use of water may do much injury, and 
it is better to have some practical instruction in the course to be 
pursued. 
We will give, in another chapter, directions as simple and explicit 
as we can for the use of water as a medicament, that its magnetic WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
171 
properties may be taken advantage of, when other magnetism can 
not be reached. 
And when the mysterious process of gestation is ended, and the 
little child is palpitating with its new and separate existence, then let 
the mother remember that nothing is so strengthening and soothing 
to the baby as careful and gentle rubbing. 
Be sure to find a good-natured, 
kind-hearted nurse for the little 
stranger, as, even before he is a year 
old, he will be influenced by the 
magnetism about him. 
Have you not noticed that with 
some people the baby is always 
fretful, uneasy, and restless, while 
with others he is either quiet and 
sleepy, or merry and frolicsome, and 
all without apparent cause? 
It is the magnetic atmosphere sur- 
rounding every person that really 
makes them individual, distinct, and 
separate from all the rest of their 
species. And this individuality is capable of being cultivated and 
improved. 
Young people should learn this, and act accordingly. 
It is not regularity of features or beauty of coloring, not mani- 
fold gifts or graces that make them attractive ; but pleasant and 
harmonious magnetism, which always tends to tranquillize people, 
and give them rest. 
I once knew a lady who, without wealth or beauty, or varied 
accomplishments, had always troops of friends about her. Men of 
talent and culture, women of fashion and social position seemed 
alike to enjoy the society of this plain little person ; and one day I 
heard a lady say to her, 
"Why is it that you who care so little for dress, who take so 
little pains to make yourself attractive, have always such pleasant 
company in your rooms ?" 
I fancied there was a dash of bitterness or sarcasm in the merry 
voice as she replied, " My recipe is very simple : Do every thing 
you can for your friends, and never ask favors, and you will always 
have plenty of them." 
She laughed lightly, but added soon in a more serious and enthu- 
siastic tone, 
Fig. 60.-Soothing the Baby by magnetic 
passes and rubbing. 172 
WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
" But I like my friends so much, I believe in them so truly, I am 
so proud of them, that they are worth more than they cost me." 
This was indeed the secret of her popularity. She liked her 
friends so much that she naturally inspired liking in them, and made 
them feel satisfied with themselves and with her. 
You may think this has very little to do with womanhood and 
maternity ; but if every husband and w:fe could be good friends, 
at once trustful and proud of each other, how much misery, how 
much heart-ache, how much dissension might be saved ; how much 
jealousy and suspicion avoided ; how much true happiness enjoyed ! 
It is better to have a friend than a lover if one can not have the 
two combined. For love in its general acceptance is selfish, asking 
for much, while friendship is generous, giving much. Love demands 
sacrifices, friendship shares everything, and is content. Love makes 
sacrifices ; friendship is never weary, never selfish, and nothing that 
can be done for a friend is ever considered as a sacrifice. 
Let the utmost friendliness be cultivated, therefore, and all selfish- 
ness eschewed ; that men and women may become wiser, consulting 
each other's interests and wishes, and always working together for 
the ultimate good. 
Children can early be taught to respect the rights of others ; and 
it is needless to say here that no child should ever be whipped for 
doing wrong, nor should whipping ever be threatened. 
There are ways enough for punishing without inflicting bodily 
injuries, and the careful and judicious rewards for doing right are 
far more efficacious in keeping up harmonious family relations and 
making children good as well as happy, than any system of punish- 
ment could be. 
Children are often managed too much. They should be let alone 
as much as possible. Left to their own simple devices for amuse- 
ment, they will find more comfort in making sand-pies and sawdust 
cakes, or in harnessing two chairs, or sailing paper-boats in a basin, 
than in the most costly toys that can be purchased. 
As they grow older, let the girls learn to drive nails as well as 
the boys to sew on buttons, and later in life let every boy and every 
girl learn to be self-supporting. Let them have education enough to 
teach, or let some mechanical occupation be learned, by which they 
may feel themselves independent. And then, when they marry, let 
it not be merely for a home or for support, but for companionship. 
Then we shall have fewer inharmonious marriages and fewer un- 
welcome children born. 
We do not expect to bring about the millennium in a single year WOMANHOOD AND MATERNITY. 
173 
nor in a single generation; but if men and women will give these 
subjects some careful and impartial thought and consideration, more 
especially, if they will talk of all these things together, they will be 
far more likely to find the way out of many of their troubles without 
legal intervention than ever they can with it. But if people have 
made a mistake and married unhappily, it should be considered no 
disgrace for them to separate. But this is a subject for another 
chapter, and scarcely to be considered from a medical point of view. 
Ira Warren. 
Fig. 61.-The Vital Temperament. FIFTEENTH SECTION. 
FEMALE WEAKNESSES THE GREAT CAUSE OF 
CONSUMPTION. 
[Dr. Warren makes special request that I shall reproduce this 
section from my large pamphlet on vital treatment, to accompany 
his foregoing section.-Ed.] 
HAT complex and mysterious organism peculiar to 
the female sex, which this cut is intended to illustrate, 
necessarily entails upon them a thousand mysterious 
and untold sufferings of both a mental and physical 
nature, for which they receive too little sympathy 
from their husbands, if married, and often too little 
from their immediate friends-on the contrary, and 
not unfrequently, cold and inhuman treatment as a 
compensation for their generous endeavors and un- 
requited toil. 
The reproductive organs are the masterpiece of 
God's human organism. An immortal being, with all his attributes, 
can not be developed with organic, individual life, embodying every 
atom possessed in the great cosmos of nature-the ultimatum of the 
Fig. G2. 176 
FEMALE WEAKNESSES. 
skill of the Divine Architect-which is pre-eminently possessed by man 
over and above all other orders of organic life, without a structure so 
formed, so contrived, so complex in its nature, as to convey the mys- 
terious principles of the soul, vitality, and the intellect, with all its 
numerous faculties, into a minute germ, and then clothe it with the 
physical body, to be built up, atom by atom, mysteriously and almost 
imperceptibly, from surrounding physical agents. 
Such is the wonderful structure which you see in the female sys- 
tem, which is so small in normal virgin life, occupying such a small 
space in the lower part of the body, yet, when impregnated with this 
vital germ, capable of enlarging in a few short months and develop- 
ing an offspring of ten or twelve pounds or more, with other append- 
ages. 
Will such of the opposite sex as are so callous and unsympathiz- 
ing in their disposition, stop and reflect upon the mysterious process 
that has been carried on in the constitution of the mother; the sym- 
pathy of the matrix or womb with the great battery-the brain and 
nervous system-in the performance of its vital function of impart- 
ing the nerve-forces through the thousands of telegraphic wires em- 
bodied in the ganglionic and the organic and great sympathetic 
system of nerves? 
When you take into consideration that the brain sends its innu- 
merable wires to the lungs and to the heart, for the purpose of carry- 
ing on respiration and circulation ; to the stomach and neighboring 
organs, for the purpose of digestion and assimilation to impart the 
vital current; and that, during this entire process of fetal development, 
an entirely new and independent system of circulation and nervous 
action is established and kept up, making its constant and yet myste- 
rious demands upon the great battery of life, independent of support- 
ing the daily needs of the body for nutrition: can you begin then to 
fathom, or have but a faint idea what must be the feelings of the 
mother in now being made the humble instrument in the hands of the 
great Creator of moulding, perhaps, some mighty genius who is to 
move the world ! 
The wonderful sympathy with the stomach, produced by the 
growing germ, demanding nutrition; with the heart, demanding 
blood; with the lungs, demanding its vitalization; and with the 
cerebrum, demanding vital force at the same time, must change all 
her feelings in proportion to the new and wonderful processes which 
are now going on in her organism; hence come the anomalies of 
nervous diseases on her part; an appetite, a longing entirely new and 
out of the natural course; a longing as uncontrollable as it would FEMALE WEAKNESSES. 
177 
seem disgusting to him, yet all inexplicable to herself; without one 
act of volition or induction, but springing from the demand made by 
the new soul-life in the developing germ which he has imparted to 
her constitution. 
Let him who has voluntarily been the coagent or instrument in 
bringing about this new, wonderful, and mysterious condition-I re- 
peat, let him, before he makes her wretched by withdrawing his sym- 
pathies, or coolly and rashly repulsing her, take into momentous and 
awful consideration, that he alone is responsible for imparting the 
mysterious appetites now being developed in her from his long-con- 
tinued indulgencies and dissipation-tobacco, or uncontrolled animal- 
ization-which for a long time he has indulged in his own system; 
and that he alone imparts the animal appetites-not the mother. 
We have made this brief explanation of the great processes in 
the mysterious organism of the reproductive system, to show their 
direct sympathy with the lungs and respiratory organs; and how con- 
sumption is developed from diseases which, in innumerable instances, 
have their origin and seat in the womb, the ovaries-the sexual 
organs. 
The disorders which modern females especially are given to, 
come on as silently, often as gradually, and lay their foundation as 
firmly in the constitution as the structure is complex and myste- 
rious in its nature. A disease, inflammation, for instance, will exist 
for a long time in the neck of the womb, increase its size enormous- 
ly, and frequently run into a low and obscure stage of ulceration, 
before any manifestation is made by pain or suffering locally. 
This is another peculiar feature in the organization of the struc- 
ture. The nerves distributed to the neck of the uterus have but 
little sensibility, compared with the different set of nerves which is 
distributed to the cavity and lining membranes of the body of the 
womb. So the same explanation obtains in those silent diseases 
manifested in the ovaries-those two round bodies which you see in 
the cut on each side of the body of the womb. 
Though the periodical function of a female, in a state of perfect 
health, is one of a physiological or strictly natural character, and 
would, in a perfectly healthy organism, be unattended with pain, 
like other functions of the body, yet rarely is this the case with 
females of the present day; the function generally becomes one of an 
abnormal character, causing the general health to suffer more or less 
every month. Some females go through life suffering, during the 
period and a few days after, intense pain at the lower part of the 
abdomen, through the loins and back, completely prostrating them, 178 
FEMALE WEAKNESSES. 
with disturbance of every function, loss of appetite, inability to digest 
food, depression of spirits, headache, despondency, and general lan- 
guor or lassitude, from which she will hardly recover after one period 
before the recurrence of another; hence, her whole life is one of suf- 
fering ; and in a constitution inheriting any predisposition to tubercu- 
lar disease, or other maladies, which are frequently entailed, they are 
sure to be called into action and prematurely developed in her consti- 
tution, which otherwise might have lain dormant. 
Dysmenorrhea, or painful menstruation, commences with puberty, 
occasioned, in hundreds and thousands of cases, by repelling the blood 
from the extremities and the surface by insufficient clothing and thin 
shoes, and the lack of nutritious food to develop iron and fibrine, and 
the vital principles of the blood which go to establish and keep up 
this great function, and for the lack of which it is often sup- 
pressed. 
Again: The continuation of this unhealthy exposure of the body 
produces a chronic thickening or congestion in the minute blood-ves- 
sels and membranes of the womb, which, with those already enume- 
rated, are the causes of their painful menstruation and ill-health. 
Again: Prolapsus, or falling down of the womb into the vagina, 
is now a very common and almost invariable attendant upon every 
female-as common in virgin as in married life. This will be sur- 
prising to many who think that none other than married females are 
liable to prolapsus. This erroneous idea has been the cause of immo- 
lating thousands of young and tender females, during the period of 
adolescence, upon the altar of that fell destroyer-consumption. 
Why is this? If you take one glance at the cut, you can have at 
least some slight conception. The uterus, or womb, is an organ almost 
isolated from the other parts of the body, held suspended by two 
round ligaments, its neck poised on the top of the vagina, having no 
other material support. The invariable practice or custom of females, 
especially the young, is tight dressing, hanging a mass of skirts or 
under-clothing drawn tightly about their waists, compressing the 
lower part of the chest, the lower lobes of the lungs, the stomach and 
the liver with the diaphragm-the muscle above-all inward, and, at 
the same time, downward. It follows, of necessity, that the organs 
above, crowded out of their natural place, down upon the abdominal 
viscera-the bowels-will crowd this organ downward out of its 
place, from its slight attachment; hence, it follows to an absolute 
certainty that there is not one virgin female in ten who is not affected 
with misplacement or derangement of these organs, designed by Om- 
nipotent Wisdom for the performance of such a wonderful function. FEMALE WEAKNESSES. 
179 
Will you wonder longer, then, respecting the awful prevalence 
and fatality of that class of maladies known as female weaknesses ? 
The cuts which we introduce into this section are designed to illus- 
trate the position and carriage of the body as it is developed by pro- 
lapsus, and the effect produced by the wicked habit of dress, to 
which we have referred, in deranging the whole internal structure. 
But before closing, we wish to illustrate more clearly than we have 
Fig. 63.-The left-hand figure shows the womb fallen down into the vagina. The right-hand' 
figure represents a well-formed, healthy female figure, having all the organs in their natural 
condition. The reader will observe the striking difference in the position and appearance of the 
bladder and the uterus. 
already done, the sympathetic powers of the uterus and its structure, 
with every other part of the body. We can not do this better than: 
in the language of the learned Dr. Tyler Smith: " There is nothing 
in the whole range of physiology or pathology more extraordinary 
than the fact that the gravid (pregnant) uterus, without itself being 
the seat of special pain, irritation, or disease, shall excite fatal disease 180 
FEMALE WEAKNESSES. 
by reflex irritation in some distant organ. In this way, pregnant 
women may be destroyed by secondary disease of the brain, heart, 
lungs, kidneys, stomach, or intestines; in fact, there are, in particular 
cases, unlimited poisonous influences exerted on the rest of the econo- 
my by the gravid uterus." 
This quotation conclusively proves what we have learned by our 
vast experience of pulmonary consumption. We rarely meet with 
a case of consumption in females who are not suffering more or less 
from some derangement or great disease of the sexual organs, and 
on minute investigation of the case, we have found that these consti- 
tutional or abnormal symptoms which we have mentioned, existed for 
some time before a cough, or shortness of breath, or other more promi- 
nent symptoms of disease in the lungs, began to be thought of. We 
have, therefore, investigated this class of maladies with an interest 
seldom felt or manifested by the general practitioner; and in study- 
ing diseases peculiar to the respiratory organs, we never have lost 
sight of predisposing causes; of tracing, as before observed, external 
symptoms or manifestations through the long chain of connections 
back in the constitution to their first causes; and in adopting our sys- 
tem of treatment, by inhalation, for the suffering of the lungs, we 
should never perfect a cure of consumption did we not adopt, also, a 
system of local and constitutional treatment, equally efficient, and 
more imperiously demanded to remove the great predisposing causes 
which have been going on in the reproductive system-the sexual 
organs. And we would say here, that our treatment is as efficient and 
as successful for their use at their own homes, as our medicated inha- 
lation is for the lungs, as we have explained in the beginning of this 
book.* 
* See Section Six-Consumption. SIXTEENTH SECTION. 
MOTHER AND CHILD. 
Nature always does her best-Love the most important pre-natal influence-A 
very relative thing-And yet love should be the basis of all life-Different 
relations between the wife and husband explained-Conception, the mother's 
care in-Progress-Confinement-Birth and care of the infant-Moral or 
mental condition-Diet and hygiene-Foeticide, its horrors-God the Supreme 
Ruler-The awful responsibility of both father and mother-Every new life 
is a classification of organic faculties evoked from the great unknown cause- 
The great duty of the mother to know how to care for and rear her off- 
spring-A physiological manner of dressing for the infant insisted upon- 
Keep drugs and sweatmeats out of its stomach. 
NDEED, children ought to 
be healthy. 
Nature always does her 
best with each new possi- 
bility in the way of life, and 
pure and healthy conditions, 
physically, mentally, and 
spiritually given, will inva- 
riably produce healthy and 
happy results. 
First, and most impor- 
tant of all pre-natal influ- 
ences, is love; love that is 
strong enough to bear all 
things, and divine enough to 
forgive all; the strong, true, 
individual conjugal love, that gives to its mated life only kind words 
and loving thoughts. 
Such love as this is possible, though it is not general; for men are 
unreasonable, and women fret. 182 
MRS. LOZIER ON" MOTHER AND CHILD. 
Perhaps only one woman in a thousand loves truly and unselfishly, 
and one man in ten thousand appreciates and returns such love. But 
love is the best of life, nevertheless, and should be the basis of all 
future lives. 
The way to keep men from evil is to educate them into being 
good; to teach them that goodness is greatness, and honor, and 
worth. 
The way to keep women from evil is to give them good to do. 
Love admits of no suspicion, no jealousy, no deception. 
A woman should love so well, and with such perfect trust and 
confidence, that when her mate is away from her, instead of feeling 
any desire to watch him, any suspicion of evil regarding him, she 
should be able to say, "He is doing what he thinks is right, and what 
he thinks is right I think is right, always." 
Women are more monogamic in nature than men, and have there- 
fore less excuse for promiscuity in love ; but I am not quite certain 
how far this psychological difference extends, or how plainly it is 
marked. 
Be that as it may, children are born and are to be born of mortal 
parents. 
The first requisite for those parents to have, is a pure and natural 
affection for each other ; the next is spontaneity. 
I know there is much talk of deliberate and scientific breeding of 
children, as prize stock and fancy pigeons are bred. This can be 
done, and no doubt with good results physically, perhaps mentally. 
I have no doubt that children could be advantageously raised to 
special sciences or departments in this way, too; but I believe it 
would all be at the expense of the natural affections, the heart and 
the soul's sole strength, which is love. 
Give us, therefore, I say, spontaneity in the expression of the 
affections, with a full realization of what the result may be, and a 
holy and hearty approval of that result. 
So much for conception; for the mystic, unexplained, uncompre- 
hended instant when from two lives throbbing in unison another life 
is evolved. 
From the time of conception the mother's mind should be kept as 
tranquil as possible, and the father's also, as they will constantly react 
upon each other. 
Sometimes within twelve hours of conception, and from that to 
twelve days, slight symptoms of derangement of the whole system 
will occur. MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
183 
This is because nature demands a general rearrangement of forces 
for the new work to be done. 
Slight but persistent nausea, especially in the morning, shows that 
the stomach objects decidedly to its ordinary food, and calls for some- 
thing different. 
Often, by a curious sympathetic action, the father as well as the 
mother will be affected with nausea. 
To prevent this, eat only such food as is agreeable. Ripe fruits, 
boiled rice, and tomatoes, either raw or cooked, are best; and an 
entirely vegetable diet for a few weeks will usually be enough to 
make every thing go on regularly and pleasantly. 
When the mother finds herself relieved from symptoms of nausea, 
she may then take more nourishing food, as lamb or chicken-broths, 
eggs, etc. 
But she should be careful about eating food that produces adipose 
tissue, or fat, to any great extent, especially with her first child. 
She should exercise freely every day, avoiding excitement or vio- 
lent exertion. Live as much as possible in the open air, and with 
pleasant thoughts and harmonious influences for company. 
The care of her home will be no disadvantage to her at this time, 
whether her child be a boy or girl, as all social and domestic feelings 
should be assiduously cultivated, and with a generous wish to make 
other people happy. 
She should be careful about walking on ice, going up and down 
steps, or slipping or falling in any way, and especially careful about 
becoming angry or frightened, or immoderately glad or sorry, as any 
sudden shock is likely to affect the embryo life so near her heart. 
For ten or twelve weeks, the mother will feel a constant enlarge- 
ment in the region of the abdomen ; the breasts grow round and 
plump, full and hard ; the glands are slightly affected ; the neck is 
enlarged as by swelling; sometimes the extremities swell as with 
dropsy ; and palpitation of the heart is a not infrequent accompani- 
ment to other disturbances. 
All these symptoms are far more annoying than dangerous, and 
usually, during the third month of pregnancy, a change takes place 
in the development of the foetus, the forces concentrating more and 
expanding less. At this time, if the mother is very anxious to have 
her child born alive and well, she may fear she is going to lose it; if, 
however, she would be glad to rid herself of this new burden, and 
has been making efforts to do so, she may hope that the hour of her 
deliverance is at hand. Hope and fear usually prove alike futile in 184 
MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
these respects, and the process of nature goes on, in a large majority 
of cases, without any interruption. 
And this brings us to the treatment of a subject alike startling 
and horrible to the unprejudiced mind. 
This subject is Infanticide or foeticide. It seems strange that the 
highest object of life, the only way, in fact, in which life can be per- 
petuated, should, by abuse of nature's functions, and disregard of her 
laws and demands, become so much a matter of pain, and trouble, 
and annoyance, as to make them not only undesirable but apparently 
unendurable ; so much so that the unhappy victim, finding herself 
impregnated without her own will or consent, dares danger and even 
death, rather than to let the unconscious embryo develop into a per- 
fect human being, asking for admittance at the gate of life. 
In sorrow and pity do we look upon this grave and dreadful error. 
My friends and co-workers, Sir Astley Cooper and Sir Benjamin 
Brodie, have jointly considered this subject, and given their views 
upon it, to which I will add but few words, as it has never been a 
specialty of mine. 
But this let me say to every woman on earth : 
If God did not want another man or woman in the world, he 
would not give magnetic life and power to that tiny atom hidden in 
the inmost recesses of your wonderful mechanism. 
Do not sneer at the idea of God. We are but weak and finite in 
all our knowledge and intelligence. 
There is a power higher and wiser than we are, call it by what 
name you will, and that is God. 
If to you is given the sacred trust of ushering into its new earth- 
life a future man or woman, accept that trust without murmuring at 
the divine decree. Be glad that you are strong and well enough in 
body and spit it to evoke that life, and give it the best you have to 
offer in the way of conditions and encouragement ; take air and exer- 
cise, and sweet, abundant food in extra quantities for baby's sake ; 
and when sad thoughts oppress you, or doubts about the future arise, 
remember it is God's own image to be reproduced again through you ; 
and he will take care of you and bless you, if you do your work 
faithfully and well. 
Study nature in her brightest moods while the wee bit life gathers 
strength and individuality from you. 
Study the birds and blossoms, the brook and the billowy sea ; 
live in the sunshine, and in hope ; and make yourself in all reasonable 
ways worthy to be a mother. 
Every new life brings conditions that never existed before, and MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
185 
almost every mother shrinks and falters from the trials in the path 
before her. 
The pains incident to childbirth are greatly aggravated by the 
unnatural and unhealthy lives that women live both before and dur- 
ing pregnancy ; the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the 
amount of exercise they take, as well as the more hygienic matters of 
bathing, breathing, etc. 
The dress should always be loose, soft, and artistic, conforming 
to the useful where strict utility is demanded, but appealing to the 
beautiful as soon and as much as possible. Do not let the unborn 
baby feel that you consider yourself a fright or badly dressed, for his 
sake. 
Wear as much drapery as you like when at rest, or when receiving 
your friends ; but make it a point to exercise for at least an hour every 
day with little or no clothing on. 
If the fresh air and the warm, invigorating, magnetic sunshine 
could reach your whole person and penetrate every pore of your skin, 
you would feel all the better for it. 
Throw a blanket or quilt upon the floor as near to a wide-open 
sunshiny window as you can place it, lie down and roll over, stretch 
your arms above your head, rub your back, chest, and limbs, and 
make the blood circulate freely in every vein. 
Ten minutes of such exercise as this every day will do you more 
good than quarts of tonic medicines. 
Bathe freely, and if it tires you excessively to rub yourself, have 
some one rub your back, limbs, and extremities briskly with a soft, 
coarse towel. 
You can continue this treatment with advantage up to within a 
few hours of the birth of your child. 
Working about the house, sweeping, dusting, cooking, and all 
light work is advantageous, inasmuch as it provides exercise and 
keeps the thoughts busy. Of course this should not be carried to 
excess or to produce exhaustion. 
But put away all sad or depressing thoughts, as you would put 
poison out of reach of a child. Keep hope and faith by remember- 
ing that motherhood is not within the compass of your own powers 
to gain, and therefore should npt be trifled with. Do not dwell upon 
any possibility of destroying that strange germ of life, lest you make 
your child an idiot or a murderer. Children are worth saving and 
caring for, because upon them depends the future welfare and pro- 
gress of the world. 
After the third month of pregnancy, the growth and development 186 
MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
of the child goes on very rapidly; and soon after the fourth month, 
a spasmodic motion of the unconscious foetus is felt. 
This produces many unpleasant feelings, and a sort of sickness 
that is not nausea, but slightly akin to it, in the mother's system. 
This can not be modified much by taking medicines, but may be 
by proper exercise, reaching the arms often above the head, taking 
hold of the top of a door and resting the whole weight upon the 
hands, or any other motion that gives the muscles full play and 
changes the weight and position of the internal viscera. Sitting is a 
bad and uncomfortable position from this time onward ; and much of 
the time should be spent in standing, walking, or reclining. The last 
three months of pregnancy must always be a time of great nervous 
irritability ; and if the mother is not very happy, she is almost sure 
to be very unhappy. 
Let her comfort herself with one thought, that, much as she may 
suffer and uneasy as she may feel or be, her own peculiar sensations 
will not affect her child so much as they would at an earlier period of 
gestation. 
Try to keep your hands and thoughts busily and pleasantly em- 
ployed ; make some simple, pretty garments for the coming baby ; 
knit soft wool for its little socks or jackets, embroider some fanciful 
pattern, nothing intricate or puzzling ; and if you have any talent at 
all for it, draw or paint, write whatever pleasant, quaint, or interest- 
ing thoughts come to you ; or learn some simple art that will at once 
serve as rest and amusement. 
Remember, if you have worn light, loose clothing, eaten simple, 
laxative food, and exercised properly, the pains of labor and of child- 
birth will be comparatively light. When you feel these approaching, 
have every thing prepared as simply and cleanly as possible ; a mat- 
tress, or straw bed, with a rubber blanket or clean, coarse cloth that 
will not wet through easily, thrown over it, is the best bed ; a long 
plain night-dress open all the way down, and well tucked away to 
keep it from being wetted or stained, so that after the child is born 
you can wrap it about you warm and dry, is the only suitable dress 
to wear. 
It is needless to go into particulars here. A woman with good 
sense and plenty of courage will walk about between the coming of 
the pains, and converse freely even up to the last moment. Remem- 
ber that child-bearing is a perfectly natural and healthy operation ; 
that you have no occasion to be frightened, or to expect any thing 
but the most natural and healthy results. 
There is nothing to be done except to let nature take its own MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
187 
course, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred any interference 
only makes matters worse. The pains will come regularly, and at 
shorter and shorter intervals, increasing in severity. 
There is not much relief gained by screams and groans, and they 
usually make those about you feel worse than they otherwise would. 
The presence of a good magnetizer, either male or female, is of the 
utmost importance at this time ; and if the father has any magnetic 
control whatever over the mother of his babe, he should lovingly and 
carefully exercise it, to relieve and soothe her as much as possible. 
The one relief and consolation through all this unavoidable suffer- 
ing is, that it will soon be over; that a few hours, or it may be only 
a few minutes, if all is well, and there will be a weary, happy woman 
lying at rest with one more life beside her, waiting to learn its mission 
on earth. 
Dress the baby simply and loosely after severing the umbilical 
cord, and disposing of the placenta. 
In a small work which we have prepared upon the "Treatment of 
Children in Health and Sickness," the reader can find full and explicit 
directions, which it would be out of place to give here, for caring for 
both mother and child through gestation, birth, and infancy. 
We would only say here, that the best bandage to be applied 
around the child's body is a strip of soft white flannel from four to six 
inches wide, cut crosswise, or bias, and without hem or edging of any 
kind. The flannel skirt should have a moderately wide white cotton 
waist, and the dresses should be the simplest possible slips that can 
be easily put on and off. 
Give the baby warm sugar and water as soon as it shows a dispo- 
sition to swallow; or if some experienced nurse or physician is pre- 
sent who insists upon catnip or elderflower-tea, give them very weak, 
slightly sweetened, and in very small quantities. 
They are simple, slightly warming, and stimulating, and not 
injurious. 
Usually within twelve hours, the child will be ready to nurse, and 
the milk in the breasts will be ready for it. 
Do not fill its stomach so full of foreign substances that there is 
no space or craving for its natural food. 
Give the mother cooked fruit, broth, and jellies with Graham- 
bread, rye-bread, plain toast, etc. 
Give her also plenty of milk and water to drink if she can bear it. 
For a few days the mother had better keep quiet; and when she 
walks about her room, she should have a long firm bandage properly 
applied. 188 
MRS. LOZIER ON MOTHER AND CHILD. 
If this bandage is wet in cold water, and then covered with a dry 
towel, it will act as a tonic and stimulant as well as support. 
There is no need that the mother should lie in bed day after day 
when she feels perfectly strong and well. 
She should learn from the first to use her own judgment and com- 
mon-sense in regard to these matters. She should wash and dress her 
baby herself as soon as she is able, and learn, by careful observation 
and experience, what it needs and wants. She should regulate her 
own food with reference to the health and comfort of her little one, 
and never forget that, as long as the child draws its nourishment 
from her, it is physically and spiritually still a part of herself. It 
has, however, a life of its own, and as such it is a separate individual 
fighting its little battles, planning its little triumphs, suffering its little 
ills, and these, too, must be separately considered. 
Charlotte E. Lozier. SEVENTEENTH SECTION. 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
The importance of laying a firm foundation when very young-Preventive of 
contagious and other diseases-Magnetism before all other treatment-Pure- 
air exercise in the open air-Teething, how to manage-Convulsions, how 
to treat-The mother must regulate her diet and keep an equanimity of 
mind-Avoid soothing-syrups and opiates-Croup and diphtheria, how to 
treat--Warm bathing and magnetism-Cold medicated inhaling vapors 
highly important-How to cure scrofula, and what it is-Sunshine abso- 
lutely necessary-Scarlet-fever, how to treat-Putrid sore-throat-Disin- 
fectants must be used-Caution against sudden changes-Water treatment 
beneficial, carefully used-Never use caustics to the throat-Function of 
the kidneys must be established-The Turkish bath a most efficient agent- 
Measles and other diseases of childhood-Children must be regarded as 
public property-Look for the book to be published. 
E CAN treat but briefly here, of the diseases 
incident to infancy and childhood ; but we 
intend to publish soon a small volume devot- 
ed entirely to the care and treatment of 
children, both in health and sickness, as it is 
only by laying a firm foundation when very 
young that health and vigor can be retained 
until late in life. 
We have already given a few words upon 
pregnancy and childbirth. Allowing, then, 
that the little helpless baby be safely and 
healthily born ; that its bark of life, so frail 
that a breath might destroy it, is launched on the billows of time, 
and ready to make its own way in the world, dress it softly and 
loosely with as few clothes as possible. 
Tight or heavy clothing tends to obstruct the circulation, and 
make the child weak and nervous. Too warm dressing, even if ever 
so loose, makes a child abnormally tender and susceptible to changes 190 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
ill the atmosphere, thus superinducing colds and fevers, or making 
the little one unnaturally liable to take disease from others. 
One of the best preventives for contagious diseases is to expose 
the child as much as possible to the fresh, pure air, and rub it with 
the hand (see page 46) thoroughly, thus making the skin firm and 
elastic, and the circulation vigorous and healthy. 
The baby should nurse, if possible, as nature thus provides, or 
does her best to provide, suitable food for the new atom of life. 
Usually the milk will be ready in the mother's breasts in a few hours 
after the child is born ; if it does not so appear, the breasts should 
be washed gently and rubbed persistently with a magnetic hand (see 
page 113) ; the mother should drink freely of cold milk and water or 
very weak warm tea ; and the bowels of both mother and child 
should be kept open by the simplest possible means. 
A little olive-oil may be given to the mother every day, either 
with her food or afloat on a glass of lemonade, where it can be easily 
swallowed; the slight acid of the drink removing all the unpleasant 
effects of the oil. 
If the little one can not nurse, give it simple, light food, milk and 
water sweetened slightly, or very thin gruel; give it in small quanti- 
ties and often, if you wish the child to thrive and grow fat ; but if it 
is naturally very fat and its flesh soft and puffy, give the food in 
larger quantities and at longer and more regular intervals. 
There should be a movement of the bowels every six hours, or as 
nearly that as nature demands, considering the amount of food, 
drink, and exercise taken. 
Weak broth in which bread has been soaked may next be given ; 
but no meat until after the teeth are well-cut and grown. 
Teething is a process always accompanied by some fever, and 
disturbance of the digestive and secretive organs. 
The face is usually flushed, the hands hot and dry, the pulse 
quick, very frequently slight red eruptions appear upon the skin, the 
breath is feverish, the gums swell, and sometimes a troublesome 
cough seems to indicate that the lungs are disordered in their action. 
Since the days of Hippocrates, it has been w'ell known that one 
essential method of treatment has been and must be, to keep the 
bowels free in their movements, thus carrying away the fever and 
other diseased conditions, preventing dropsical and hydrocephalic 
symptoms, and hastening the return of health ; bathing every day in 
water so cool as to act as a tonic, but not so cold as to give the delicate 
system a shock, and then rubbing thoroughly until the magnetic 
conditions are equalized and the nerves calm. DISEASES OF CHILDREN-. 
191 
I do not have much faith in the lancet, as I think cutting the 
gums often makes an ugly flesh-wound that becomes more or less in- 
flamed before it heals, and adds to baby's sufferings. 
But sometimes, when the skin seems to be drawn hard and firm 
over the growing teeth, it may be well to separate it, and let the 
little tooth have its freedom. Some hard, smooth substance should 
be kept constantly within reach of the child, that he may bite or 
rub his gums with it, and thus facilitate the breaking of the mem- 
brane by the crown of the tooth. 
Soft linen cloths should be kept about the neck, and removed as 
often as they become wet from the increased secretion of saliva. 
If they are allowed to remain too long, the skin of the chin and 
throat becomes tender, irritated, and chafed. 
It will not be necessary to give the child any laxative medicine if 
it is nursing, as children should do until their sixteen first teeth are 
all safely through the gums and in good working order. 
The mother can regulate, her own diet in such a way as to meet 
all the digestive needs of the babe ; but she must be careful, and 
avoid all stimulants and irritants. 
Teething usually commences at about the age of four months, 
and continues for a year ; sometimes much longer. 
But when the teeth are cut and the little one can walk firmly on 
his own feet, then he should be gradually accustomed to eating bread 
and milk, broth, and other light, nutritious food. 
He will then soon give up the habit of nursing, when he no 
longer needs the food thus provided ; and with proper care, anti 
attention to diet, exercise, and bathing, the transition can be made 
without trouble or danger. 
If the child has convulsions, is inclined to start and cry out in its 
sleep, or exhibits other signs of unusual nervousness, remember that 
these generally proceed from indigestion, and be careful to regulate 
the quality and quantity of food to prevent a recurrence of such 
troubles. 
In convulsions, raise the head, loosen all the clothing, supply 
plenty of fresh air, dash the head and face with cold water, put a 
silver spoon in the mouth, to prevent the teeth from closing tightly ; 
then gently rub the back, stomach, bowels, and limbs ; prepare hot 
flannels as soon as possible, and wrap the feet in them; apply hot 
fomentations to the pit of the stomach; and, as soon as the patient 
can swallow, give four or five drops of ammonia in a table-spoonful 
of water, also apply ammonia to the nostrils repeatedly. Do not 
allow the head to fall backward, but support it in a natural position, 192 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN-. 
and keep calm, and patient, even if the fit continue for hours. Mag- 
netism will do in ten seconds what it will take mere mechanical 
means hours to accomplish ; therefore, apply magnetism if possible. 
But it is better, by proper care in food, bathing, and exercise, to 
prevent convulsions, than to depend upon any artificial means for 
curing them. 
Avoid soothing-syrups and dll medicines containing opiates. 
A slightly warm bath and plenty of rubbing will cure the worst 
case of colic or cold or restlessness, easily and safely. If a child is 
subject to croup, or is threatened with it, let him drink copiously of 
cold water before going to bed ; and then covered so warmly as to 
excite slight perspiration, merely enough to keep the whole skin 
active in throwing off all morbid secretions, thus preventing them 
from gathering where the mucous membrane is weakest. 
Hut if the terrible whistling breath tells too plainly to the mother's 
ear that the little throat is filling up, and the child is gasping pain- 
fully, then no time is to be lost. 
Put the feet in warm water, dip a long strip of flannel in cold 
water, wind it about the neck, and, pressing the mouth firmly but 
lightly against the windpipe, breathe out a long breath slowly but 
steadily, then refill the lungs as full as possible, and repeat the 
action. Any one who has not tried this experiment will scarcely 
believe how much local heat may be generated by this simple pro- 
cess. It may be done with a dry flannel if preferred, and applied 
also to the back of the neck, as well as to the windpipe. It will 
soon loosen the accumulated secretions, and a fit of coughing will 
often bring up a mucous cast as large as the annular opening of the 
throat, and nearly solid. 
If this does not come up, and the child seems inclined to choke 
or strangle, give warm drinks, and even if the entire mass is carried 
down into the stomach, it will do no harm. 
Very small doses of ipecacuanha-rocA may be given with good 
effect, if the necessity for medicine seems imminent ; but if the cold 
inhalations used by Dr. Stone can be procured, they will produce an 
immediate and salutary result not to be obtained in any other way. 
It would be well worth the trouble for any parent to keep these 
preparations at hand, if only for the relief they will afford in croups, 
colds, and all asthmatic or phthisical affections. (See page 76.) 
The contagious and eruptive diseases usually incident to child- 
hood, such as chicken-pox, measles, etc., can be easily treated by light, 
nourishing food, bathing, and magnetic rubbing. 
Hooping-cough, if slight, should be cared for like a cold; if DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
193 
severe, the cold inhalations should be resorted to, with plenty of 
exercise and rubbing. 
One of the most distressing and troublesome diseases usually in- 
cident to childhood and early life is scrofula, in its various forms. 
This, if it does not prove fatal to the young patient, often con- 
tinues to manifest its baneful symptoms until late in life; but it 
rarely attacks or shows its first indications upon a person later than 
the age of ten or twelve years. 
Scrofula, bad as it is in every way, is yet especially amenable to 
the simplest and most natural forms of treatment. 
Take the child to the country, where it can come in contact with 
the fresh earth; to the sea-shore, where it can play in the sand and 
dabble in the salt water; and always be careful that plenty of sun- 
shine reaches it. 
You know very well that the plants in the window will not grow 
and thrive and blossom unless the sun shines on them • and what is 
necessary for plants and flowers is far more essential for baby. 
But scrofula only means weakness and debility, lack of vitality, 
and want of magnetic strength, not merely in the individual, but as 
an hereditary bequest and condition. 
To supply the lack and the need, then, will be to rout the enemy 
from his stronghold, and save the victim from further torture. 
We claim to be able to cure scrofula more effectually than any 
known regular school or practice can do, because we work with and 
by nature. 
There is a form of disease usually incident to childhood, though 
sometimes it attacks adults. Its very name is enough to make the 
mother's heart stand still with horror, and her cheek blanch with fear. 
This is scarlet-fever. 
Every year this terrible scourge sweeps away from mortal sight 
thousands of helpless victims, who might, in almost every case where 
the disease is not of a malignant type, be saved by attention to a 
few simple hygienic rules. 
Scarlet-fever is usually divided into three varieties. Scarlatina, 
called also simple scarlet-fever, because it is not complicated with any 
disease of the throat; scarlet-fever and throat-distemper, which is the 
most usual form of its appearance; and malignant scarlet fever, which 
is very much like/nrfnY? sore-throat and the worst forms of diphtheria, 
in its symptoms, and requires very nearly the same treatment. 
For scarlatina, the simplest possible treatment is safest and best. 
A large, airy room, which can be freely ventilated without expos- 
ing the patient to a draught, should be used if possible. 194 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
A mattress, covered with a rubber cloth or bit of canvas that can 
be easily removed twice a day, forms the best bed. 
The patient should lie upon a soft cotton sheet, and another sheet 
should be used for a covering. That is all that will be needed until 
the little one complains of cold, which will be an indication that the 
fever is abating, and then more bed-clothes should be added. 
Let the patient have cold water to drink as often as desired, and 
some pleasant acid drink, as lemonade or a little cream of tartar and 
water, sweetened with white sugar. Use ammonia freely, and all 
simple disinfectants, as carbolic acid, diluted chloride of lime, soda, 
etc. 
When the breathing becomes difficult, use Dr. Stone's cold inhala- 
tions ; or if these are not at hand, use camphor, ammonia, and carbolic 
acid, mixed with cologne spirit, to make the odor as pleasant as possi- 
ble. Let these be inhaled, and immediate relief will follow. 
Cold water is one of the oldest and most efficient curatives for 
scarlet-fever. 
Many years ago, when I was a physician on earth, I wrote of this 
same disease, 
" We are possessed of no physical agent, so far as my experience 
has taught me, by which the functions of the animal economy are 
controlled with so much safety, certainty, and rapidity as by the ap- 
plication of cold water to the skin, under the augmented heat of 
scarlatina and some other fevers. This expedient combines in itself 
all the medicinal properties which are indicated in this state of dis- 
ease, and which we should scarcely d priori expect it to possess. 
"For it is not only the most effectual febrifuge, but it is in fact the 
only sudorific or anodyne which will not disappoint the expectations 
of the practitioner under these circumstances. 
" I have had the satisfaction, in numerous instances, of witnessing 
the immediate improvement of the symptoms and the rapid change 
in the countenance of the patient, produced by simply washing the 
whole surface of the body. In a few minutes, the pulse has been 
diminished in frequency, the thirst abated, the tongue has become 
moist, a general free perspiration has broken forth, the skin has be- 
come soft and cool, the eyes have brightened ; and these indications of 
relief have almost invariably been speedily followed by a calm and 
refreshing sleep." 
Still, I will say this in regard to water treatment, that some of the 
worst and most fatal cases of scarlet-fever I have ever known have 
swept through whole families of children who have been reared in the 
Grahamite and hydropathic faith and practice. But I think one rea- DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
195 
son why the fever is prone to be especially fatal in those families is 
because children brought up on a purely vegetable diet, and often 
perhaps a short allowance even of that, have less power to withstand 
disease, less physical stamina, and therefore they yield all the more 
readily to contagion or gradual weakness. 
It is well known, more especially among the homeopathic school 
of physicians, that Dr. Hahnemann, of Leipsic, has asserted that bella- 
donna, or deadly night-shade, will, if taken in small doses, prevent 
attacks of scarlet and similar fevers; but whether this has been found 
to be scientifically possible or practically true I do not know. I am 
inclined to think, however, that it is a mere matter of faith and'super- 
stition, arising from the fact that belladonna will produce a slight 
eruption on the skin somewhat resembling that of scarlet-fever. 
Caustic should never be used for the throat, nor should sponges or 
other foreign substances be introduced unless suffocation seems immi- 
nent. A good magnetic physician will be a safe and speedy relief 
from all such troubles. When the fever has turned, and the cuticle 
begins to show symptoms of falling off, to give place to a new, soft, 
healthy skin, then the body should be carefully and gently rubbed; 
and if the skin seems very dry, a little sweet-oil or glycerine,should 
be used, rubbing it in until it does not show or leave any unpleasant 
feeling on the surface. 
Be very careful, when the patient begins to recover, about any 
exposure to draughts or out-door air, as the system is in a very sensi- 
tive state, and the secretive organs and absorbents are especially weak- 
ened. 
The kidneys often refuse to do their work properly, and dropsy is 
the result. 
Good magnetic treatment, rubbing, bathing, and proper exercise, 
are the only reliable means for toning and strengthening the whole 
system, and making all the organs perform their proper functions. 
Plenty of light, nourishing food should be given ; arrow-root, rice- 
water, fruits, gruels, boiled rice, jellies, broth, bread and milk, toma- 
toes, etc., increasing in richness and strength-giving qualities as the 
demand increases. Tomatoes, having a specific effect upon the kid- 
neys, are particularly useful in all feverish diseases. 
The general directions for treatment of scarlet-fever apply equally 
well to measles, chicken-pox, rash, and other eruptive diseases; plenty 
of fresh air and a judicious use of cold water being always needed, 
and good magnetic treatment the next desideratum. When the throat 
is affected, it requires local treatment. 
If a good magnetizer can not be found, wrap the throat in cold 196 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
wet cloths, renewing them every two or three hours; bathe the body 
frequently; keep the extremities warm; excite perspiration as soon 
as possible; and if the child can not be persuaded to use a simple 
healing gargle, be sure to try inhalations of carbolic acid and other 
healing vapors. 
One of the best and most healing inhalations is made by pouring 
hot water upon black cherries that have been soaked in alcohol or rum, 
or black currants, and then inhaling the steam. 
In scarlet-fever, the rash or eruption usually appears within the 
first forty-eight hours of the fever; but in measles, not until the third, 
fourth, or sometimes the fifth day. 
In scarlet-fever, the eruption appears like a superficial flush, with 
innumerable fine points intermixed with minute pimples, dispersed 
all over the skin. In measles, the rash consists of small circular 
dots, like insect-bites, and of a deeper red in the centre than at the 
circumference. 
The best preventive for these diseases is to keep the child strong 
and healthy, by abundant nutritive food, and free contact with fresh 
air, sunshine, cold water, and the ever-healing magnetic mother earth. 
The best cure is care and cleanliness without drugs. 
Other diseases incident to childhood or infancy will be treated 
more fully in another work. 
Also the care and teaching of children, children's schools, the Kin- 
der-Garten or children's garden, the different methods of object-teach- 
ing at home and at school, the influence of children upon each other, 
and the kind of people best adapted for teachers and guardians of 
children. It is a well-known fact, both physiological and psychologi- 
cal, that there are many women capable of conceiving, bearing, and 
bringing to safe and healthy birth children whom they are not fitted 
to rear and educate, or even to care for during childhood. 
Society should make some provision for this, and it is a subject 
worthy of careful consideration. 
Thomas Bateman, M.D. EIGHTEENTH SECTION. 
HOMEOPATHY. 
CONTRIBUTED BY SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. 
ASK as a matter of literary courtesy,* what I can not 
demand as a right, that you grant me a little space 
to explain my own position in my own way. 
That very enthusiastic and somewhat unreasona- 
ble experimenter- Nay! I will not be unjust. 
However I may differ from my contemporaries in 
opinion, I will still speak of them with the respect 
due from student to student, from friend to friend. 
I believe, I have always believed, that Friedrich 
A. Mesmer was, through some peculiarity of nervous 
temperament, subject to a disease of the brain that 
made him visionary and imaginative. I thought his 
control over his patients was due only to the imagination or the will. 
I had the more reason to think this as I knew, by actual experi- 
ment, often repeated and thoroughly tested, that I could produce the 
effect of certain medicines upon persons both in sickness and health, 
merely by intimating to them that they were taking or had taken 
certain drugs. 
I did not do this with any idea of ridiculing the imagination or 
its power over the more physical faculties. 
* This lecture should have followed the one by Friedrich Anton Mesmer; 
but feeling to conscientiously coincide with the views expressed by him and other 
contributors regarding the merits of homeopathy, we were opposed to publish- 
ing it; but in reply to a strong mental request, after the manuscripts had gone 
into the compositor's hands, Dr. Janies Johnson, the chairman of our Band, 
says, " I want Hahnemann's words added to the book, because it will show that 
we are tolerant to all sides, and give every one a chance to speak for him- 
self."-Ed. 198 
HOMEOPATHY. 
I have tried the same experiment upon myself, and wondered 
much at the result. That is to say, I took what I thought was a 
certain drug, at one time in experimenting, and found it produced 
the symptoms of the disease I intended to cure by it. 
These symptoms proceeded so far that I thought I would take 
their antidote, and thus control them. I did so, and they rapidly 
subsided. 
I then learned, to my intense surprise and bewilderment, that I 
had taken blank medicine in both cases. 
That is, I had prepared some tiny pellets of sugar of milk, in- 
tending to medicate them with certain drugs of the sixth potency 
or six hundredth dilution. 
I had marked them with the names of the two drugs I was to 
use, putting a sign of minus, thus, -, before the name, to show that 
they were not yet medicated. 
I selected these bottles from my case, and took the several doses 
without noticing the minus sign. When I did notice it, I was utterly 
confounded. 
I did not know whether I had experienced any feverish symptoms 
or not. 
Before that time, I had been in the habit of asserting very posi- 
tively that certain minute doses of certain drugs, at certain dilutions, 
given to a person in health, would produce certain effects. 
After that, I gave my drugs to the best of my knowledge and 
instinct, and said, " Behold the result," but I was a little shaken in 
regard to mathematical certainties. I now know that the disem- 
bodied spirits who were interested in my experiments and were try- 
ing experiments of their own at the same time, produced the effect 
upon me which I have described• but I did not know it then. 
Mesmer says that he luiew that the spirits influenced him, and 
wrought through his agency the marvels that startled the scientific 
world; but that, knowing how the idea would be ridiculed and 
scorned, he persistently denied the fact even to himself. 
So prone is man to ridicule what he can not understand. 
Perhaps Mesmer shrank the more from revealing what he believed 
to be the truth, from the feeling that it would be like casting pearls 
before swine, or exposing the holy and sacred secrets of the inner 
temple to the carping gaze of a curiosity-loving crowd. 
But for me, I had no such idea. I did not even fully believe in 
conscious existence after death. 
And strange as was my experience in mental power, it never, to 
my mind, had any spiritual significance. HOMEOPATHY. 
199 
I recognized the power which the mind or imagination had over 
the individual's own faculties and functions, but did not even know 
the power possessed by one mind over another. 
So that the charge of fraud in that direction is utterly ground- 
less. 
The theory of " Similia similibus curantur," or like counteracts or 
cures like, was not new, though I thought it was. 
It had been known since the days of JEsculapius that a certain 
quantity of opium, given under certain conditions, would produce 
wakefulness, while another proportion of the same drug would cause 
sleep. It was known that large doses of any poison would pass 
harmlessly out of the system, while small doses would remain and 
cause derangement, distress, or death. 
It was known that a large dose of mercury would pass through 
the stomach and intestines, and find its way out with no more per- 
ceptible effect upon the system than a ball of lead, swallowed in a 
metallic state. 
But let the mercury or the lead be triturated by corrosion, and 
mixed finely with ever so harmless a preparation, conserve of roses, 
for instance, and what violent poisons do they both become, and 
how small a quantity of either will produce the most distressing 
symptoms upon the human frame ? 
When a certain honest and enthusiastic spiritualist, published, a 
few years ago, a little book entitled, Whatever is is Right, it called 
out an unprecedented amount of criticism from both the secular 
and the religious people. 
And yet the idea was not a new one. It was as old as the 
Christian religion itself, and many centuries older. It is only 
another form of saying that if God does any thing He does it all; 
that " God's ways are not as our ways, but his ways are best for us, 
always, though sometimes we can not see that they are best." 
But so resolutely and persistently do people slip into one channel 
and take up the tread-mill of habit, that they refuse to listen to a 
new thought, and even persecute and revile an old thought when 
offered to them clothed in a garb of new words. When I said as an 
axiom, "The smaller the dose, the more powerful the effect," I 
meant, primarily, that the same amount of medicine, given in many 
small doses, would produce a far greater effect upon the system, and 
would control a diseased condition far sooner than if given in one 
large dose. 
But that simple statement, which every physician who had ever 
conscientiously watched the effect of a dose of herb-tea, knew to be 200 
HOMEOPATHY. 
perfectly true, wakened a howling whose echo has not died away 
yet, and caused a chatter of ignorant ridicule, which a century has 
not sufficed to silence. 
The opposition that I encountered made me stubborn. 
I firmly believed that I had received the first faint glimmer of a 
great truth, which was destined yet to make an entire revolution in 
the whole use of medicine. Where that glimmer came from, I did 
not think or inquire. 
I believed that I held one end of a tangled thread, which, proper- 
ly unraveled, would lead to all the beneficent effects which drugs 
had ever been able to produce upon the human system, without any 
of the reactionary or poisonous results. 
I know what the abuses of homeopathy are ; for I have watched 
the whole subject with the most intense interest, ever since I came 
here, and with a far wider scope for observation than I could pos- 
sibly have while confined to the earth-planet. 
But I believe that one of the principal and most glaring abuses 
has grown from the indiscriminate and careless use of homeopathic 
remedies by ignorant people, without the advice and supervision of 
some one who had made a study of both chemistry and physiology. 
The common understanding is, that homeopathic remedies will 
do no harm, even if they do no good ; but never was a greater 
mistake made. 
As I have before remarked, large quantities even of the most 
poisonous drugs or chemicals may be thrown off from the stomach 
by vomiting, or may pass off in the natural way, while small doses 
will be retained in the system. 
I watched a case not long ago, where a young man who wrote a 
great deal, and was closely confined to severe mental labor, found his 
eyes troubling him. He had a sort of double vision at times, and an 
apparent shortening of the sight, so that he would reach out his 
hand to take a book or a chair that was really twenty feet away from 
him. 
He went to the family physician, of the homeopathic school, and 
soon obtained relief. 
The physician gave him homeopathic arsenic. The young man 
discovered this fact, and when again the troublesome symptoms ap- 
peared (which were really only an indication of nervous weakness 
and weariness, nature's pleading voice saying, " Give me rest or I 
fail"), he took arsenicum, without consulting the physician. This 
course he continued for two years ; took arsenic until it became a 
habit with him, until he could not live without it; took it until he HOMEOPATHY. 
201 
died with every symptom of arsenical poisoning, and his eyes pro- 
truding like globes. Sad as this case was, and possible as it is that 
there are many others like it, I can scarcely hold homeopathy 
accountable for it. I never taught or practiced any such treatment 
of medicines as would allow an ignorant clerk to dispense the mother 
tincture of belladonna, mix vomica, or other poisons. 
And yet a person can now go to a druggist's, virtually devoted to 
the sale of homeopathic remedies, and buy any of these dangerous 
articles, to be used at home for the ordinary ailments of childhood, 
without question or instruction. 
This is all wrong, but it is not homeopathy. A well-known writer 
says, " I saw a young man yesterday, enter a homeopathic drug- 
store and call for 'Nux,' with a very important air, as though he 
wished it distinctly understood that he knew what he was talking 
about. 
The clerk took down a bottle of blank sugar pills, and poured the 
mother tincture of nux vomica upon them. 
The pills were discolored and partially dissolved. They emitted 
a powerful and characteristic odor, and were nauseatingly bitter to 
the taste. Three of the pills licked off the hand by a pet lap-dog 
caused spasms, followed by rigidity, and it was thought for a time 
that the dog was dead. 
Now this was not a safe preparation to put into the hands of any 
person. 
I gladly enter my protest against all such abuses. I call upon all 
reasonable and thinking persons to look well to the course they are 
pursuing, lest they unintentionally dally too long with poisonous 
preparations, and bring disease and death where health and strength 
should reign. 
I know that homeopathy is a mere name, and as far as the prac- 
tice of its pretended disciples is concerned, it means nothing. 
I know that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for any one 
to find two so-called homeopathic physicians who now give medicines 
as they were taught, and according to the same rules or in the same 
proportions. Even this would not be objectionable if they were all 
equally careful and conscientious. But I am sorry to say they are 
not. They know that their profession is not an exact science, and 
they try one remedy after another, often giving doses that would 
make a regular old-school physician tremble for his reputation, per- 
haps for his life. Or if they give small doses, they mix two or three, 
sometimes a half-dozen, different drugs together, hoping that if one 
does not prove beneficial, another may. 202 
HOMEOPATHY. 
Now, any one who has studied my writings, unfinished and im- 
perfect as they were left, will see at once that I did not countenance 
or teach any thing of that kind. 
I believed in the very simplest forms of treatment, and if magne- 
tism can still farther simplify the whole process, I gladly accept mag- 
netism as a substitute for drugs, even in their infinitesimal forms. 
I know now that it is in many cases the physician who heals, and 
not the medicines ; but I did not know it when I was going through 
with the tedious process of " provings," that took up so large a por- 
tion of my time. 
I know now that the same infinitesimal drug administered by two 
different people, will produce two different effects, and that destroys 
the certainty of action upon which alone a science can depend. But 
I certainly had faith in my little pellets, while I used them ; and that 
faith, thus transmitted, did its work too in the way of healing. 
The old, old saying, " Thy faith shall make thee whole," never 
had a truer significance than it has to-day; and that significance 
was never more plainly demonstrated than by the use of homeopa- 
thic remedies in the true insensible doses ; that is, in doses in which 
the drug could not be detected by any of the senses. • 
Blank medicines will produce a specific effect, if the patient is l,ed 
to believe that they contain a certain drug, or medical power or 
virtue. But if the physician also believes the same thing, the effect 
is still more marked. 
I suppose this is one manifestation of " the power of the spirit," 
of which Mesmer speaks so enthusiastically. 
But I must confess that my studies have been so closely confined 
to the realm of drugs and their effects, that I have not until very 
recently thought of taking the one step farther on, and studying the 
effect of faith, hope, and love without any drug at all. 
Of late, I have been experimenting through some of those pecu- 
liarly organized persons now called "magnetic physicians," or 
" media." 
They belong, I believe, to the same class or order of tempera- 
ment with what was at one time known as mesmeric subjects, or, as 
Reichenbach calls them, " sensitives." • My experiments in this line 
are as yet in their infancy. 
As they progress, I may desire to find some patient hand and 
receptive brain to record them. 
If so, my readers may feel assured that I tell them the whole 
truth as far as I know it, and give them every ray of transmittible 
light that I have received. HOMEOPATHY. 
203 
If homeopathy is, to-day, as it is said to be, a mean and cowardly 
fraud, it certainly never was intended by me to hold any such posi- 
tion, and I can not help believing that its general tendency has been 
for good ; that as spiritualism has had a general tendency toward 
liberalizing all religion and awaking thought, so homeopathy has 
tended to make physicians study more carefully the nature and pos- 
sibilities of drugs and to give smaller doses. Nature and science, 
revelation and religion, still move onward very much as a man walks. 
One foot takes a step forward, and calls itself the progressive foot ; 
the other is left far behind, and is called the conservative foot. 
Strife, and ridicule, and mutual " I-am-better-than-thou" bickerings 
ensue. Slowly and quite imperceptibly for a time, the conserva- 
tive membef*pulls itself forward, presently it reaches out in turn far 
beyond its neighbor, and relative positions are reversed. There is 
the same strife, the same bitterness of spirit, and tendency toward 
persecution, but they do progress. Let us try, then, individually, to 
cultivate patience and charity, not only toward each other, but 
toward all movements and theories and ideas. 
I know that one of the best remedies in almost any disease is 
that it be let severely alone. Another is, that the mind of the patient 
be kept in a quiet and composed state, and all responsibility and 
effort of the brain, in thinking and caring for itself, be removed. 
This is best done by having a physician in whom the patient 
places implicit confidence and trust. 
Good judgment, patience, faith in one's self, and determination 
to succeed are the best qualifications for a physician, and then if 
medicines must be given and drugs used, stick to the infinitesimal 
doses. Cure by the spirit. 
I think there are not a dozen doctors in America to-day, who 
even pretend to practice homeopathy as I taught it. 
Each one studies up a sort of eclecticism of his own, and practi- 
ces in accordance with it ; but for all his or her blunders and errors 
of judgment, homeopathy is held responsible. This is neither wise 
nor just. Therefore, I join the general plea used by the higher in- 
telligences, and call upon all disciples of homeopathy to study well 
the principles of magnetism ; and if they thereby become convinced 
that there is a way to heal without even the semblance and pretense 
of drugs, so much the better for their patients and the world. 
There is no doubt that the improper use of drugs has wrought 
great mischief to the human family, not alone in the deaths thereby 
caused, but in the poisoning of the blood and weakening the secre- 204 
HOMEOPATHY. 
tive and excretive organs, so that life has dragged on, a succession 
of miseries and suffering. 
There is no doubt that homeopathy as practiced to-day, is doing 
its full share of depositing poisons and injurious substances in the 
systems of its victims, by which they suffer from morbid secretions, 
paralysis, chronic diseases, and general derangement. 
Education and liberal, honest thought will show the way out 
from these abuses. NINETEENTH SECTION. 
COSMETICS. 
THE CARE FOR AND IMPORTANCE OF THE FUNCTION OF THE SKIN. 
BY FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. 
Beauty simply the skin-Too much washing of the face-The skin composed of 
two layers-Seat of the coloring matter-The skin or complexion must be 
well cared for-Diana bathed every morning in rain-water, the secret of her 
beauty-Cold bathing injurious and bad for the skin-Rub with the soft 
magnetic hand-A soft dry powder beneficial-Bathe other parts of the body 
more-Baths of milk-The Turkish bath-A domestic steam-bath from a 
heated brick-Of soaps, castile and carbolic are preferable to all others- 
To secure a fine complexion, the excretions of the body must be daily car- 
ried away-A quiet and happy temper essential-The magnetism of beauty 
and love. 
E shall treat in this section of the skin and the 
complexion, more from the anatomist's stand-point 
than from the physiological view, and more in 
regard to beauty in general appearance than in 
regard to health. There is a little book of Jacob 
le Bibliophile, Confessions Archeologiques et Cos. 
metiques. It is called both witty and learned, and 
certainly has many original and interesting views. 
"Beauty," he tells us, "is simply the skin. 
Resolve me the problem of preserving the skin, 
and the preservation of beauty is no longer a problem." And now 
we wish to state, as a primal fact in regard to preserving the skin of 
the face, ninety-nine out of every one hundred people wash their 
faces too much. Instantly the query arises, What is the skin ? 
Any medical student will glibly reply that it is the protecting cover 206 
COSMETICS. 
to the exterior of the body; that it is composed of two layers-the 
epidermis, or scarf-skin on the outside, a structure usually thin and 
without sensation ; and the derma, or true skin, a sensitive layer of 
fibres immediately beneath the epidermis. The epidermis is compo- 
sed of numerous cells. These contain the coloring matter which 
gives the flush to the cheek, and the different hue to the different 
races of men. It is the epidermis which rises when a blister is 
drawn. Blister a negro, and when the epidermis conies away, you 
will find the spot is white. This color, which we make such an ado 
about, is not even skin-deep; for it does not reach through the true 
skin. 
So it is with freckles, moles, moth, and most kinds of spots on the 
skin; they are very superficial, and do not affect the true skin at all. 
In point of looks, however, it is the scarf-skin, much more than the 
true skin, which concerns us; for it is this outer and ever visible 
layer which is most frequently to blame in unhandsome complexions. 
Therefore, to retain the clear and brilliant 
complexion of youth, the skin must be well 
cared for. To do this, our instructions com- 
mence with a homely theme, but an orthodox 
one. It is that of bathing. 
It is said of Diana of Poitiers, that every 
morning of her life she bathed in rain-water. 
Says Master Oudard, her apothecary-in-chief, 
surgeon-barber, and perfumer, as he delighted 
to call himself, " And this it was, I swear by 
the soul of my honored mistress, that was the 
only secret of that illustrious dame, employed to preserve her health, 
youth, and beauty to the age of three-score and twelve years " 
We believe the honest apothecary; for rain-water is the finest and 
purest of distilled water, perfectly soft and neutral, fitted beyond 
any other to render the skin clean, odorless, white, smooth, and trans- 
parent. 
Let it be preferred to all artificial preparations; for it is better 
than any of them. Hard water, which contains mineral salts, should 
be avoided in bathing, as it cracks and injures the epidermis. 
Cold bathing is injurious to many constitutions, and is always 
bad for the skin. Very hot water is quite as bad. The water should 
be tepid, or slightly warm ; and in using it, one should wet the person 
sufficiently to soften the skin thoroughly, and then rub the flesh, not 
violently, but gently and continuously, with a coarse towel, a soft 
flesh-brush, or a mitten not too rough. 
Fig. 64. 207 
COSMETICS. 
Best of all treatments for the skin, both for its health and beauty, 
is the warm, soft, magnetic hand, to rub it thoroughly and persist- 
ently. A few drops of clean 
sweet-oil, or a small quantity of 
glycerine, should be taken in the 
palm of the hand, and thoroughly 
rubbed over the whole surface of 
the skin until no greasy or sticky 
feeling remains. 
The face should be thoroughly 
rubbed with fine, soft powder, 
made from starch, rice, or other 
harmless preparation. It is well 
for the health and beauty of the 
skin of the face that it be washed 
as seldom as possible. A rubbing 
over with dry powder will cleanse it much better than an application 
of soap and water, and will not leave the pores open to fill with dust 
and form the unpleasant black specks, erroneously called worms. 
A good powder to use is three parts of finely-pulverized starch to 
one of orris-root. One reason why the face is most subject to spots, 
pimples, and other eruptions is because the face is washed oftener, the 
pores are kept open, and the circulation stimulated by the rubbing, so 
that the effete humors in the blood find there the readiest exit, and 
consequently crowd thither from all parts of the body, giving the face 
too much to do. Wash and rub daily all parts of the surface, and the 
secretions will be equally distributed, and no one part overtasked. 
Baths of milk may be beneficial in cases of sickness, where a 
patient is very weak; for the skin is an active absorbent. Milk is 
often used as a cosmetic, and is supposed to give a peculiar softness 
and freshness to the skin; but it needs great care to prevent it from 
leaving the epidermis in a sticky state that makes it more liable to 
catch the dust and grow gray in consequence. 
The Turkish Bath is becoming so popular that it deserves spe- 
cial mention. It is a sort of hybrid reproduction or degenerate off- 
spring of the old Roman bath. That luxuriant nation reduced bath- 
ing to a system. Establishments for the purpose were found in every 
city of the empire, and were of the most splendid and costly construc- 
tion. Their plan was as follows: The first room the guest entered 
was filled with hot air. Here he remained long enough to break out 
into a profuse perspiration. Then he was ushered into a large apart- 
ment, in the centre of which was an elegant tank or basin of water 
Fig. 65.-The Magnetized Hand. 208 
COSMETICS. 
heated to one hundred or one hundred and five degrees. Here men 
and women often sat together, reading, exercising, or gossiping for an 
hour or more; after which, they went to the next room, and plunged 
for a moment into cold, clear water. This sudden transition removed 
the languor left by the previous high temperature, and braced the 
system for exercise. The whole body was then anointed with per- 
fumed olive-oil well rubbed in, to protect it from the action of the air. 
The clothing was then resumed in a moderately-warmed room ; more 
chatting and lounging about on soft divans was indulged in, and the 
bath was finished. 
The Turkish bath likewise has its hot-air chamber, its hot-water 
bath, its plunge or douche, or spray, its needle-bath; and it no doubt 
cures some cases of rheumatism and other chronic disorders; but a 
person needs a strong constitution to go successfully through with a 
course of Turkish baths. The value of this bath depends on the 
thorough cleaning it gives the system and on the perspiration it ex- 
cites. Its peculiar feature is the shampooing process. 
An expert attendant kneads, rubs, and manipulates every muscle 
and joint of the body, imparting a suppleness and elasticity which is 
often agreeable and beneficial; but they must be taken cautiously, 
lest the patient lose strength unawares. 
Our North-American Indians have their style of big medicine or 
bath cure. They build a small lodge of skins, heat a number of 
stones, and pile them in the centre under a rude couch made from ash 
saplings. Then shutting close the apertures, they dash water on the 
stones until the lodge is filled with the hot vapor. After they have en- 
joyed this for a while, they start on a full run for the nearest brook or 
pond, and plunge in the cool waves, where they rub themselves 
briskly, and throw off the disease, which is supposed to be taken up by 
the 'wntex-sprites and carried away. 
A simple and easy method of taking a vapor-bath on a small scale 
at home is this: Seat one's self unclothed on a cane or other porous- 
bottomed chair, under which place a very hot brick on a plate; wrap 
a large blanket around you from the neck downward, inclosing the 
chair, and carefully close the covers. Pour, from time to time, a little 
hot water on the brick, and the body will soon be in an atmosphere of 
highly-heated vapor. When the perspiration has lasted from fifteen 
to twenty minutes, throw aside the blanket, and plunge into a tub 
already filled with cold water, or take a cold shower-bath. The only 
warning needed in this procedure, but a very important one, is not to 
allow the body to cool gradually between the hot and cold stages. 
The transition must be sudden and the cold dip or shower must last COSMETICS. 
209 
but for a second or two, otherwise trouble may result. After this, 
the person should be rubbed thoroughly, and the face especially should 
be well dried with a soft towel and light friction, as well as thorough- 
ly powdered, unless the person has a prejudice against powdering. 
There is a place in Switzerland, in the valley of the upper Rhone, 
Soueche-les-Bains, where every day one can see from fifty to a 
hundred guests of both sexes seated on chairs in the bath, with the 
water reaching nearly up to their arm-pits. Before them are small 
tables, upon which they play cards or chess, write letters, and rest 
then- books or needle-work; and it is not unusual for some of them to 
remain in the water for six or seven hours every day. 
As the springs still continue famous, and great cures are often re- 
ported from them, it is natural to presume that the magnetic pro- 
perties of the water counterbalance their exhaustive powers, and that 
thus the patients gain more than they lose. 
Soap and water are the great agents advocated by most writers on 
health; but they should be used with due judgment and moderation; 
and for the face, any soft, smooth powder is better than soap. One 
reason is, that it is difficult to obtain a perfectly neutral soap, that is, 
one that contains no excess of alkali, and that has in it no undissolved 
oil or injurious coloring matter. 
The so popular brown Windsor soap is said to be colored caramel 
or cacao ; but burnt grease and even burnt bones are often used in its 
manufacture, which makes it exceedingly irritating and unhealthy for 
a delicate skin. The dark lines in castile soap are produced by a pre- 
paration of iron, which is harmless. Soaps containing sand or pumice- 
stone are rarely needed, a piece of the pure pumice being better to 
polish the nails and soften the rough portions of the epidermis. 
There arc medicated soaps which may be used with benefit for dis- 
eases of the epidermis, especially carbolic soap, which is cleansing and 
healing for any kind of sores, ulcers, or eruptions. Carbolic acid be- 
ing in itself the most effective of all known disinfectants, gives it an 
immediate advantage over other medicaments. 
Sulphur soap, too, has its advantages in the cleansing and renovat- 
ing of the skin; while a little sulphur-flour used with clear water, 
and well rubbed upon any slight eruption or discoloration, will tend 
to make the epidermis soft, smooth, and healthy. 
A person who has a shiny, polished complexion owes it to a secre- 
tion of fatty matter by the skin; and if the person is not content 
simply to scour the face dry with powder, or even with a soft towel 
persistently used, she had better wet her face night and morning with 210 
. COSMETICS. 
a weak solution of borax and a little pure glycerine. But this is not 
necessary with a healthy skin. 
The celebrated Dr. Wilson, of London, recommends constantly in 
his practice, as of great efficacy in whitening and cleaning the com- 
plexion, lotions of citric acid. Now, citric acid is simply the acid of 
lemons, and the following preparation, which any one can make in a 
few minutes, is as efficacious as any: To a pint of rain-water add a 
gill of lemon-juice and a little wintergreen for perfume, or a few drops 
of ottar of roses. If the face and hands are thoroughly cleansed, then 
wash with this lotion, allowing it to remain on three or four minutes 
before wiping, and then dusted lightly with powder, the skin will be 
found to grow fine and firm. 
In France, great cosmetic virtues are ascribed to the juice of the 
cucumber; and horse-radish used with sour milk or buttermilk is 
also highly recommended. But probably the slight acid they contain 
is their principal cosmetic virtue. 
We would here remark that a fresh, healthy, and attractive com- 
plexion can never be retained unless the secretive organs are in a 
healthy state, and the excretions carried away by the kidneys and 
bowels every day regularly. 
Sun and air give a ruddy, healthy glow to the face, but they also 
roughen and brown it. In the Orient, and in Spanish countries, 
women of the better class rarely go abroad except in thick vails with 
apertures cut for the eyes. This custom arose from the necessity for 
guarding the complexion against the burning sun and scorching winds 
of those hot climates. 
It would be well if vails could be used in the same way here ; for 
the sudden change from our furnace-heated houses to the keen out- 
door cold is very trying to the skin, especially when it is weakened 
by too much washing. 
Our readers may think that in a work devoted to health and mag- 
netism this talk regarding the personal appearance is vastly out of 
place. But in this they are mistaken. All the magnetic currents are 
so delicate that any mental action disturbs or encourages them. 
Therefore it is a part of health that a person should feel as well as 
possible. 
A clear complexion can not be maintained by one who continually 
frets, is easily angered, or nurses any of the harsher feelings or pas- 
sions. What is universally wanted and needed is a method of life 
and education which will give existence itself a pleasant flavor and 
fillip, and through the jocund health thus naturally had, the nerve- 
stimulant of electrified blood charged by nature herself, will dissolve COSMETICS. • 
211 
all morbid accumulations in the system and vacate them thence forth- 
with. Health of that sort is attended by strength on one side and 
beauty on the other. It will clear the veins and arteries of all morbid 
accretions and effete matters, and magnetize the blood, rendering it 
clear and limpid; will make the nerves sound, steady, firm, but sensi- 
tive ; tone up the genital system, strengthen the action of the brain, 
and increase and refine the magnetic power. 
So says Randolph, and he says too, that tears are neither useful nor 
beautiful. He has analyzed them. They contain a little phosphate 
of lime, some chlorate of sodium, and much water. Therefore make 
as little use of them as possible; for they are salt and bitter; they 
drain the heart and ruin the complexion; therefore employ them 
but sparingly. 
There is a magnetism in beauty which may be made one of the 
most powerful allies for doing good. But let every one remember 
that beauty of person, of form or feature can never in any way com- 
pensate for deformity of heart or soul • and that no beauty is so pow- 
erful or so attractive as the love which is strong enough to bear all 
things, and divine enough to forgive all. For " love is the best of 
life," and true friends are the most precious possessions that can possi- 
bly be granted to mortals. 
Be careful, then, to fill every hour with as much of happiness as 
you can make it hold. Think of your friends' best qualities and of 
their kindest traits. If they have unpleasant peculiarities, pass them 
over lightly, and do not dwell upon them. If they commit indiscre- 
tions, or are guilty of discrepancies which you think you never can 
forgive, remember you are not God, you are not called upon to for- 
give sin or error or shortcomings. You are but called upon to make 
as bright and cheerfid and attractive as possible the little spot in the 
world where you live, where your influence can be felt. Thus alone 
can you grow truly beautiful and attractive by giving much and ask- 
ing little; by appreciating as a blessed boon every kind word or lov- 
ing act that fate and circumstances throw in your way. Thus 
alone as the years go by, can you garner the warmth of all their 
summers in your hearts, while the frosts of passing winters fall but 
lightly on your heads. 
Make yourselves as beautiful and fair to look upon as you can, 
that you may feel content, and then give no more thought to mere 
external appearance. 
But carry with you the pure, strong magnetism of good-will 
toward all, and you will soon see of how little value are mere personal 
beauty and attractiveness. TWENTIETH SECTION. 
ON INSANITY. 
Children not properly born-The unwelcome babe-Trouble should be met with 
fortitude, manfully-Premature exhaustion from bad pre-natal influences- 
Passions should be controlled-Self-government most important-Children 
should not be unduly confined-Should be early taught to work, and boys 
to all kinds of work-The brain an epitome of the whole body-Only a cer- 
tain amount of gathered force to expend-Danger of cutting the hair short 
on back of the head-Mechanical excitement of the passions one of the 
most fruitful causes of insanity-Cause of baldness-Of rheumatism-Shun 
tobacco and obscene books-Associate with the virtuous and pure and high- 
minded-Meanness of young men-A woman's first impulse-Individuality 
sacrificed-Insanity will soon be treated successfully-Model inebriate asy- 
lums-Cures by unconscious magnetism. 
OR healthy and self-reliant action, the brain must be 
radically sound to start with. 
If the brain of a child be well organized and 
healthy at birth, and receives no injury, and acquires 
no improper impressions during infancy, it will very 
seldom become diseased in later life. 
But the grand trouble is, children are not born 
properly. 
I do not intend here to encroach upon the subject 
that Dr. Warren has chosen to treat, in regard to 
marriage and maternity; but after a life as long as 
mine was on earth, spent almost constantly among diseased or 
weakened brains, I think I may be pardoned for entering every 
possible protest against perpetuating or reproducing the horrors I 
have witnessed. 
Of course, I can but repeat the apology we are always making, 
that any lack of terseness in expression or familiarity with the sub- 
ject being treated must be attributed to our imperfect control of a 214 
INSANITY. 
faulty human organism, rather than to any want of knowledge on 
our own part. 
And it is as a first principle essential that children should be well 
and happily born. 
Too many mothers, when they first find the germ of another life 
Fig. 66.-Unfortunate Specimen of Children generated under such 
Conditions. 
within their own, mourn and lament as though some terrible misfor- 
tune had befallen them ; too many try all means within their power 
to rid themselves of the new burden ; and the unwelcome child is 
dead before it is born, or fights its way into the world, where its first 
weak, inarticulate wail usually arouses the sleeping mother's love in INSANITY. 
215 
her troubled heart, and the babe has found its home, but often too 
late to remedy the evil already done. The brain is diseased, and 
sooner or later the disease manifests itself. 
Morbid passions, uneasy fancies, excessive sensitiveness are the 
first indications, followed by desire for excitement or shunning of all 
society, and very frequently thoughts of murder and suicide grow to 
the most fearful consummations of crime from this terrible pre-natal 
influence. 
Many people feel, when trouble comes, recklessly despairing, as 
though it made no difference whether they lived or died. 
This is not the proper way to meet trouble of any kind, and as 
soon as a person finds that sort of feeling taking possession of him, 
he should immediately seek the best magnetizer he knows, and 
besides taking regular treatment, should seek cheerful society and 
endeavor in every way to throw off all despondent feelings before 
they have become an incurable disease. 
I remember a woman with whom I was acquainted forty years 
ago. 
She was young then, and married to a likely young man, who 
had just commenced business for himself as a grocer. 
For a time all went well; but the'young man was ambitious, 
enlarged his store more than his income warranted, bought more than 
he could sell to advantage, and at about this time their oldest child, a 
girl, was born. 
For a year or so he struggled on, trying to gain a firmer foothold ; 
his wife was patient and affectionate, and interested in every thing 
that interested him ; but times grew hard, and they found that failure 
was inevitable. He failed, and shortly afterward their second child, 
also a girl, was born. 
Both children were fair and healthy, and grew strong and bright; 
but a very striking difference in temperament soon manifested itself. 
The young couple were sadly cast down for a time, but rallied 
again at last, commenced more prudently and cautiously, and in two 
or three years were firmly established in a good business, when a boy 
was born to them. 
Time passed, success continued, and other children came. 
But the eldest girl was fretful, impatient, always wanting some- 
thing just beyond her reach, incessantly active and never satisfied 
unless busy herself and doing something to keep other people busy. 
At eleven years of age, she was the best scholar in school, surpass- 
ing many girls of fourteen or fifteen years. 
At thirteen, symptoms of consumption appeared, and before she 216 
INSANITY. 
had reached the age of sixteen, she was dead, literally worn out and 
dying of exhaustion like an old person. 
The second girl, totally unlike the first, was quiet, almost hopeless 
from the first ; with large languid eyes, and a strange fixed sadness 
on her face. 
She would do nothing without urging, was shy, easily discouraged, 
indolent, and an expression I have often heard her use was, that she 
was not worth saving any way. 
Early in her teens, she became interested in a young man, and, 
with the natural intensity of such lethargic natures when once 
aroused, she idealized him, and thought a great deal more of him 
than he deserved. 
Probably if they had married, working-day life would have toned 
her dreamy fancies down somewhat ; perhaps raised the standard of 
his worthiness by constant association with worthier thoughts ; and 
if he had died, she would have been petted and sympathized with for 
some gentle grieving; but he proved faithless, and married another 
girl in every way inferior to his first love. 
Then the sadness and despondency of her nature grew to settled 
melancholy ; she had nothing left to live for ; she wished she was 
dead, and several attempts to commit suicide ended by the young 
woman being placed in a retreat for incurable insane. 
There I met her, remembered part of her history, learned more 
by careful inquiry, took her under my own care, commenced a course 
of temperamental treatment, which I know now was only one form 
of magnetizing, and by diverting her mind, encouraging her self- 
respect, laughing at her whims and fancies, and interesting her fairly 
in life, she was led out of and beyond herself, and made at last a 
healthy, heartsome woman. 
She is a happy, reasonable wife and mother now; watching and 
guarding her children both before and after their birth, that they may 
be shielded from unpleasant influences, and given at least a safe launch 
on the great sea of life. 
This is only one of many similar incidents which have come under 
my own observation, where insanity seems not only curable but pre- 
ventible. 
I trace the peculiar temperaments of these girls almost entirely 
to pre-natal conditions. 
The mother did not think enough about the little unformed intel- 
ligences gathering strength and life from her. 
The boy, born later and under happier circumstances, was a brave, 
hopeful little fellow, and has always held that nature for himself. 217 
INSANITY. 
But after children are safely born and have scampered through 
childhood securely, another critical period dawns. 
And not only must every thing be done as youth advances to pre- 
vent morbid affections of the brain, that may lead to insanity, but 
the appetites should be cautiously governed and the passions con- 
trolled. 
Self-government is the most important lesson to be taught between 
the ages of twelve and twenty. And a child who has learned 
obedience will learn independence, both of thought and action, easily 
and safely ; but one who has not been accustomed to depend upon 
any authority will find his own weak, vacillating will and uncertain 
judgment a very poor dependence. 
Children should associate together, in families and in schools, and 
as they grow older, such association should be continued. 
Fig. 67.-Out-of-door Magnetic Exercises of Children. 
They should eat light, nourishing food, grains, fruits, and the 
freshest and sweetest kinds of vegetables ; and no child less than 
twelve years of age should be confined for more than three hours in 
succession in one room, without being allowed to exercise freely in 
the open air for at least an hour. 
No person less than twenty years of age should be confined to 
any one occupation, either mental or physical, for more than six hours 
out of twenty-four. And when working or studying hours are 
over, there should be pleasant recreations, light talk, and careless 
laughter, merry games, music, marching, dancing, impromptu speak- 
ing, and all the changeful variety of entertainment that will bring 
every mental and physical faculty into action and leave no nerve or 
muscle dormant to become diseased from lethargy. 
The true way is to have children begin to work as soon as they 
begin to play ; to let them feel that they are of some use in the world 
to themselves and to others. 
They will be happier and stronger to feel that even their play is 218 
INSANITY. 
accomplishing something, and teaching them lessons for the future as 
well as serving for occupation in the present. . 
Every child should have the privilege of setting its two small feet 
on the grass, and digging in the brown earth, where is garnered a 
wonderful store of magnetic strength ready to flow out to all who 
may seek for if there. 
Every child should learn to plant seeds, to pull weeds, to care for 
its own small garden, and to help others. Boys and girls should work 
together at these tasks ; and after working for an hour, they should 
vary the occupation so as to call other muscles and other thoughts 
into action. 
Boys should learn to sweep and dust, to make beds and wash 
dishes, to cook and prepare food for the table; not that they need 
all expect to become professional cooks, though even that position is 
not to be despised. 
Why, boys, when I was confined more closely to Boston and vici- 
nity than I am now, I learned that the head-cook in one of our first- 
class public houses there received every year a thou- 
sand dollars more as a salary than the president of 
Harvard College. 
And it would be no disgrace to either of those 
gentlemen to be able to change places with each 
other, and have all the machinery of their respective 
shops run on smoothly without break or jar. 
The human brain is a very incomprehensible piece 
of mechanism. 
Exactly in what way it receives its supply of vital power it is 
impossible to tell. But all through the system a net-work of fine 
white nerves proceeds ; and if from any cause one of these nerves is 
severed, the part or member it was intended to vitalize loses either 
the power of sensation or motion in consequence. 
The brain is an epitome of the whole body. Every power, every 
passion, every possibility has its seat and sequence in the brain. 
And the brain has only a certain amount of gathered force to 
expend. Whatever is wasted in one way can not be saved in another. 
Whatever is lost in one way can not be gained in another. 
The brain is the centre of life and the engine of thought. From 
the brain proceeds the spinal cord, protected by the spine, downward 
the whole length of the body. 
Every person knows that in case of wound by knife or bullet, if 
the heart is reached, the wounded person dies. If the jugular vein 
is severed, death is inevitable ; and if the temple is pierced and the 
Fig. 68.-Baker. 219 
INSANITY. 
brain penetrated, the machinery of life stops instantly, because these 
are all vulnerable and vital points. 
But not every person knows that a place more vital, a point more 
vulnerable, is situated at the back of the head, where the spinal cord 
commences. 
There is a small oblong cavity, filled with a whitish, semi-fluid 
substance, and that is the fountain-head of the will-power. 
A cambric needle penetrating there, would cause instant paralysis 
of the whole system. 
One very important reason why the hair should always be worn 
long is to protect that portion of the brain. 
Cutting the hair very short on the back of the head, especially if 
Fig. 69.-Section of the Cerebrum and the Cerebellum ; showing 
the Nerves of the Cerebellum, the Seat of the Will ; also the 
Eye, the Optic Nerves, and Nerves distributed to the Face. 
the person be much exposed to changes of temperature, or to the 
direct rays of the sun, will tend to paralysis; and tying the hair up 
tight and high, thus exposing this portion of the head, tends to pro- 
duce nervous diseases and weakness of the will, thus making hysteria 
more likely to occur. 
But this reservoir of will is only distributed to one half the nerves 
that go from the spinal cord to the different parts of the body. 
The nerves of motion are nearly all under the control of the will ; 
but the nerves of sensation are not. 
" Life is life that generates," says Emerson ; and in order that the 
perpetuation of the race may be sure to go on, the natural desire for 
reproduction is implanted strongly in every healthy nature. 220 
INSANITY. 
But when any one passion or inclination is allowed to become 
dominant, all the other powers must suffer. 
The ecstatic thrill of pleasurable emotion caused by natural sexual 
intercourse between two people who are magnetically and tempera- 
mentally adapted, and who truly love each other, is like nothing else 
on earth, and as impossible to describe as to conceive of without 
actual experience. 
But a faint counterfeit of this sensation is sometimes attained by 
mechanical means; as little like the real emotion as it would be for a 
hungry man to be allowed the smell of savory food without the privi- 
lege of tasting it, and expect to keep from starvation thereby. And 
worse; for while the smell of food to a starving man is merely tanta- 
lizing, and the process of starving is not hastened thereby, mechani- 
cal excitement, or masturbation, wastes the vital forces, depletes the 
brain, and ruins the intellect, besides destroying the physical health, 
causing untold suffering, and making a skeleton and a wreck of what 
might otherwise be a healthy and happy man. 
It is one of the most fruitful causes of insanity, particularly among 
young men, and many who are not really insane are troubled with 
loss of memory, weakened individuality, and almost entire lack of 
will-power without fully realizing the cause of the trouble, or what 
the cure might be. 
I have known physicians to tell young men that masturbation once 
in eight or ten days was not injurious, or at least not so injurious as 
amative dreams and nocturnal emissions. 
I think such physicians can profitably study the mechanism of the 
human frame and its varied functions for a long time yet. 
The seminal secretions are in direct correspondence with the brain, 
because, as I said before, the brain is the centre of intelligent life, and 
by the semen new life is to be created. 
To waste the semen, therefore, is a waste of life itself, and the loss 
of ci single ounce of semen, without any reciprocal magnetic return, 
is equal to the loss of a hundred ounces of blood. 
The seminal fluid is albuminous and lubricatory, besides being 
nervous and full of vitality. Any undue excitement in that direction 
calls the nerve-power from the brain; but if no ejection take place, 
then the vital power is not lost, but goes to strengthen the nerves, 
while the particles of albumen and oily substance are absorbed by the 
blood, increasing the growth of the hair, nails, and other appendages, 
besides hardening and strengthening the bones. 
One frequent cause of baldness is a waste or excessive discharge INSANITY. 
221 
of seminal fluid, and one very frequent cause of rheumatism and 
neuralgia is the same excess. 
Of course, the next question is how to break up the habit of mas- 
turbation, or prevent the periodical recurrence of nocturnal emissions. 
To this I would answer, live well and regularly, eat coarse, light 
food, exercise every day until every muscle is thoroughly wearied, 
and brain and nerves are ready to supply them with recuperative 
energy. 
Row a boat, walk, skate; 
if possible, find a piece of 
earth, and dig it up thorough- 
ly, plant it and weed it and 
watch with some interest 
whatever you can raise there. 
The earth is full of mag- 
netic strength, and by magne- 
tism alone can the will-power 
be strengthened to control the 
nerves of motion, and thus 
leave the nerves of sensation 
unexcited. 
Take no stimulants, shun tobacco and low, obscene books or con- 
versation; seek the society of ladies, women, girls, good, true-hearted, 
pur e-minded females, to whom you would be willing to introduce 
your mother or sisters; talk with them, sing with them, dance with 
them, if such amusement be admissible, and you will feel more worthy 
of respect and confidence if you always treat them in a straight- 
forward, honorable manner. 
Never indulge in sexual intercourse because 
you have been a certain number of days without 
it; never allow any thing but pure, disinterested 
affection and magnetic attraction to influence you 
in that. 
I am writing now as though my words were to 
be read by conscientious and honorable young men, 
men of some sense and principle. 
Alas! no one knows better than I how few such young men there 
are, especially in our large cities, where diseases of both mind and 
body are most prevalent. 
If men and women would only remember that in helping each 
other they strengthen themselves, one great object in life would be 
gained. No phrase in the English language sounds so thoroughly 
Fig. 70.-Skating fob Hygienic Exercise. 
Fig. 71.-Dancing. 222 
INSANITY. 
weak, mean, contemptible, and wicked to me as when a young man 
boasts of having obtained an advantage over a girl. It means this: 
that they are both human beings with natural instincts of right and 
wrong, and natural passions and desires, which reason tells them 
should be governed and controlled by the higher or moral faculties. 
Women have, naturally, finer perceptions than men, and, other 
things being equal, stronger desires to do right. 
But always a woman's first impulse is to please the man she is in- 
terested in; to give up her individuality, to subjugate her will in his 
favor. 
Then how easy and how noble it would be for him to lead her to 
do right! to help her honor God and man by honoring herself, and 
following only the highest and purest dictates of her own conscience 
and self-respect. Does he do this? No! 
The advantage he speaks of is, when, by artifice or persuasion, 
sometimes by open fraud, he has prompted and persuaded her to do 
what society, education, and her own soul tell her is wrong or liable 
to lead to most disastrous results, while her yet undisciplined human 
passions plead for indulgence. 
Very often I hear women talking with young people as though 
they had some real, tangible standard of right and wrong. They bid 
them do this or that because it is right to do it, and shun various 
things because they are wrong. 
But this is an argument I very seldom hear men use. They tell 
young men to do certain things because it will help their credit, or 
make business better, or make people think better of them; and to 
avoid certain things that may injure their prospects or hurt their repu- 
tation ; but the plain fact of absolute right and wrong is evaded at 
every point. 
Iwish this were not so. 
I wish women would be more tolerant and charitable, men more 
strict and moral, and all more reasonable. 
The truest comfort I have in this direction is that the human race 
is constantly improving, growing more thoughtful and spiritual and 
better. 
Insanity does not increase so fast in ratio as population increases; 
and I rejoice to think that the time is soon coming when a few simple 
rules of health and hygiene, and magnetic treatment, will cure ninety 
per cent of all cases of insanity now considered incurable. 
One prevalent cause of one fearful form of insanity is appetite; 
especially appetite for alcohol and other stimulants. And diseased 
appetite is one of the hardest diseases to meet and fight and conquer. INSANITY. 
223 
Asylums for inebriates are not conducted upon true philosophical 
principles unless they provide employment for all the inmates suited 
to their tastes and capacities. 
And one very essential point is gained when the mind of the pa- 
tient is kept so busy and so pleasantly or profitably engaged that the 
appetite for drink is overcome by the mental force being used in 
Fig. 72.-Illustrating a Model Home and Resort for Inebriate 
Patients. 
another direction. Every asylum should be connected with a farm, 
and be made a self-supporting institution. 
Every insane asylum could be conducted in this way; for insanity 
is a disease that often does not affect the physical health, and exercise 
of the muscles will often withdraw the electro-magnetic currents from 
the brain, and aid it to healthy action. 
But a diseased and weakened will-power is the usual immediate 
cause for inebriety. Often this is hereditary and sometimes pre-natal; 
but usually it is caused by bad training and bad habits in childhood, 224 
INSANITY. 
and can be remedied by careful attention to the education and sur- 
roundings of the young people. 
After the appetite has once become established, and the desire for 
strong drink is a fixed disease, then some other course must be adopted 
than a merely educational one. 
Magnetic treatment, the control of a strong will over a weak one, 
will often prove a complete cure for intemperance, if judiciously ap- 
plied. 
But it requires patience and the faithful co-operation of patient 
with physician. I have a plan in my mind for the building and man- 
agement of asylums for all classes of unfortunates afflicted with men- 
tal maladies and diseases, and some time I expect to have my ideal 
realized, my plans out-wrought in material life. I shall be happy to 
feel at any time that I am doing good and aiding suffering humanity 
to a better or a purer standard of life and character, and I can wait. 
A few hundred years more or less make very little difference when 
one is sure of eternity, and has the will and the power to work for 
the good they wish to attain. 
It is not a proper place here and now for explanations of my plans 
in reference to asylum homes. The subject is a broad one, and needs 
the most comprehensive treatment; needs time and means, and 
abundant patience, to carry it out to any thing like a successful com- 
pletion. 
Therefore I have only to say in regard to treatment of insanity in 
general, that the patients should be constantly supplied with good 
magnetic influences, the will strengthened, and, as far as possible, the 
wishes consulted and acted upon. 
In conclusion, I will give a brief account of an interesting place 
only twenty miles from Antwerp in Belgium; a town called Gheel, 
in which a large proportion of the inhabitants are insane persons, who 
share in all the daily toils and pleasures of their sane fellow-citizens. 
They live in fraternal equality, taking part in the simple religious 
festivals and ceremonies. 
This custom has lasted for centuries, and tradition has preserved a 
sad and tragic legend concerning the origin, which it is scarcely worth 
while to transcribe here. 
Sufficient to say that early in the seventh century, a chapel was 
erected on the desert lands of the Campine,* and dedicated to St. 
Martin, the apostle of Gaul. 
* An arid, sandy tract, forming part of the Provinces Antwerp and Lainberg, 
300,000 acres still unreclaimed waste. INSANITY. 
225 
The few pious pilgrims who built their huts in the neighborhood 
were the founders of Gheel. 
In this desert place, a runaway princess, the fair Dymphinia, was 
overtaken and murdered by her own father, a wicked king of Ireland. 
Tradition states that some lunatics, who were witnesses of this 
cruel deed, were restored to reason. The miraculous cure was ascribed 
to the beneficent spirit of the murdered princess, who from that time 
became the patron-saint of the insane. 
A custom then arose of leaving lunatics in the charge of the few 
inhabitants who had settled there. The cluster of huts became a vil- 
lage, and later an important town. 
In the twelfth century, a large church, dedicated to St. Dymphinia, 
took the place of the old chapel of St. Martin, and in a.d. 1400 the 
popular belief in the miraculous power of the saint was confirmed by 
a bull of Pope Eugenius IV. 
At this distance of time, it is impossible to discover whether those 
first cures were real or imaginary; but at all events, we can easily 
perceive how what at first was a work of charity and piety soon be- 
came a source of prosperity to the country and benefit to the insane 
who were brought there. At Gheel, the combination of a northern 
climate with the sandy soil of the south rendered the means of liveli- 
hood difficult to obtain. 
Economy as well as kindness prompt the sane to live in common 
with the insane guests. Their guardians, who could ill afford the 
time to keep and watch them within-doors, usually took them with 
them to the fields when they went to work, and thus gradually the 
lunatics in their lucid moments became fellow-workers in the fields as 
well as companions in the house, and lived freely and fearlessly with 
their keepers. 
It is wonderful to see how soon the lunatics accustom themselves 
to the regular hours and habits of their guardians. 
This is one of the strongest cases of unconscious magnetic influ- 
ence I have yet found; and philanthropists who visit that spot will 
become convinced of the advantages of an institution which allevi- 
ates the wretched condition of lunacy, and while giving the sufferers 
reasonable freedom, restores them sooner to health and to society. 
Luther V. Bell. TWENTY-FIRST SECTION. 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
The moral aspects of crime-Comparative degrees of crime-Diseased condition 
of will-Kleptomania-Violence-Brute force-Error of punishing children 
physically or by brute force-Pre-natal causes and influences-Self-culture 
and self-reliance should be taught the child early-Present methods of treat- 
ing crime aims at effects instead of causes-Prisons should be considered as 
hospitals-The effects of solitary confinement in deranging the harmony of 
mind-Affecting instance of maternal insanity from murdering her own 
child-Society secure only in the general culture and moral elevation of its 
members-The natural genius or bent of mind in children should be 
encouraged, not thwarted-Melancholy result-A case of a promising young 
sculptor-Dean Richmond-Capital punishment should be abandoned- 
Prison officers should be teachers-Law-makers should understand the 
causes of crime-Bad results of unhappy marriages-The law of love and 
magnetic attraction should be patiently studied-Better principles of educa- 
tion should be adopted-Girls should be educated first to be women, then 
true mothers. 
CARCELY you will expect to hear from one who has 
so lately left the earth-sphere, and the scene of my 
active labors and peaceful rest.* 
But I want to give you some views I have long 
entertained in regard to criminals and their treatment. 
When I was quite a young man, I think not more 
than twenty-four or five years old, I went as assistant- 
surgeon on board the old ship of line, Franklin, on a 
cruise to the tropics and along the South-American 
coast. 
I remember our commanding officer was a stern, 
strict man, perhaps not unnecessarily so ; but being 
young and light-hearted, I associated much with the men and learned 
* This lecture was transmitted within four months after the author passed 
on to the spirit-world.-Ed. 228 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
their ways of life, and also their ideas of discipline, of crime, and of 
punishment. 
Here for the first time the idea dawned upon me that crime was 
a disease, a sort of mental and moral dyspepsia, caused by im- 
proper training in early life, sometimes by hereditary taint and 
trouble. 
And crime seems to have a myriad shades and degrees, some of 
them far more harmful than others. 
There is a species of falsifying, unintentional and almost harmless 
in its nature, born of an active, imaginative temperament and some- 
times of a too strong desire to please. And this, I think, is the first 
and faintest form of crime. We might call it the effect of a diseased 
imagination, and many people who suffer from this, never develop 
any further or more serious form of disease in that direction. 
But next in order comes the intent to deceive ; the willful false- 
hood willfully told ; sometimes told that its effect upon others may 
be noticed, sometimes to advance personal means, either of vanity or 
apparent necessity. 
I say " apparent necessity," because I have taken the ground that 
in a healthy and natural state of society, the absolute truth may be 
spoken at all times, and not to speak it indicates a diseased condition 
of the will, and is a constant source of trouble and annoyance to the 
patient as well as to all whom said patient may come in contact with. 
Next to this form of crime or disease, which is known under the 
general term of lying, we find the quite as general term of stealing. 
It is difficult to tell where this disease ceases to be a virtue, and 
becomes a vice. 
With the present way of making and administering the laws of 
the land, there are opportunities for appropriating, and slight legal 
advantages that can be taken, that pave the way by easy steps to 
fraud and theft. 
It is doubtful if the wary shop-lifter who dexterously bears off a 
bit of spoil from the heavily-laden counter is any more a criminal 
than the ylib-tongued salesman, who, in the interest of his employer, 
represents his goods to be what they are not, and takes money from 
the unsuspecting purchaser, for which he knows he has given no just 
equivalent. 
However, it is impossible in a treatise of this kind to deal with 
abstract crime. 
We know there are certain actions recognized as theft, and con- 
sidered criminal, and I believe they are caused by diseased ideas con- THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
229 
cerning property ; either ignorance of or misapplication of the laws 
of possession and personal rights. 
Following the various forms of stealing and appropriating, comes 
the graver disease of violence, the using of brute force either as a 
means of offense or defense. 
Morally and spiritually, it is a crime for any man to strike one of 
his own species. 
In some rare instances of daily life, in compelling domestic 
animals to do the work assigned them, it may be necessary to enforce 
obedience by goad or blow or stinging lash ; and in encountering 
wild animals, of course murderous weapons must sometimes be used, 
either in self-defense or for the purpose of capturing or killing 
them. 
But personal violence toward a reasoning, thinking being should 
never be used in anger or excitement, excepting strictly in self- 
defense or the defense of helplessness against drunkenness or in- 
sanity. 
No parent should ever strike a child, under any possible circum- 
stances. No teacher should punish a pupil by violence or force. 
And of course the next question which arises is, How shall gov- 
ernment be administered ? 
Of the pre-natal influences that contribute so largely toward 
forming character, I can not now speak; but children should at 
least be fed with proper food, be supplied with fresh air and exercise, 
be properly clothed and cared for, and allowed to grow through in- 
fancy under the most favorable conditions possible. 
Then every child should early be taught self-care, self-culture, and 
self-government. And as soon as they reach the age of three or four 
years, schools should be established at which they may learn not only 
to read and study, but also to play and to work; to wash their own 
faces and comb their own hair; and, as they grow larger, to plant 
and tend the garden, to cultivate flowers and fruits, working, of 
course, only a few hours in a day, and that under guidance as strict 
and careful as that which governs any other branch of study. 
A series of rewards and punishments might be established as 
connected with out-door sports and duties, that would encourage the 
timid, awaken ambition in the indolent, keep the nervous from over- 
exertion, and in every way equalize the natural forces, thus aiding 
and establishing habits of industry, order, and regularity, so that 
every child would be better fitted to earn an honest living, and thus 
one of the prolific sources of crime be annihilated, or at least im- 
measurably reduced in power. 230 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
But I am talking now as though we could commence with the 
little children and build up society anew, and fashion the world 
according to our own ideas of right, which I know very well can not 
be done at present. 
I am firmly convinced that if we could commence with the child- 
ren and educate them all to healthy, natural, and useful lives, crime 
would soon come to be considered not only as a disease, but as an 
exceptional disease, requiring exceptional treatment. 
But we must take the world as it is, and the statistics of crime as 
they stand, and see what can be done for the safety and protection 
of the whole human family. 
Every method we have of treating crime seems to aim at the 
effect and not at the cause ; seems to be designed to punish, not to 
prevent. This is not the right principle. 
To return to our first classification of criminal diseases, I would 
suggest that a diseased imagination be taught to govern itself by 
reason. 
This can easily be done. People who have merely diseased 
imaginations, especially if they be children or young people, can 
learn to understand the truth themselves; and once thoroughly 
understanding that truth is better, more serviceable, and more simple 
than any class of falsehood, they will readily adopt it. 
The surplus of imagination can then be used up in writing stories 
which are known to be not absolute truth, and therefore are not 
deceptive, or in representing fictitious characters in drama, or in 
painting, or poetry, or any of the arts. 
The willful falsifier demands a more thorough course of treatment, 
to awaken the moral sense, to arouse the dormant faculties, to point 
out the actual harm done, and the little good gained by his perni- 
cious course. Parents and teachers should alone be able to check 
and control these forms of disease as soon as they begin to develop. 
It is harder to teach the laws of mine and thine, the true line 
that marks the distinction of property, and requires steadier training 
and more powerful magnetic treatment. 
Cases of theft are constantly occurring, and the sole result of the 
present.method of punishment is, not to make a man more honest 
by teaching him that it is wrong to steal, but to make him more cun- 
ning and cautious, by showing him that it is unfortunate to be found 
out. 
What we want is a powerful police corps, always active and vigi- 
lant, and every one chosen for the power of will, the magnetic influ- 
ence they possess. THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
231 
We want them to be considered, not as the especial enemies of 
all evil-<Zoers, but as the enemies of all evil deeds. And we want 
them to look upon criminals exactly as the good physician looks 
upon his patient. When, in the wild delirum of fever, the patient 
tries to strangle himself with the bell-rope, or stab himself with the 
carving-knife, or take a shower-bath of ice-water, the physician only 
says to himself, " If he were well, he would not do these things." 
So he puts him in a place of safety, and keeps him until he is 
well. 
All our prison-houses, jails, and penitentiaries should be con- 
sidered as hospitals ; and all the men and women who have charge 
of these institutions should be looked upon as physicians and nurses. 
The only punishment the worst case would ever need would be to 
be deprived of their liberty, and kept more or less isolated from 
companionship. Every one who has had any experience in these 
matters, knows how the dark cell is dreaded, and how the wildest 
and most reckless cases become tamed to the most abject humility 
after a brief period of solitary confinement, with only their own 
thoughts in the darkness for company. 
I remember an instance where a large, powerful ruffian was con- 
fined in a cell that had a single small, very small window heavily 
grated. One day the attendant had taken the usual allowance of 
food to this man (whose name was Grey), and as he left the cell, I 
saw Grey reach both arms out toward him with a pitiful, imploring 
gesture, while an expression of agony seemed to distort his face. 
Partly from curiosity and partly fearing that some real wrong 
had been done, I entered the cell alone and asked the man what was 
the matter. 
He held down his head for a moment, and I saw two tears on his 
face as he answered me, that, for several days since his confinement 
there, a fly, an ordinary little house-fly, had buzzed on his one win- 
dow, and that, as the attendant went out just now, the fly went out 
with him. 
" He be a powerful deal o' company, sur, in a place as there's 
nothing movin' all day but that speck o' light on the floor ; and now 
he's gone, I be all alone," the man said with such a voice of hopeless 
horror as one does not often hear. 
I remember, too, a woman who was kept in solitary confinement 
for the crime of having twice tried to kill her babe, once by aban- 
donment and again by violence. 
She tamed a mouse so that it would eat from her hand, and nestle 
for hours in her bosom. 232 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
She seemed at last to conceive an idea that her baby was dead, 
and its soul had entered the body of the mouse ; for once, when 
listening out of sight, I heard her crowing in strange motherly fashion 
over the little animal, saying, " Poor baby, pretty baby ! Mamina 
knew she would starve to death. Mamma is glad her baby is not 
hungry and sick and cold any more. Nobody knows how near to 
Mamma baby is now." And so on for hours, if she was not inter- 
rupted. 
But when any one tried to talk with her about the crime she had 
committed, she grew at once morose and unreasonable, fiercely deny- 
ing all knowledge of it, purposely misunderstanding questions and 
refusing to give facts. She became at last hopelessly insane, and 
died smiling and talking senselessly to the spirit of her dead baby. 
Now, I contend that the punishment allotted to that woman, 
slight as it may seem, only solitary confinement, was more than she 
was able to bear. 
You may think that no punishment could be too severe for a 
crime so heinous;but consider further: 
If that mother had been assured that the minimum of support 
would be supplied to herself and child, the morbid idea of murder 
would never have developed itself in her brain or been wrought out 
by her hands. 
Society, for its own protection, needs that all its members should 
have more culture ; that individual tastes and preferences should be 
more consulted; and that the true millennium of peace may arrive, 
when every one can feel that they are cared for, without being con- 
trolled. 
And if any tendency toward crime is discovered, the mind and 
body should both be set at work in the opposite direction as fast as 
possible. 
If there is any thing a person particularly desires to do, and the 
desire is natural and healthy, he should be taught and encouraged in 
that direction. 
One more personal reminiscence, and I leave this fragmentary 
dissertation. 
A young man, Henry Powell by name, had been sentenced to 
twenty years' hard labor and solitary confinement, for arson. 
He was at work at stone-cutting, and his face wore an expression 
of the most stolid apathy. 
Yet something about him interested me, and in watching him 1 
saw him hide away bits of bread from his coarse and not over- THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
233 
abundant fare, which he afterward moistened slyly, and moulded into 
miniature models for statuary. 
With much care I gained his confidence and learned his story. 
He was by trade a machinist, but from boyhood had always had 
a desire to become a sculptor ; fashioning grotesque snow-men and 
queer clay images, that were soon superseded by quaint wood 
carvings. 
But friends and relatives discouraged this useless work, and 
insisted upon his learning a trade, which he was accordingly appren- 
ticed to. 
In his leisure hours, he had managed to secure a block of marble, 
and fashion therefrom a sort of satyr or wood-nymph, a rude 
attempt at mythological representation, with hoofs like a deer, claws 
like a dragon, and face of a pretty girl. Before he had finished this 
piece of work, he was taken sick, and the physician who attended 
him offered to take the unfinished statue as payment for his services. 
Young Powell had no money, and knew it would be long before 
he could earn any ; he was flattered, too, perhaps, by the physician's 
evident admiration of his rough work, and so he let it go. 
Some weeks afterward, when he had recovered his health and was 
again at work, he wanted to finish his statue. So he went to the 
physician, told him he did not consider the work completed, and 
begged he would let him take it back to his room and go on with it. 
The physician laughed at him, told him to stick to his bench, and 
not try to become an artist ; for it was only wasting marble to make 
such things as that. 
The young man listened with silent rage in his heart, and went 
away. 
But day by day, as he passed to and from his work, he saw 
through the long window of the conservatory, amid tropical blos- 
soms, green, bright leaveg, and the tossing spray of the fountain, his 
poor statue, with the distorted smile his chisel had left on its sweet 
mouth, and the awkward block, not yet wrought into a graceful coil 
of hair. 
Often he tried to think of some way to obtain possession of it, 
and gave up every plan as impracticable. 
At one time he thought he would call and ask the physician to 
allow him to bring his mallet and chisel and work on the marble as 
it stood in the conservatory ; but the memory of his last visit there 
and its result still rankled like poisoned fire in his brain, and he for- 
bode to go again. 
The desire to possess that image at last became a mania. 234 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
lie could not afford to buy another block of marble, nor did he 
want the tiresome work of making another model and blocking it 
out; he wanted that. 
And so one night he tried to steal it ; but the crash of breaking 
glass aroused the gardener, and Powell was obliged to escape by 
flight. 
Still the idea haunted him, and gradually developed into a plan. 
He bought a can of inflammable oil, and a long wax taper. He 
whittled soft pine shavings and saturated them with turpentine ; 
then carried them all to the familiar spot, thinking, as he said, that 
he could set the end of the conservatory on fire, and then, in the 
attendant confusion, rush in and bear off the statue, while the foun- 
tain and abundant moisture would prevent the fire from reaching the 
house, or doing any very material injury. 
The light frame upon which he had poured the oil as high as he 
could reach blazed up merrily, the roof caught, servants wakened, 
an alarm was raised, and with the first cry of fire, Powell sprang 
from his hiding-place, entered the green-house, and threw one 
arm around his Fannie, as he called it, only to find that said Fannie 
was firmly riveted to an iron pillar that supported the roof, while 
both her ugly claws were fastened to a heavy bronze harp, around 
the slender strings of which graceful vines were clinging. 
" Oh I" he said bitterly, " that the flames had burned me, or the 
water drowned me, or the smoke poisoned and suffocated me where 
I stood." But no 1 In less than half an hour he was arrested and 
lodged in jail. 
His trial was brief, his sentence stern and irrevocable. Not a 
word of evidence given in his favor, not even by himself, for he 
pleaded guilty. 
And yet, I say, that man's crime was an indication of disease. 
He did not like his work in the machine-shop-he hated it. 
And it bred disease in his mental organism, just as the wearing of 
a galling chain or the eating of improper food would breed disease 
in the physical organism. 
The remedy still is education, and proper means taken to allow 
every young person facilities for choosing and following that path in 
life best fitted for their own powers. 
As a noted business man (Dean Richmond) used often to remark, 
" It is entirely useless for one man to undertake to do business by 
another man's telling, or for any man to try to tell another what to 
do. Every man's business must fit him like a garment, and he must THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
235 
like it, and enjoy devoting himself to it, in order to be truly success- 
ful." 
As for what should be the punishments for crime, after all means 
for prevention have been exhausted, I have very little to say. 
Capital punishment has done its work, and will soon be abolished 
by law. In fact, it is only administered now spasmodically, and for 
nobody exactly knows what. 
It is only another form of murder, murder by the law-makers in- 
stead of by an individual, a remnant of old barbaric might, when 
force was the only recognized power. 
It is said that capital punishment is needed to hold in check the 
worst classes in society. 
But I think its "holding-in-checkpower" must be somewhat dimi- 
nished, when the whole thing becomes an experiment, as it is to-day; 
when the principal question in the prisoner's mind must be, not 
whether he will be convicted of murder or not, but whether, being 
convicted of murder, he will be sentenced to be hanged or not, and 
whether or not, having been sentenced, the sentence will be executed. 
There have been few executions for several years ; and the proba- 
bility is that public opinion, growing bloodthirsty, will demand more 
victims soon, and the gallows will be full-gorged for a time. 
Still in this very spasmodic action we see plain indications of 
decline, and we are glad to notice it, whatever may be the cause. 
We want all our jailers to be teachers, and all our law-makers to 
understand the causes as well as the effects of crime. 
There is another form of this disease called crime, which is a 
mysterious growth peculiar to civilization, and known as " the social 
evil." 
The physical effects of this disease I do not propose to treat here. 
But it is very evident that, morally considered, the social evil is a 
perversion of nature's best and holiest right. 
The only remedy we can suggest for this is, that the natural laws 
of magnetic attraction be more carefully and patiently studied; that 
people marry with a better knowledge of self, and a truer and 
more kindly appreciation of each other and each other's needs and 
wants. Sexual intercourse should be at least a mutually desirable 
caress, and excite a mutually pleasurable emotion. This without 
especial reference to its spiritual significance, and the possibility or 
probability of conception, which always should be considered. 
It is not a suitable subject for legislation. It depends upon the 
thorough and pure education of girls and boys, of men and women. 236 
THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
Girls are educated to make wives. They should be educated first for 
women, good, true women, then for mothers, wise and kind. 
Finally, I have but to repeat that in the proper education of 
children, in teaching them all and each as individuals, with rights to 
be respected, tastes and preferences to be consulted and cultivated, 
powers to be developed, and passions to be subdued, lies the great 
hope we have of preventing future crime and misery. 
Fig. 73.-Play-Ground. 
Every school should have connected with it a play-ground, a 
garden, a work-shop, and a home ; and all these could, I believe, be 
easily made self-supporting by proper care and management. 
Fig. 74.-Work-Shop. 
Every boy should learn to play ball, to fly a kite, to march with 
military precision, to play on some kind of a musical instrument, to 
make shoes, or clothing, or hats, or furniture, or write books, or bind 
them ; to paint a picture, or a house, or a carriage ; in short, to do 
many useful things. And every girl should receive the same kind THE TREATMENT OF CRIME AS A DISEASE. 
237 
of culture. Boys and girls should be taught to work together, to 
share each other's hopes and plans and interests in life ; in short, to 
help each other. 
Then they will protect each other, and guard each other from 
error, from failure, and from crime. 
Adkian K. Hoffman. TWENTY-SECOND SECTION. 
REMARKABLE CASES OF CURES UNDER THE DIRECTION OF OUR 
INSTITUTION, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE NEWLY-DEVELOPED 
SYSTEM OF TREATMENT BY VITAL MAGNETISM AND THE 
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAWS OF HYGIENE. 
N THIS section we only intend to publish a type of 
some of the leading or otherwise prevalent classes of 
diseases; which, although of themselves specifically are 
not new, but owing to modern developments, progres- 
sive civilization, artificial habits, gross inconsistencies 
in foods, in conditions of eating and living, the cultiva- 
tion of artificial habits of appetite, social licenses, in- 
continency, etc., have become extremely complicated in 
their nature and consequently afflictive in their ef- 
fects, as the narrations strictly copied will discover. 
The first and second cases relate strictly to dis- 
eases of the kidneys, known as calculary, resulting, 
generally, in the formation of gravel or stone, or both, producing 
the most direful misery and suffering that the human system is liable 
to. The following cases, therefore, should not only be read but re- 
read and carefully studied by every living person, until every point 
and every cause is understood, and the indication of each phenome- 
non is legitimately traced to its primal origin. 
It is but little more than a year since Napoleon III. fell a victim to 
this class of maladies. His strong mind and body succumbed to the 
great nervous prostration produced in the endeavor to cure himself. 
You read of lithotomy or lithotrity, almost of daily occurrence, 
both of which comprehend the most imminent danger to life, saying 
nothing of the suffering to be endured by the pitiful victims for the 
time being : although the suffering may be deadened by unconscious 240 
CASES OF CURES. 
sensibility from chloroform, yet this gives him no guarantee of 
safety from its dangers to a speedy transportation under the ope- 
rator's hands, to a bourne so intangible, supposed so spiritual, he can 
not compass. So dangerous are these anaesthetics becoming known 
that but yesterday the Massachusetts Dental Society passed resolu- 
tions emphatically condemning the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic, 
and declaring any member administering it liable to expulsion. (Read 
the lecture of Professor Simpson in the fore part of this book.) 
Although females are not so generally liable, from their peculiar 
organization, to be subject to these dangerous operations, they are 
correspondingly subject to more exquisite morbid sensibility from a 
higher development of nervous power. 
Fig. 75.-Case of Mrs. H. E. Hain. 
The likeness standing at the head of this section but be- 
speaks the candor and earnestness so graphically described by her 
pen. 
My Dear Doctor : I feel it not only a duty which I owe to my- 
self, to my physician, but to suffering humanity, to write a history of 
my painful case, that it may be published, so that others similarly 
situated may know to whom to resort for a cure. 
While residing in the city of South-Bend, Indiana, in April, 1870, 
when my little girl was seven months old, I was taken sick, not con- 
fined to the bed, but only just able to go about the house. 
Consulting our family physician, he pronounced my complaint 
prolapsus uteri, or falling of the womb; he believing me to possess a 
strong constitution naturally, said by keeping in a horizontal position CASES OF CURES. 
241 
(bad advice) for a few weeks would strengthen the ligaments and 
thereby perfect a cure. After remaining in that position for nearly 
five weeks, I was taken with a calculary disease; when urinating, I 
would have severe pain in the bladder, and the urine would be streaked 
with blood, as I believed. The disease increased daily, until there 
seemed to be no urine, but to all appearance clear blood. I became 
so very weak I could but just walk across the room, and even that 
exertion would cause me to urinate. 
I continued under this physician's treatment until it was decided 
he could do me no good whatever. I then ceased taking drugs. In 
July of the same year, I was reading much of buchu; so tried a bot- 
tle or two of that, with at first some apparent good results-so much 
so, that I gained strength considerably. 
The last of August, just before starting for Missouri, I overtaxed 
myself, and about that time found in the urine a clot of blood, within 
which was a piece of gravel or lime, the first I had ever seen. I re- 
sorted to buchu immediately. After arriving at my future home in 
Missouri, I was taken with hemorrhage again, as I termed it, it being 
just as severe if not more so than it ever had been. Again I resorted 
to buchu, but to no effect; thus the disease continued. Soon I began 
having a fine, gravelly, gritty matter pass with the urine, which caused 
great pain and irritation ; also severe pain in the kidneys and the 
loins. 
I tried a great many different remedies, but could find nothing to 
benefit me. In November, I sent to a friend in Homer, N. Y., to send 
me a remedy that had been highly recommended me, but all to no 
purpose. The disease was fast preying upon me, and one year ago 
this time I was suffering perfect agony, not being able to lie down at 
all through the day, and being obliged to rise several times during 
the night. So great was the irritation of the neck of the bladder, I 
was unable to retain the urine longer than an hour at a time, and 
often large chunks of gravel would pass in the urine, the size of a 
pea. 
I continued suffering in this way, each day my strength decreas- 
ing and my whole system becoming diseased. 
In January, 1872,1 wrote to a physician in Wisconsin, from whom 
I had some treatment, but which only made me worse, not only with 
the urinary complaint; but now a catarrh and bad cough ensued along 
with them, pain in the side, symptoms rapidly menacing consump- 
tion. Now my limbs became numb, almost paralyzed, so much so, I 
could not use my arms or hands; the disease of the urinary organs 
causing all the other. 242 
CASES OF CURES. 
I now became confined to my room, painful symptoms becoming 
more numerous, and existing affections of cough, pain, night-sweats, 
cold chills, and general prostration more and more intense. My agony 
was so great, when passing urine, that large drops of sweat would 
stand on my face, and my clothing literally wet from profuse 
sweating. Then again a second or continued spasmodic coughing 
would set in, causing an expectoration of clear matter, evidently 
showing the lungs were becoming involved. I had, now, lost all 
further confidence in medicine, and about given up all hope of being 
any better; indeed, I felt my case to be incurable. My agony was 
so great I looked forward to death calmly as the only relief. 
Reader, if you have ever suffered thus and could find no balm in 
Gilead, you alone know. It was thus in my agony a friend found 
me to be suffering-one who had formerly been a patient of Dr. 
Stone. I had just been suffering the most intense agony, had seated 
myself in an easy-chair, feeling weary and worn out with pain. I 
commenced telling him of the nature of my disease. After listening 
to me for some time, this friend recommended Dr. Stone, of Troy, 
N. Y, as the physician who had saved him from an early grave. My 
husband was anxious I should write to Dr. Stone; and if he gave any 
encouragement, to make one more trial; when after a few days I wrote 
my case-forwarding a vial of my morning's urine for analysis. 
In the mean while, I suffered such intense spasms that it took two peo- 
ple to hold me. Even at the time of receiving the box of treatment 
from Dr. Stone, my agony was so great that it was some time before 
I was able to read the prescription; and when I did so, his prompt 
and scientific investigation of my case merited my gratitude and gave 
me new hope of at least benefit if not an entire cure. I ascertained 
at once, from the report of the analysis, my case was not what the 
other physicians had termed it; what I had supposed was really blood 
was but red sand or deposits of crystals of lithic acid, mixed with 
lime, ammonia, etc. It was the crystals of lithic acid passing through 
the kidneys, the ureter, and irritating the whole surface of the blad- 
der, and especially the urethra, the neck of the bladder, that had given 
rise to so much mischief and intense suffering, by abrading the 
mucous coating of these organs and exposing the raw surface to the 
action of these morbid materials as they almost constantly accumu- 
lated and passed away. 
Dr. Stone's scientific explanation of the nature of my case, name- 
ly, that there was a peculiar abnormal diathesis, to be corrected by 
regulating the dietary, selecting such articles of food as would not 
generate morbid acids in the stomach, and giving others that would CASES OF CURES. 
243 
restore the alkaline principles, or the potash salts, as he termed them, 
in order to produce a balance between the two in the system, so, for 
a time at least neither should preponderate in the blood ; that the 
urine must be brought thereby into as much of a neutral state as pos- 
sible, to give a disposition and opportunity for the coatings to be re- 
stored and the parts made sound and wrell. 
His remarkably lucid explanation of the laws of hygiene in vari- 
ous ways, which had been perverted not only in errors of diet, but 
dress, temperature, ventilation, etc., looking directly to the vitalizing 
or contaminating the very fountain of health, was to me like remov- 
ing at once the clouds of darkness and pouring in the effulgence of 
the noon-day sun. And, as I continued to read further, and learned 
that all medicines, or correctives, as he termed them, that he was giv- 
ing me, must not be looked upon as doing the cure, but merely pallia- 
tive, and would become but very temporary in relief, unless the condi- 
tions of hygiene were very rigidly observed, and the whole cure 
prospectively promised become futile unless I so obeyed, I exclaimed 
again with gratitude, " There must be one honest and noble physician 
yet in the world." 
For the benefit of other suffering ones, let me briefly recapitulate 
the complicated nature of my case on receiving Dr. Stone's treat- 
ment : every symptom of aggravated pulmonary consumption, tor- 
pid liver, enlarged spleen, prolapsus uteri, with great nervous prostra- 
tion and irritability of the brain and whole nervous system, existing 
with the intense morbid derangement of the kidneys and bladder, in- 
ducing almost perpetual torture. 
I commenced, therefore, with the most renewed faith and hope with 
the treatment, taking the remedies, adopting the hygiene; and after 
the first day, I had no more spasms ; in one Peek's time, my cough 
was decidedly better, the expectoration changing from a yellow mat- 
ter to a whitish color. In three weeks' time, the irritation in the 
bladder had subsided to such an extent that I was not obliged to rise 
more than three times during the night. In seven weeks' time, I was 
not obliged to rise at all during the night; and in two weeks more, 
sleeping soundly and refreshingly, to which I had been a stranger for 
so many long months. My progress to health was rapid and beyond 
all expectation, both to myself and friends. 
The first of September found me without pain, the neck of the 
bladder healed, so much so that irritation had entirely left me, and 
to-day I am feeling well and enjoying better health than I have for 
five years. I do a great deal of work, house-work, sewing, etc. etc. 
I can walk and ride with ease. 244 
CASES OF CURES. 
The cure Stone has done in my case is truly wonderful. Looking 
oack to the state my system was in one year ago, and to the intense 
agony which I suffered, it makes my blood run cold, and I can scarce- 
ly believe myself that I am so well. People that were daily expect- 
ing to hear of my death seem amazed to see me in the streets. My 
weight, which was but 90 pounds when I began treatment with Dr. 
Stone, has increased to 121 pounds. 
I feel that I can not be sufficiently grateful to my Heavenly Father 
for the providential influences used in bringing the meritorious claims 
of Dr. Stone to my notice. Your friend and patient, 
Mrs. H. E. Hain. 
Windsor, Mo., Nov. 20, 1872. 
SECOND CASE OK CALCULARY DISEASE. 
This class of maladies is so extremely prevalent, and so unsuccess- 
fully treated by physicians of the old school, that sufferers do not 
know to whom to apply unless they learn, as this patient did, by 
fortunately becoming acquainted with a patient we had successfully 
treated. This patient is now under treatment, with every prospect 
of a permanent cure. Let it be studied with interest and attention. 
Wednesday Eve (writing in bed). 
Well, Doctor, since I commenced this letter to you, I have had 
two hard spells (meaning spasms in the ureter, from the passing of 
an accumulation of gravel or sediment and the attending inflamma- 
tion) ; one that I had Sunday night was the hardest I have had for 
more than a year, lasted all night long; was taken real bad about six 
o'clock in the evening, did not get any relief until nine o'clock in the 
morning; tried every thing you suggested-hot hip-bath, rubbed 
with chloroform externally, and finally had to take one grain of mor- 
phine before I could get any relief. I had another spell yesterday, 
though it did not last me so long. Doctor, I do not see how I can do 
without morphine or some other anodyne that will deaden the pain. 
When 1 commenced doctoring with Dr. JM of II , he put me on 
one grain of morphine a day, half in the morning, half at night, and so 
continued it for one year while under his care. Do you blame me 
for being discouraged? I have but just arrived home from one 
whole year's siege, and now I am just as bad off as when I commenced. 
[Let the reader remember that where the patient had been treated, 
the doctor or doctors only treated her symptoms, without in any way 
looking at or for causes for such intense suffering, and removing them. CASES OF CURES. 
245 
No wonder the treatment and great sacrifice of money was all thrown 
away-where effects only are sought to be lulled by opiates. This 
case proves the fallacy of the general practice of treating symp- 
toms.-Ed.] 
Thursday morning.-I will once more try to finish this letter. I 
am up and dressed for the first time since Sunday; I have not taken 
any morphine since day before yesterday, but I fear I can't go very 
long without it, as I have notrmissed having one of those hard spells 
more than three or four days at the longest for two months ; always 
have to stay in bed two or three days after having one. Have not 
commenced talcing my hot-air baths yet. Want to, to-morrow. 
That urine we sent you, doctor, was not nearly as highly colored 
as it is most of the time, nor was it streaked with blood and matter as 
it is a good part of the time. I had just had one of my hard spells 
the night before, and had taken so much morphine, which always 
makes the urine lighter colored, and more profuse; as a usual thing, 
it is high-colored and scant. 
When I have those spasms, awhile before I get relief I nearly 
always get very sick and often vomit; and just before I get easy, the 
pain seems the hardest, and then it goes off almost instantly. There 
will come a sharp pain from my left kidney and groin that feels just 
like a knife running through me, and always feels as though it cuts 
something away. 
[The above symptoms always indicate gravel or stone passing 
from the kidney down into and through the ureter. The ureters are 
two tubes, one leading from each kidney into the bladder.-Ed.] 
Then I can pass urine quite freely. But nearly always at such 
times there will be lumps pass me, and often they are streaked with 
blood. 
This patient writes, January 4th, 1875 : 
Friday night, I had almost half a pint of blood pass from my 
bladder; it did not all pass at once, but at several times, when I 
would get up to pass urine. The first that I noticed that there was 
blood passing, I felt a great desire to urinate, as though I could not 
wait until I could get up; but when I did so, I could not pass water 
at all, but instead great clots of blood, and my bladder pained me 
very much. After a little time, I had a desire to get up again ; this 
time I could pass water. 246 
CASES OF CURES. 
[We are particular to copy the very distinguishing features of the 
case as given in the graphic language of the patient; for it plainly, to 
us at least, shows the very characteristic nature of the disease and its 
varied complications: First, the intense spasms after a lull, in the 
ureter (left), indicate that there will be an accumulation of sediment, 
mucous or calculary matter in the left kidney; when it begins to pass 
out of the kidney into the ureter, the tube, then the spasm commences; 
but the spasm does not relinquish until relaxed by some anti-spasmodic 
agent, to allow the extraneous irritating material to pass on to the 
bladder. Secondly, the passing of blood proves most conclusively the 
inflammation that has a long time existed with more or less ulcera- 
tion, healing almost in times of respite, when a fresh accumulation of 
irritating particles will abrade the surface and cause fresh hemor- 
rhage. But in this case the points are yet blind whether the hemor- 
rhage is from the ureter or in the bladder, or both. In all probability 
in the upper portion of the ureter, near or connected with the left kid- 
ney, where the seat of greatest suffering seems to centre. But, thirdly, 
the constant desire to micturate, with pain and burning, scalding sen- 
sation at the neck of the bladder, the urethra, proves, too, a complete 
abrasion of the mucous coating of these parts. And, fourthly, as in 
the preceding case, while the urine is either strongly alkaline or 
strongly acid, but little opportunity is afforded the powers of the con- 
stitution to heal. 
Fifth. The urine needs to be, in all such cases, kept as nearly neutral 
as possible, to save the irritation, and also to prevent the almost con- 
stant misery such poor victims have to suffer. 
Sixth. The great practical instructions of this case lie in the effect 
of a hot-air bath, or the Turkish bath at a pretty high temperature, 
relieving the intense spasms as well and far better than opiates or mor- 
phine, thereby saving the brain, nervous system, and the blood from 
being constantly contaminated with such a narcotic ; while the effect 
of the bath is mainly external, calling the blood to the surface, re- 
lieving the internal congestion and inflammation, and giving the sys- 
tem (nature) an opportunity to recover her exhausted forces and bring 
about the cure. Let the patient speak for herself.] 
I am better in some respects; in fact, I know I am better of those 
spasms. I have not had one of those hard spasms for nearly six weeks; 
that is the longest I have gone for a long time; I have not taken a bit 
of morphine in that time, either. I have had strong symptoms of 
them several times, but have kept them off by going into the dry 
hot-air bath. I take the bath every morning. CASES OF CURES. 
247 
What man can read the misery and suffering detailed in the fore- 
going letters, but must have a desire, if he possesses the attributes of 
humanity, to know of the causes ? 
We reply, they are legion ; but it is only a humane duty, a solemn 
obligation, that some at least of the principal ones should be made 
known. Let the spirit of the learned Sir Benjamin Brodie speak. 
" I come to-day, my earthly friend and brother, to talk with you 
upon a most delicate subject, one which is very imperfectly treated 
in all medical works, and which deserves, and will soon receive, more 
general and careful attention, namely, Woman's Sexual Functions 
and Relation to the World. 
"In the first place, women know too little about themselves, and 
the medical fraternity make every effort to keep them in a state of 
ignorance. We hear a great deal about the social evil; but I believe 
the worst evil in American social life to-day is the prevalent system 
of abortionism, and later, infanticide, practiced by hundreds who are 
called respectable, winked at by thousands, who call themselves reli- 
gious. Unconsciously but not less truly it is woman's agonizing pro- 
test against being a slave to man's passions and her own ignorance. 
" Of course, the first remedy that suggests itself for this appalling 
evil is abstinence from sexual intercourse until such time as the 
woman considers it best that she should become a mother. But the 
men and women of to-day come from generations of uncultured 
parents in that direction, and passion is stronger than principle. 
" Nor do I think the pleasures of sexual intercourse should be con- 
fined merely to the reproduction of the species, any more than that 
of eating should be confined merely to the function of supporting 
life. But surely undesired maternity can not be a blessing. I know 
if woman is healthy and natural in her conditions and functions, and 
if she hold any love relation at all with man, it is as natural, both 
spiritually and physically, for her to desire maternity, as it is for sick 
people to desire health. She desires it as a fulfillment of the law of 
nature, as the completion of her own and her husband's life, which 
without this is always incomplete. 
" But there be sickly and groaning thousands who are not fit to 
become mothers, and yet, having accepted the marriage relation, 
know not how to escape Maternity. For these there should be some 
preventive agency, simple, cleanly, safe and sure, which they could 
use at their own option. (See Dr. Warren's lecture on Maternity, 
page 167.) 
"I know cold-water injections are used for the purpose, and I know 
they are not safe, not sure, and positively injurious. The sudden 248 
CASES OF CURES. 
application of cold water when the organs are in an abnormally 
heated condition, gives a shock to the nervous system, and often 
causes a sudden contraction of the womb and the walls of the vagina, 
retaining effete particles of secreted matter there, and causing inflam- 
mation and subsequent ulceration. These ulcers, being filled with 
pus, are liable to be broken by the entrance of the male organ, and 
any slight abrasion there becoming inoculated, inflammation follows, 
and sometimes more serious results. Therefore I say cold water is 
not safe, while hundreds of women could assure you that it is not 
sure in its results." 
Let the great spirit of the immortal Powhatan be heard on this 
subject, so all-important to the well-being of every female, aided by 
the queenly efforts of his daughter, Pocahontas. 
" Pale-face, these questions go away back beyond your own begin- 
ing, and the cause for so much disease and early sacrifice of life has 
its origin and is indebted for its power to the organs of fear; 
and that fear of death has always kept mortals in an unnatural con- 
dition, making men, women, and children cowards, and holding them 
in gross ignorance of every law of life, binding them by the autho- 
rity of the few who have in order advanced only as a more perfect 
organization has developed more boldness ; fear of death, fear of 
sin, fear of going nearer to God, through the only given way of 
drawing nearer to him, by the natural process and change called 
death. Women have lived ages upon ages in fear and dread of child- 
bearing, and at this day, while civilization is boasting of its rapid 
strides toward perfection, women of refinement and culture in art 
and dress are guilty of the darkest crimes that ever shaded human 
life and staid human progress. Child-murder leaves its impress upon 
the soul, and those who think they have shirked care, gotten rid of a 
responsibility, may rest assured that in this (the spirit) world of reali- 
ties a certain reward awaits them, which will be paramount to the 
sin committed. 
" I have not the time now to dwell as I might upon this point; 
but will give you chapters in some future hour upon this dire evil. 
"We were called savages; but believe me, my brother, when I tell 
you that no Indian woman ever sought to destroy her child, and no 
amount of reasoning could in my day ever have induced an Indian to 
have submitted to such modes of murder. 
" The highest office of humanity is that creative power which 
enables a world to develop more of Deity, and it is high time that 
Savages taught pale-faces the glory and the purity of creating a 
superior race. 
" When this is done, then our brothers will have, first of all, the 249 
CASES OF CURES. 
proper beginning to know how to live. Civilization seeks for happi- 
ness in all that is false to the spirit, false to nature, hence antago- 
nistic to the great central Soul whose breath is harmony and whose 
life is truth and love." 
But shall we give men further evidence for the cause of so 
much disease and suffering among their wives ? We will copy verba- 
tim from a letter now before us from a lady under treatment, telling 
us of a recent illness or rather relapse from a promising stage of con- 
valescence, and hinting in doleful language at the cause. "Doctor, I 
can not use my eyes to look at any thing without increasing the dis- 
tress in my head. My nervous system is very much shattered from 
some cause. It is killing to me to sleep with a man. I have wished 
so much that I could go away and stay for three months until I 
recover in a measure. As for having children, I have two, and that 
is all I can take care of in my feeble health." 
No wonder this feeble patient, having suffered for years with 
untold miseries from hidden chronic inflammation of that delicate, 
sensitive, nervous structure, the womb, extending up the spinal 
column and nerves to the kidneys, the loins, the stomach, causing 
dyspepsia and impaired nutrition, and that in turn extending to the 
very citadel of life, the brain, wants to go away from home to escape 
a constant abuse of the sexual passion on the part of her husband. 
No two persons should ever sleep together in the same bed, unless 
it be for curative purposes, where the magnetic relations are fully 
understood, and it is directed by the intelligent physician to that 
purpose, for the time being. This physiological, magnetic condition 
is clearly recognized and explained in the case of King David of 
olden time. 
The diseases evolved and produced by two persons sleeping in the 
same bed, the miseries entailed thereby, will be known only in that 
day when tly? " great book shall be opened," and the most secret and 
apparently insignificant act and motive will be found therein recorded. 
The language of the Revelator has an awful meaning, "They will 
call for the rocks and mountains to fall upon them and to hide them 
more appalling than this aye, with all its boasted light and knowledge, 
will admit ; for when it is declared that our Heavenly Father's 
government is so perfect and so minute, so all-searching, " that not 
one hair of the head is left unnumbered, or one sparrow falleth to 
the ground without his notice," some ingenious sophistry or subterfuge 
will be palmed off upon the credulity of the ignorant to induce them 
not to believe that it has any relation to the laws of physical entity 
or that it concerns the harmony of every life. 250 
CASES OF CURES. 
Well might the prophet of old exclaim, "Fools die for want of 
wisdom." 
Men and women fain marry, and at once go to sleeping together 
in the same bed, without ever thinking of, or asking the question, Are 
there any subtle or spiritual unseen laws involved in the physiological 
contact and relative conditions assumed ? 
Time passes on ; at length diseases not only of the body spring up, 
but, worse still, diseases of the mind-of a moral nature, discord, 
inharmony, coldness, estranged and repulsive feelings, that once they 
would have been incensed to have heard even suggested ; little com- 
prehending that they were, through ignorance, infringing the all-per- 
vading law of vital magnetism by blending perpetually while in such 
proximity ; and that it is a law of mental dynamics and electric affi- 
nities that, when two opposite bodies come together, they negative 
and repel with precisely the same degree of force. 
Hence one, at least, of the great causes of social tmrest, family 
or domestic jars and quarrels, elopements, divorces ; all tend to, all 
struggling for a readjustment of new relations ; forgetting still the 
laws underlying the social relations are as real, as inflexible as those 
that move the ponderous celestial orbs. "There is nothing that will 
so derange the nervous system of a person who is eliminative in ner- 
vous force as to lie all night in bed with another person who is absorb- 
ent in nervous force. The absorber will go to sleep and rest all night, 
while the eliminator will be tumbling and tossing, restless and ner- 
vous, and wake up in the morning fretful, peevish, fault-finding, and 
discouraged. No two persons, no matter who they are, should habitu- 
ally sleep together. One will thrive and the other will lose." 
The time is approaching when these laws will be recognized and 
acted upon. 
Again, science can not estimate the anomalous morbid manifesta- 
tions growing out of the conditions : the excess of sexual intercourse 
so liable from a constant pandering to the passions, that with proper 
hygenic relations would be obviated-hence so much latent, hidden 
disease, so much anguish and misery, that we, as medical men, are 
called to listen to and witness. 
Upon husbands, then, and those who would become husbands, 
rests the awful responsibility. " The ignorance of the law excuseth 
no man." Can you expect either yourselves or wives to have health 
without knowing how it may be preserved? Sickness is the result 
of ignorance. If you understand not the subject, not the laws that 
govern your organism, you are like one walking in darkness over 
yearning precipices, every moment liable to slip and precipitate him- 
self on the rocks below. TWENTY-THIRD SECTION. 
CASE THIRD. 
A remarkable cure of Bright's disease of the kidneys, general dropsy of the 
body and lower limbs after two years' standing, and unsuccessful treatment 
by three physicians-The true pathology of albuminuria or Bright's dis- 
ease explained, following the case. 
R. A. L. Burgess, aged about thirty-two, of 
Marathon, Cortland County, N. Y., consulted 
us at our Institution in January, 1874. His 
belly was remarkably pendulous, his legs and 
feet swelled to nearly or quite twice their 
natural size. He could walk moderately and 
wieldily well by the aid of a cane, but was 
clumsy in his movements. There was yet a 
brilliancy of the eye, the appetite good, func- 
tion of bowels quite normal, his rest or sleep 
refreshing. We proceeded at once to make 
an analysis of a specimen of his urine passed that morning, which 
required but little scientific research in our chemical laboratory, be- 
fore we made the discovery of a large amount of albumen and ni- 
trogenous compounds, proportionate to the quantity examined. 
It should be understood that when Dr. Bright, of London, first 
wrote upon and published his select report of cases about 1827, his 
conclusion was that all such cases where albumen largely escaped in 
the urine were incurable. Why so ? Because his reports were made 
from morbid specimens; hence his conclusions were from erroneous 
premises. 
. But this unhappy and fatal impression then made by Dr. Bright 
swayed the minds of a vast number of well-read and otherwise 
thinking scientific medical men for years; and even down to the 
present time does it bear its baneful sway. 252 
CASE THIRD. 
We declined treating the case ; but otherwise threw no icy shud- 
ders over his already cast-down spirits. For our conclusions were 
based upon his history, that he had been treated by drugs extensively 
by three if not four physicians for two years, and they had aban- 
doned the case as incurable. We well knew that medicine alone 
could not cure such a disease, and that the hygienic agents we had 
confidence in to reach the Case, if cured at all, and if adopted, re- 
quired more sacrifice as well as more wiLL-power to make effectual, 
than we feared he, in his present disheartened condition, could com- 
mand. It was therefore upon these considerations that we declined 
treating the case, when the patient, with liberal generosity, paid the 
consultation-fee, and retired to spend the night where he had left his 
companion. 
Fig. 76.-The Good Samaritan pouring in the Oil and the Wine. 
As our aim is to do good, to extend a knowledge of diseases so 
generally prevalent, and often allowed to prove too fatal for the want 
of dissemination of light and knowledge, familiarly expressed, to 
come to the comprehension of the common reader, we must be fa- 
miliar to this end in our way of giving the history of this case, be- 
cause it will meet the needs of hundreds of other similar cases. 
This patient, then, was accompanied by an old and long-tried 
friend of ours, George Clark, Esq., of Millerton, N. Y., whom we 
had treated successfully, some twelve years since, for calculary trou- 
bles, and who nearly lost his life when passing some calculi. 
Our friend felt such confidence in our ability, he was loth to have 
us abandon the case, and came again, spent the night, and persuaded 
us to reconsider our conclusions, and make one effort at least to save 
the life of the patient, in pity if no more for a young wife and child. 
In order to make the case instructive, we must explain some physi- 
ological laws of the animal economy as we go along. There are some CASE THIRD. 
253 
five at least great emunctories for eliminating the effete matter from 
the blood and system, the lungs, the skin, the kidneys, the liver, and 
the bowels. Of these five, the skin and the kidneys have almost per- 
fect collateral sympathetic relations. If the skin, which when in 
health secretes and exhales from thirty to forty ounces in twenty- 
four hours, should be almost or even entirely suppressed, some vital 
organ must feel a desperate shock in congestion, inflammation, apo- 
plexy, hemorrhage, or burning fever, unless some compensating func- 
tion, as the kidneys, step in and perform, for the time being at 
least, a double duty. 
Now, in the case of our patient, the function of the skin was 
almost entirely suppressed. He was a butcher by occupation ; his 
business had been on the road much, running and heating and sweat- 
ing himself after his cattle, until, subjected to alternate heats and 
colds in sudden transition, the pores of the skin had become firmly 
closed ; indeed, the skin was glued, the pores almost hermetically 
sealed. This disordered condition of the skin function had com- 
pletely unbalanced the system, thrown these two great functions out 
of all harmony. The kidneys had been compelled so long to do a 
double, duty, they had grown very feeble ; the tissues, delicate at best, 
had become debilitated in the extreme, so much so that the albumen, 
the fibrinous matter of the blood, strained directly through them. 
Under this condition of things, what should be done? What does 
the reader, who will feel deeply interested in the case, suppose could 
be done to be of any avail? Not by any means continue drugging 
the stomach and the blood, and driving through these delicate organs 
(the kidneys) acrid diuretics in the shape of nitre, potash, iodide of 
potash, squills, digitalis, buchu, etc. etc. This had already been clone 
by the three physicians who had abandoned the case in despair. 
Common-sense would teach to the unprofessional even, that the kid- 
neys at least required perfect rest in order to recuperate their forces, 
recover their tone, and that the dormant function of the skin must 
be restored, and made to do its function, which it had so long failed 
of doing, and had been the cause of the enormous accumulation of 
water in the body, limbs, etc. 
This course being decided upon, the next consideration was, what 
agent could be best used to effect the result. 
The dry hot-air or Turkish Bath was the agent relied upon for 
the cure mainly. 
Now, we wish to disabuse the minds of most people of the false 
notions they have of what is really a Turkish bath. Because air, 
heated to a high temperature, was first systematized and used very 254 
CASE THIRD. 
generally in Turkey not only as a curative agent but as a luxury also, 
it came to be known as a Turkish bath, and so the unlearned and 
unthinking class drew the very unreasonable conclusion, and do to 
this day, that in order to have a Turkish bath they must go to 
Turkey, London, New-York, or at my friend's, Dr. Shepard's, on 
Brooklyn Heights, or some other high-sounding name and place to 
obtain it, when the /asf is, every one can have it at his own home 
with comparatively little trouble or expense. So in the case of Mr. 
Burgess. We gave all necessary instructions how a room should be 
be prepared and the air heated to a suitable temperature of 140°, 
150°, or 160°, as his particular condition required, in order to arouse 
the dormant energies of the cutaneous exhalants and unload the 
cellular tissue of its freight of accumulated water and effete matter. 
To further accomplish this end, we sent our assistant with him, 
who put the bath in practical operation, and staid by him until our 
patient and his kind wife saw plainly the desired results that were 
coming of it. 
Some extracts from his own letters will clearly show the progress 
of the case on to a complete cure : 
I 
Dr. Stone : January 26, 1874. 
Dear Sir : I send you three specimens of urine, the respective 
dates of each affixed. I am feeling very well ; I have reduced my- 
self two inches around my body, and my limbs are a great deal 
smaller than when I was at your Institute. I take the bath regularly 
every day. I stay in for one hour each day, and sweat all over now, 
which I did not do at first. We think I have got along finely since 
I cotnmenced the treatment. You will please reply as soon as conve- 
nient. A. L. Burgess. 
Dr. Stone : March 3, 1874. 
Dear Sir : I send you two specimens of urine for your analysis- 
one February 24th, one of 2d instant. I am feeling smart ; I have 
reduced around my body two inches since my last letter, making nine 
(9) inches in all, since I saw you. I am now down to about my natu- 
ral size. I am wearing the pants that I used to wear before I was 
sick. Please send soon and oblige, yours truly, 
A. L. Burgess. 
Marathon, N. Y., March 25, 1874. 
Dr. Stone : 
Dear Sir : Again I send you a specimen of my urine. Can I go 
to work ? I feel able to do so. I am uneasy. I walked further yes- CASE THIRD. 
255 
terday than I have walked for a year, with ease and without injury. 
I am a member of a brass band, and our boys want me to play with 
them again. I feel well enough to do so if it will not injure me. 
Answer soon. Yours truly, A. L. Burgess. 
Here the case was dismissed as cured. And to the credit of 
modern science and the development of new and more rational ideas, 
let the cure stand recorded. A very rapid and progressive cure in- 
deed, in less than three months to do, without medicine, what three 
physicians had failed to do with, in two whole years ! 
We gave no medicines only as we magnetized them, and for the 
purpose of keeping up a magnetic connection with our patient. We 
relied upon vital magnetism alone for the cure, combined with a ju- 
diciously select dietary, forbidding such articles of food as were 
found too hearty for assimilation. Strict attention was given to 
magnetic garments and clothing, magnetic rubbings, percussion, the 
magnetism of sunlight-all calculated to condense the very thin and 
scattered globules of iron in the blood which had become very thin and 
watery. Verily, the science of medicine is progressive, and the time 
will soon come when all diseases will be cured without drugs, and 
scattered by the subtle power of vital magnetism, as the meridian 
sun disperses the fog and sombre clouds which hang around the 
horizon. 
The progressive vital magnetic and hygienic system oe the 
Institution, for diseases of the respiratory organs, in 
striking contrast with the old school practice. Con- 
scientious REASONS FOR ITS ADOPTION. 
What, let us ask, should we treat, if we expect to cure ? Should 
we not treat the disease ? Yes. Where is it ? It is in the lungs. 
Well, then, why put your remedies into the stomach? The stomach 
was designed for food, and to make blood for nourishment and suste- 
nance. The lungs are clogged ; the bronchial tubes and air-cells are 
filled with cheesy, tubercular bodies. What is to be done to remove 
them ? If medicines are valuable at all, should they not be carried 
where the disease is? Well, how will you get medicines into, the 
lungs ? They are breathing organs only ; nothing but air can enter 
with impunity. We answer, " Medicines can be volatilized and ad- 
ministered in the form of vapor, and given by every physician." 
That every rational person can see. Now, we give remedies by inha- 
lation, which are breathed just as naturally, just as easily, into the 
lungs as air ; and at the same time, oxygen and air are breathed. 
But we shall meet with the objection from the stubborn, blind disci- 256 
CONDITIONS OF CURE. 
pies of the old school that inhalation is no new system ; that it was 
tried a long time ago. Well, let us ask, " IIow was it tried?" Very 
rudely : as rudely as medicines administered by the stomach-given 
in the form of steam, and what is the consequence ? Nothing can be 
more debilitating and relaxing than to breathe steam or hot-water 
vapors into the lungs ; for these tubercles, when they are formed in 
the lungs, become fatal only when they soften down into matter, and 
in the form of an abscess. Nothing will hasten on this process of 
softening like hot-water vapor or steam ; hence, this treatment is 
unsuccessful, unscientific, and destructive as a system. To do away 
with these objections and contingencies, our system fulfills every de- 
sirable indication, in accord with physiological laws and the laws of 
life, in that, namely, we give our vapors at the natural temperature 
of the atmosphere, in a cold state ; so, instead of their being debili- 
tating, relaxing, or softening to the tubercles, they arrest the soften- 
ing process, stimulate and arouse the absorbent vessels, causing the 
tubercles to be absorbed-be dispersed. 
In the next place, the composition of the vapors is such that tuber- 
cular matter in its incipient stages of formation on the mucous sur- 
faces of the bronchial tubes will be dissolved by it, and caused to be 
expectorated from the lungs, producing a benign condition for nature 
to heal. 
We do not overlook the nourishment and building up of the 
system ; we do not put nauseating or devitalizing remedies into the 
stomach to deprive him of appetite or ability to eat food. Where 
an appetite or ability to digest food is wanting, we give such reme- 
dies as will provoke an appetite, energize the stomach, and cause food 
to be assimilated into healthy blood, to sustain the patient, and fur- 
nish resources in the blood-in the constitution-to heal the ulcerated 
caverns. 
So successful has been our treatment that we have cured hundreds 
of cases, so far gone when we prescribed for them that we had but 
faint hope of their recovery. 
We consider consumption to be as curable and amenable to a ra- 
tional system as any other common disease. No one need despair, 
for that would only stimulate the disease. The great danger is here : 
The nature of the complaint is such as, for the most part, to excite hope 
so inordinately that procrastination, the thief of time, is indulged 
until the precious season passes by, and the more aggravated symp- 
toms, which are now being developed in the harassing cough and 
hurried breath, night-sweats, and burning hectic fever, admonish him 
to seek relief, but too late. 257 
CONDITIONS OF CURE. 
Because a few such are so allured by hope as to allow the precious 
moment when they could have been cured to pass by-that forms no 
objection to the efficiency of our system of medicated inhalation ; 
for, had they applied at a seasonable moment, the cure would have 
been certain. 
Should there remain any doubts as to the efficiency of our treat- 
ment for the cure of consumption, let them read the certificates ap- 
pended. 
Fig. 77. 
This cut illustrates the instrument for readily introducing into 
the blood, through the medium of the lungs, the air-cells, the medi- 
cated vapors for curing pulmonary maladies ; but thus, too, are nearly 
all our remedies administered, assisting the function of other organs, 
namely, diuretics for the kidneys, vitalizing material for the blood, 
alteratives for the liver, tonics and correctives for the stomach, and 
laxatives for the bowels. For in the developed form and manner of 
magnetic concentrations, it is no longer necessary to sicken and dis- 
turb the stomach with a mass of noxious, sickening drugs. The in- 
tegrity of the stomach is preserved for food and healthy digestion. 
Medicaments are spiritualized and breathed, and a babe can now be 
cured without longer poisoning with drugs. Let the people think and 
progress with the age. TWENTY-FOURTH SECTION. 
CASES OF CURES. 
CASE OF ABRAHAM O'DONNELL. 
MOST ASTOUNDING CURE OF TUBERCULAR AND BRONCHIAL 
CONSUMPTION. 
Troy, New-YoRK, March 17, 1866. 
Y DEAR DOCTOR : It is from a deep sense of 
gratitude that I owe you and suffering humanity 
everywhere, that I now address you. 
Being aware that you are about bringing 
out a new work descriptive of your scientific 
system of treatment for diseases of the lungs, 
respiratory organs, and chronic maladies, I de- 
sire that you would publish, after a lapse of 
eight years, my complete recovery and restora* 
tion to health. 
As you have my cure published in your large book on Consump- 
tion, I need not go into detail otherwise than to state that, in the 
spring of 1856, I became entirely prostrated with a disease of the 
lungs, from too close confinement and application to my business- 
that of a compositor and printer-so much so, that I was entirely 
unable to work, and hardly able to get about. I had not done a day's 
work in five months. 
I made a number of unsuccessful efforts at a cure from several 
medical sources, but all to no purpose ; when at that time you first 
made your appearance in Troy, and I was induced to consult you. 
You directly examined my chest, tested my vital capacity on your 
Pulmometer, and proved so conclusively to my judgment that you 
understood, not only my case, but your profession perfectly, I put 
myself at once under your treatment. Notwithstanding you thought 260 
CASES OF CURES. 
that you could cure me so that I would be able to enjoy health in the 
open air only, during the balance of my life, I got so well by the fall 
of the same year-1856-that I again entered the printing-office, 
where I have continued ever since at hard work, and am also in the 
enjoyment of good health. My vital capacity has been increased in 
the mean time one hundred cubic inches, as proved by your pulmo- 
meter ; and there is not a vestige of disease left in my lungs. 
I desire that you publish this account for the benefit of suffering 
humanity, and permit any one in any part of the world to refer to 
me by letter or personally. Very truly yours, 
Abraham O'Donnell. 
Note.-Mr. O'Donnell is at this time, January, 1875, in good 
health, doing hard work daily at the printing-press, proving the cure 
perfect, which he with all generosity attributes to our treatment. 
FROM W. S. AUMOCK, PRINCIPAL OF THE AMSTERDAM ACADEMY, 
AMSTERDAM, MONTGOMERY CO., N. Y. 
GREAT DERANGEMENT IN THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTIONS. 
Dr. Stone : 
Dear Sir : About a year ago, I took a severe cold one day, and 
awoke the next morning to find myself literally speechless-not 
being able to utter an audible word. Thinking it to be a tempo- 
rary hoarseness, to which I had been occasionally subject from over- 
taxation or protracted use of the voice, I neglected it for some days, 
trusting to the recuperative energies of nature. Aphonia still con- 
tinuing, however, I began the use of domestic remedies recom- 
mended by various friends ; then applied to a regular physican, who 
prescribed gargles, and used the probang with slight relief ; then 
tried a few of the infinitesimal doses of the homeopathist; but all 
would not do ; they did not reach the seat of the disease, which was 
chiefly in the larynx, and apparently extending toward the lungs. 
In the mean time I was obliged to resume my school duties, which, 
of course, were performed chiefly by proxy under my personal super- 
vision, but with great inconvenience both to myself and the school. 
At last, when I began to despair of a cure after repeated trials of 
six or eight weeks, and a change of vocation seemed almost impera- 
tive, I was referred to Dr. Stone, of the Troy Lung and Hygienic 
Institution, as most likely to restore my health and speech. Like a 
drowning man I caught at what, I frankly confess, I then considered 
as a mere straw, and paid him a visit. CASES OF CURES. 
261 
He pronounced it, at once, a serious case of 11 disease of the 
larynx, throat, and bronchia, with complications of derangement of 
the digestive functions f to which I had been for years more or less 
subject; but was confident of effecting a cure by general and local 
treatment. So ready and clear was his diagnosis of the case, and so 
confident was he of success, that I gladly and trustingly placed my- 
self under his care and directions. 
The inhalation acted almost by magic on the vocal organs, and in 
three days I was able to resume my official duties in the school-room, 
conducting all my recitations personally, while the use of the general 
remedies with the dietetic and other sanitary observances prescribed, 
gradually restored all the functions to their normal activity, and in 
less than a month I was in a better condition of health than I had 
been for years before. 
I make this statement as an act of justice to Dr. Stone, and with 
the hope that I may, through him and the Institution he represents, 
be of some benefit to suffering humanity. W. S. Aumock. 
Amsterdam, N. Y., July 10, 1862. 
P. S.-I send you the inclosed statement of my case last year, 
and its cure. If you are suited with it, you are at liberty to use it 
at your discretion. * W. S. A. 
CASE OF MISS AMANDA E. GREEN, NOW MRS. A. S. NICHOLS. 
REMARKABLE CURE OR TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION, ATTENDED WITH 
BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS. 
In November, 1860, Miss Green was confined to her bed, as she 
had been for about three months, attended by an allopathic 
physician, who had abandoned her case as incurable, and given her 
up to die, in the last stages of consumption. It was at that time 
that her brother consulted us by letter, stating her case, and asking 
our opinion as to the probability of cure. 
She inherited consumption on the side of both father and mother, 
her father having died some years previously with it, and her mother, 
at the time she consulted us, was laboring under a disease of the 
lungs and hemorrhage. So the case to us appeared one so aggrava- 
ted in its nature that we gave but faint hopes of cure ; but offered 
encouragement that our treatment would, at any rate, soon soothe 
the distressing cough, assuage the night-sweats, and smooth her 
pathway to the tomb, if it should not succeed in restoring her. 262 
CASES OF CURES. 
In this condition she was placed under my care. I prescribed for 
her the cold, medicated vapors and vitalizing tonics, with a 
thorough system of hygiene. In three weeks we were gratified to 
learn that our patient was able to sit up all day, had obtained a good 
appetite, her cough and night-sweats had abated, and she felt strong 
enough to ride out, asking our opinion. 
Suffice it to say that, in nine weeks from the day that we pre- 
scribed for her, she was able to ride on a cold winter day, take the 
cars, and come seventy miles to consult us in person. She continued 
to gain strength and health until the cure has become complete. 
Since that time, she has been able to do much hard and exposed 
work. We saw her personally during the summer of 1865 ; and to- 
day, March 17th, 1866, have heard directly from her, that she remains 
in sound health. 
This affords another one of the most striking cures of Tubercu- 
lar Consumption performed by our improved system of treatment 
by medicated inhalation, vitalizing tonics, and rational hygiene; 
demonstrating that medicine is a progressive science, capable of 
great and astounding developments which may be continued through 
all coming time, until it arrives at that state of perfection when it 
will meet every physical emergency, and afford a balm for every 
wound. 
The case of Miss Green is reported at great length in our large 
volume on Consumption. 
Note.-Mrs. A. S. Nichols, nee Miss Amanda Green, is now, 
January, 1875, in the enjoyment of almost perfect health ; considers 
herself entirely cured of all the disease that formerly affected the 
lungs, in 1859. Since that period, has and is doing much exposed 
and hard labor even. She too, with all gratitude, has been the means 
of influencing many consumptive invalids to adopt our system of 
treatment. We mention these long-standing cures with emphasis, to 
prove to the world the perfect curability of every form of consump- 
tion, and the perfect fallacy of the old school doctrine. 
CASE OF A. D. KEYES, ESQ., NOW OF FARIBAULT, MINN. 
ASTONISHING CUKE OF TUBERCULAR BRONCHIAL CONSUMPTION. 
Mr. A. D. Keyes, a young man aged twenty-one, residing in 
South-Acworth, N. H., was induced to consult us in the summer of 
1865, by the recommendation of Rev. E. S. Foster, of Claremont, 263 
CASES OF CURES. 
N. H., a clergyman of great intelligence and ability, who had been 
cured, by treatment from our Institution some nine years previously, 
of an obstinate bronchitis, and who, by the way, is constantly bring- 
ing our claims to the notice of suffering invalids, and sending us new 
patients almost every month, such is his confidence in the rational 
and scientific nature of our treatment. 
On making a personal examination of the case of Mr. Keyes, we 
found the top of both lungs seriously affected with tubercular 
deposit; and in the top of the right lung, an ulcer or cavern of con- 
siderable extent was already developed. To this was added exten- 
sive bronchial inflammation. The case, therefore, combined the two 
forms of bronchial and tubercular consumption. 
Mr. Keyes was at once put upon a discriminating course of cold 
medicated vapors, combining the tonic, the balm, and the balsamic 
vapors, with the design of fulfilling all the indications, subduing 
bronchial irritation, causing a free expectoration of the ulcerated 
matter, and stimulating at the same time the ulcerated surfaces of 
the lungs, to put them in a condition for nature to heal. To fulfill 
the last indication,' the electro-stomachic vitalizing tonics were ad- 
ministered to give tone and energy to the digestive organs, and cause 
healthy blood to be made. 
At this time Mr. Keyes was extremely debilitated with night- 
sweats, occasionally with hectic fever and with bad digestion, and 
had expectorated blood at several times. He returned home with a 
full determination to prosecute the treatment to the very letter, and 
live up to our rigid sanitary, hygienic rules which we pointed out to 
him. 
He writes us, under date December 14th, that his cure is complete ; 
that he has had no more bleeding at the lungs ; and that he has 
entirely recovered from his cough, his night-sweats, has good diges- 
tion, gained many pounds in flesh, and is now able to do a hard day's 
work. And further says, had it not been for our treatment he 
probably would have been in his grave some months since; that 
such is his confidence in our system of treatment that he is recom- 
mending it to every invalid who comes in his way. 
Note.-Since his recovery, with a most commendable ambition, 
Mr. Keyes has successfully prosecuted a course of collegiate studies 
at Dartmouth ; has graduated at a law-school; and informs us that 
he is prosecuting his profession with zeal and prosperity in Fari- 
bault, Minn. So much for Dr. Stone's system of cold medicated 
inhalation. 264 
CASES OF CURES. 
CASE OF DAVID H. PIERCE. 
CURE OF AN AGGRAVATED CASE OF PULMONARY CONSUMPTION IN ITS 
ADVANCED STAGE, AT THE HOME OF THE PATIENT, WITHOUT SEE- 
ING HIM, BY FORWARDING THE TREATMENT. 
Limerick, Me., Jan. 5, 1874. 
Dr. Andrew Stone ; 
My Dear Sir : Four years ago, I was very sick with consump- 
tion of the lungs. I had suffered for three years with a bad cough, 
night-sweats, hectic fever, pain in my chest, soreness of the throat, 
and hemorrhage of the lungs; most of the time loss of appetite ; 
was very much emaciated and debilitated; had not done a day's 
work for three years. In the mean time tried seven of the best 
physicians in New-England without any benefit, but constantly 
grew worse. Hearing of your great skill and success in curing one 
of my townsmen, I determined to try your treatment; wrote you, 
and obtained your opinion and terms, and immediately placed myself 
under your care by letter and correspondence. 
Judge of my surprise ; in one week there was a marked change 
in all my symptoms, a decided relief of many of my sufferings. I 
continued the treatment about nine months, 'when I considered my- 
self cured. My progress to health was rapid indeed, and beyond 
the expectations of my friends, altogether beyond the expectation of 
the family physician who had attended me, and far exceeded my own 
expectations. 
And now, after a lapse of three years, I am gratified in being 
able to announce to you my restoration to perfect health. I have 
been able to work every day during this time (of three years) on a 
farm. I seldom ever take a cold. I am convinced that, had it not 
been for your treatment, I should not have been living now. I 
permit you to refer any one to me with pleasure, and publish this 
letter for the encouragement of other sufferers, that they, too, may 
find in you a balm of hope and relief. Truly yours, 
David H. Pierce. 
CASE OF ALMON H. GOVE. 
CURED OF TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION BY INHALING DR. STONE'S 
COLD MEDICATED VAPORS. 
West-Buxton, Me., Jan. 1, 1866. 
Andrew Stone, M.D.: 
My Dear Sir : Three years ago, I was very sick with consump- 
tion and disease of the lungs. I had suffered extremely, for months. CASES OF CURES. 
265 
with a bad cough, night-sweats, hectic fever, great restlessness, pains 
in the chest, soreness of the throat; most of the time loss of appe- 
tite, and was very emaciated and debilitated. I had tried all our 
doctors, both in my own place and towns adjoining, without any 
permanent benefit from their treatment, but it rather aggravated my 
symptoms than otherwise. 
At that time, hearing of your great skill and success in the treat- 
ment of pulmonary affections, I wrote you, obtained your opinion 
and your prices, and put myself under your care and treatment by 
letter or correspondence. Judge of my surprise, in a very few days 
after commencing the use of your inhaling vapors, and tonic and in- 
vigorating remedies, my symptoms began to give way ; the night- 
sweats were soon checked by your medical applications, the hoarse- 
ness and harassing cough became quieted, and balmy sleep, to which 
I had been a stranger for long months, once more returned to refresh 
me and make my pillow inviting. My progress to health was rapid, 
and beyond all expectation to my friends and physicians who had 
attended me, and far beyond my own expectations ; for I had given 
up all hope of ever being cured ; I had not been able to work 
for more than a year. And now doctor, after a lapse of three 
years, I am gratified in being able to announce to you that my cure 
is perfect ; I am divested of every symptom of pulmonary affection, 
and have been able to work, in fact, do a hard day's work, for more 
than two years. 
I am convinced that, had it not been for your treatment, I should 
have been buried a long time ago. Since my recovery, I have recom- 
mended your system of treatment to many of my friends and 
acquaintances-it has been alike successful with them. 
I permit you to refer to me at pleasure, and to make whatever 
use you see fit of this letter for the benefit of suffering humanity. 
Truly yours, Almox II. Gove. 
January, 1875.-It is now nine years since Mr. Gove wrote us to 
publish his cure ; he is still alive and in good health. After having 
purchased and worked on a farm for more than three years, has retired 
to less laborious business in Portland, Maine. He has, with a philan- 
thropy worthy of all praise, recommended many consumptive invalids 
to the claims of our treatment, who in turn also have been cured ; 
and many others who were too far advanced to be cured had their 
stay on earth prolonged, and their sufferings greatly mitigated, and 
their pathway made smoother by the palliating, soothing effects of 
our treatment. 266 
CASES OF CURES. 
We have treated and cured many patients in Maine during the 
last fifteen years, and out of that number never saw but few of them 
personally; sending the treatment to them after a minute investiga- 
tion of the cases, scientifically, as we have elsewhere described. The 
seaboard of parts of Maine, of Massachusetts, and the New-England 
States is peculiarly liable to develop bronchial and pulmonary con- 
sumption, and such will ever be the case unless her population will 
awaken to the momentous necessity of paying a greater attention to 
physical education, and the propagation of a hardier race of off- 
spring in which shall be implanted in the very vital germ itself 
stronger hearts and lungs, as suggested by the spirit of the immortal 
Laennec. 
Hence, the importance to all her valetudinarians and consump- 
tives to have at command the most reliable curative treatment which 
will be furnished from our Institution at all times; but also will be 
accompanied with the scientific literature, to impart the knowledge 
of the primeval organic laws to institute the radical physical reform 
hinted at. 
CASE OF MRS. FRANKLIN SAWYER, OF MILBRIDGE, MAINE. 
NEURALGIA, LUNG, KIDNEY, AND BLADDER DISEASES, WITH COMPLI- 
CATIONS, CURED. 
Doctor Stone : 
My Dear Sir : You will recollect that, early in the spring of 
this year, I corresponded with you in relation to my wife, who had 
been a long time sick, and then was prostrated, confined to the house 
and the bed for much of the time. Her maladies seemed to be nume- 
rous and complicated : suffering at times with extreme neuralgia of 
the loins and kidneys and irritation of the bladder, as well as short- 
ness of breath, cough, and many other painful affections. 
I had employed many physicians, who attended her personally 
almost daily, and without giving her relief. At this stage of her suf- 
fering I was informed of your great skill by some of my neighbors 
whom you had cured of similar affections, and wrote you. When I 
had concluded to adopt your treatment, she was taken so much worse 
that I called in another new physician, who attended her personally 
for seven weeks longer, and all to no purpose. When at this stage 
of her suffering, I again wrote to you and put her under your treat- 
ment-you sending your remedies and directions without seeing her. 
It may be of some satisfaction to you to know that you have cured 
my wife of bad dyspepsia, constipation, painful menstruation, leucor- 
rhcea of eight years' standing, and also relieved her of the intense 267 
CASES OF CURES. 
irritation of the bladder attending the passing of water. She is now 
eight or ten pounds heavier than she was three months ago. All of 
these benefits I credit solely to your treatment. I have much to feel 
grateful (with her) to you for what you have done. 
Franklin Sawyer. 
Milbridge, Me., Sept. 19, 1863. 
P. S.-I have been using your catarrh remedy for one week. 
It suits me exactly, and I am perhaps too confident when I say I think 
I shall be entirely cured in a few weeks. At any rate, I shall be satis- 
fied if I feel so well and remain so clear of my catarrh as I now am. 
It has had a wonderful effect. F. S. 
CASE OF MRS. SARAH E. HODGKINS. 
CONSUMPTION, BRONCHITIS, AND NEURALGIA CURED. 
Dr. Andrew Stone : 
Dear Sir : I was much pleased by receiving a letter from you a 
few days since, inquiring as to the state of my health. I am very 
happy to inform you that I am now quite well: better than I have 
been for some years previous. My cough yielded to the soothing 
influence of the medicated vapors in a few weeks after commencing 
their use. 
Six months ago, I was thought by most of my friends to be in 
incurable consumption. Now I am freed from almost every symptom 
of it. I have an excellent appetite and good digestion. I feel that 
under Heaven I am indebted to you for the good health which I now 
enjoy. Words would but feebly express the gratitude of my heart 
for this. Very respectfully, your friend, Sarah E. Hodgkins. 
Cherryfield, Me., Nov. 29, 1864. 
CASES OF CURES IN NEW-JERSEY. 
CASE OF MISS ANN E. ANGLE. 
Delaware Station, N. J., Feb. 24, 1874. 
Doctor Stone : 
Dear Sir : I received the bottle of inhaling vapor and one of 
catarrh remedy all safe ; find inclosed the amount, which letter will 
be registered. I think it advisable and judicious to keep by me 
these most invaluable remedies of yours, that I may, when I take a 
cold or become again attacked with my bronchial difficulty, arrest it 
at once; for I find no remedies or treatment that will compare with 
yours in affording relief. 268 
CASES OF CURES. 
You will recollect, I presume, that before I applied to you, now 
something over four years, I had been very ill for a length of time 
with a complication of disorders affecting the air-passages, catarrh, 
bronchitis, laryngitis, etc. I had tried treatment from our physicians 
near home, without any benefit, undergoing much suffering all the 
while. At length, hearing of your treatment by hygiene and inhala- 
tion, I decided at once on a trial. After using your medicines for one 
month, there was the most marked relief. I continued the treatment 
for three months, when I found myself so well I was again able to 
assume my usual duties. I am now enjoying good health, for which 
I owe all to your system of treatment. Yours, very respectfully, 
Ann E. Angle. 
CASE OF ISAAC A. LONGCOR. 
DYSPEPTIC CONSUMPTION CURED. 
Andover, Sussex Co., N. J., Aug. 27, 1869. 
Dr. Stone : 
My Dear Sir : It is with feelings of gratitude that I sit down 
to write a few lines to let you know how I am getting along. I am 
following your directions ; I am nearly relieved of all the pains that 
have so long affected my chest, lungs, and other parts of the body. 
My appetite has improved, my food does not now distress my stomach, 
and I have gained six pounds in flesh since I was at your Institution. 
I intend to follow the treatment until I am entirely cured. 
Yours, truly, Isaac A. Longcor. 
CASE OF THOMAS H. CLARKE, ESQ. 
Dr. Stone : Newport, R. I., April, 1872. 
Dear Sir : My gratitude for material help received through your 
ministrations and medicines has led me to recommend many to you 
for treatment; not wholly as a return to you, but that I might bene- 
fit suffering humanity. In every case of those who have taken your 
course of treatment, the testimony is the same-relief and cure. I 
have been thanked over and over again for recommending Dr. Stone. 
Now, I have done no more than my duty to you and my neighbors. 
You helped me in 1860 ; you also helped me again in 1870. For both 
I am truly grateful, and I would show my gratitude not only to you 
but to others ; to that end I inclose names of men I know, now seek- 
ing health in Florida, that you may forward to them your book, and 
whom I believe you might cure, if they will only put themselves 
under your care. Yours, gratefully, Thomas H. Clarke. • CASES OF CURES. 
269 
Clarksville, Tenn., Aug. 30, 1868. 
Dr. Andrew Stone : 
Dear Sir : Having experienced so much satisfaction with your 
treatment of myself, I have recommended you to a lady friend. Will 
it be necessary for her to visit you in person, or can you treat her by 
correspondence? Kespectfully yours, 
M. L. Killebrew. 
PROFESSIONAL TESTIMONIALS. 
It is very cheering to us to receive testimonials from our progres- 
sive brethren, to whom we tender our thanks ; we will ever take them 
by the hand in the cause of that humane science which we are proud 
to be engaged in, and which above all others lies nearest our heart. 
Franklin, Tenn., Feb. 12, 1872. 
Dr. Andrew Stone, Troy, New-York: 
My Dear Sir : I take the liberty of writing to you upon a sub- 
ject in which I feel deeply interested ; that is the reformation which 
your indefatigable industry and perseverance are producing in the 
practice of medicine, for which every friend of humanity should feel 
grateful to you. 
Like yourself, I was educated in the allopathic school of medi- 
cine. But after an experience in active practice of ten years, I was 
convinced of the fact that, as a system of physic, it was not only 
multiplying diseases, but increasing their fatality. Therefore, believ- 
ing that no amount of conscientiousness could possibly excuse the 
evil I might commit in adhering to an erroneous system, I considered 
excommunication preferable to the principles and sophistries so elo- 
quently harangued by the devoted votaries of inconclusive theories. 
For a mere blind conformity to what we may have been taught, can 
never justify a credulous trilling with human life. But it devolves 
on every medical practitioner to endeavor by honest investigation to 
discover the truth, and when found, by an inflexible conscientious- 
ness follow its teachings. 
Since I came to this conclusion, I have sought instructions of 
institutions of a progressive character. I have perused volume after 
volume ; still there appeared to be a void which was never filled up 
in my researches so well as when I read, a few weeks ago, your book 
on the system of " Vitalizing Treatment." 
It appears to me that you have rightly opened the medical door, 
and I wish you every success. Most respectfully yours for truth and 
progress, Dr. M. McFall. 270 
CASES OF CURES. 
CASE OF REV. JOHN H. BROCK. 
AN AGGRAVATED CASE OF BRONCHITIS AND LARYNGITIS COMPLICATED 
WITH LIVER COMPLAINT AND DERANGEMENT OF THE NUTRITIVE 
FUNCTIONS. 
Dr. Andrew Stone : 
My Dear Sir : It is with no feelings of reluctance, but on the 
contrary with a cheerful heart, for the sake of sick and suffering 
humanity, that I relate to you the following facts. Last June, I was 
attacked with chills and fever, which very much reduced my system. 
After suffering from the disease for a few days, I commenced raising 
blood from the throat and lungs. I was, of course, entirely unable 
to preach. I had, in addition to the above, a very torpid or inactive 
liver and constipated bowels, which made my case still more compli- 
cated. Naturally skeptical, I hesitated for a time, after being intro- 
duced by letter, through a clerical friend, to Dr. Stone, Physi- 
cian to the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute, about trying your 
treatment. Yet I commenced inhaling your cold medicated vapors. 
I followed your directions of hygiene carefully. In one month, I 
had greatly improved. I found my strength returning, and as that 
came back, the disease subsided. 
I continued on, however, and in less than six months preached my 
first sermon without feeling any the worse for so doing. 
I am now preaching once every Sabbath. My liver is much better, 
and my friends say that I have not looked so well for years. In fact, 
my weight is more than it has been for years. If I may be allowed 
to express an opinion of your system of medical treatment, I should 
say that it is in every way harmless to the constitution, meeting what 
seems to be the demand of nature, and also in accordance with com- 
mon-sense. Hence it is scientific and progressive in its nature, and 
the effects upon the constitution in harmony with the laws of hygiene. 
Hoping that this brief letter will prove beneficial in bringing you 
into greater confidence with strangers, and with all who may read it, 
and thus make you the means of relieving the suffering. 
John R. Brock, 
Pastor of the R. P. D. Church, 
Spring Valley, Rockland Co., N. Y. 
Spring Valley, March 25, 1867. TWENTY-FIFTH SECTION. 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS OF THE PHYSICAL AND 
ORGANIC LAWS, IN RELATION TO HEALTH, AND 
THE RELATION AND SUBORDINATION OF ALL 
DISEASES TO AFFECTIONAL CONDITIONS. 
The secret of life-A motor-Spiritual ether-Continual change necessary to 
form life-The lily-Physical basis of life the same in vegetables, ani- 
mals, and men-Material elements demanded-Man more attentive to 
. the needs of the lower animals than his own-The mother's-mark 
not to be disregarded-The wail of feebleness teaches a fearful les- 
son-Who shall roll away the stone?-Nature's grand protest-Bane- 
ful effects of drastic medicines-Awful sacrifice of life by bloodlet- 
ting-Eclecticism a great advance-The healer of the future-The medi- 
cal savants in spirit-life are not forgetful of the needs in their chosen 
profession-The mother brings her babe for restoration-The exercise 
of the believing will necessary-Hunger signifies cause-Supply the 
want-Fling to the winds all compulsory practice. 
HE Secret of Life," which is proving to be a 
problem too intricate for your profoundest men of 
science, may be best made approximately clear by 
this illustration : Your atmosphere is composed of 
oxygen and nitrogen. Wherever it is found in the 
minutest or largest expansion, there are the infinite- 
simal particles of the two elements. Thus the ether 
in which the conscious existences of the higher life 
abide is composed of two properties best compre- 
hended by you as positive and negative. Infinitely 
minute yet perfect atomic globules, each enshrining 
a motor, which can be understood through your uses of the words at- 
traction, affection, desire, although neither term gives full scope to 
our meaning, and only the essential significance of the three, wherein 
they are most nearly synonymous, approximates thereto. 272 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
As each form of your life absorbs of the oxygen or nitrogen ac- 
cording to its needs or desires (again synonymous), so is drawn from 
the spiritual ether the positive or negative atom, with its ever-active 
motor, continually reaching after the element from which it is for 
the time abstracted. And this eternal attraction, affection, desire, 
produces the never-ceasing action which is life. 
A perfect equilibrium of these forces is inertia. A continuous 
changing and interchanging, attracting and eliminating, produces the 
infinite variety of manifestation with which the infinite universe 
teems. 
How divinely the pure white lily gathers unto itself, by virtue of 
this motor, from the dark crude soil, the sullen storm, air, light, and 
heat, atom by atom that which perfects it in its fragrant loveliness ! 
Place it where this native desire can not reach its fitting pab- 
ulum, and it fades, withers, is disintegrated, as the particles lose their 
positive power, and are drawn to other unmet particles to be absorbed 
by them, and, entering new combinations, to eliminate new forms of 
life adapted to the existing conditions by the same self-adjusting 
principle. 
As the physical basis of life is the same in vegetables, animals, 
and men, so the indwelling motor that forces such varied forms from 
the protoplasmic cell floats equally from the great ocean of spirit for 
all, and the name we shall confer upon it, as condensed from affec- 
tion, attraction, desire, is demand. 
Contrast the two fields of the skillful and the unskilled husband- 
man, the luxuriant, luscious growth of vegetables, fruit or cereal, 
on the one hand, with the scanty, shriveled product of the other ! 
And through what principle is the superiority gained? Simply by 
placing within the compass of this out-reaching attraction a due pro- 
portion of each element that responds to its demands ; so much of 
heat, of light, of liquid phosphorus, lime, etc. etc. And he who fully 
learns to supply precisely the required properties produces, or rather 
aids, the perfect growth. Thus equally in the animal kingdom, the 
added functions and freer scope only causing the demands to be 
more extended and imperative. Thus far the consciousness of man 
has been partially instructed by all-powerful cause and effect. 
But the next step taken, in the sublime height gained wherein 
that consciousness should reign supreme, is the sphere of the human, 
and behold its vision is obscured by the varied hues of the stained 
glass of tradition, superstition, fear, and ignorance. Attraction, af- 
fection, desire are doubted, enslaved, outraged. Bind the branches 
of the tree, and they are dwarfed or deformed. Deprive it of sun- METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
273 
shine, and it sicklies ; of rain, and it withers away. Feed it with all 
requisites, and its magnificent, wide-spread boughs are red and golden 
with its perfect fruitage. 
Do you listen in vain for the song of the bird, or wonder at its 
drooping plumage, how quickly you seek to know its native habits, 
its instinctive desires, and how eagerly strive to surround it with 
that which is most gratifying ! 
But alas for the higher organization, the human ! " It is totally 
depraved," says the theologian. " Hence when it asks for the breast, 
give it physic," says the M.D., and no pleadings of hunger (demand) 
or moanings of protest save it from the outrages upon its native af- 
fections which commence before it beholds the light. " Give me joy- 
ous welcome !" cries the weakened protoplasm when penetrated by 
the positive life-atom with its enshrined motor. And the womb that 
has received it responds with angry tears of dislike. And as each 
attracting atom gathers from its surrounding material that which is 
to constitute its growth and consciousness, instead of being built up 
with thanksgiving, gladness, pride, power, anticipation, and aspira- 
tion, it is compelled, in its insatiate hunger, to feed upon fear, dis- 
gust, repining, and regret, and too often overwhelmed with murderous 
hatred. 
Less kind and philosophic to the highest form of earth-life than 
to bird, or beast, or vegetation, the demands of the new-born child- 
life are ruthlessly disregarded. 
"Give me freedom!" is its second demand ; "freedom to form 
each organ of a human body in symmetrical proportion." And the 
corsets are drawn tightly, the weight of drapery increased, and the 
very beatings of the heart of the procreator are tutored to ignore its 
presence. " Give me abundantly of pure nerve-fluid, the psychic force 
that allies the finite to the infinite, that I may so infill that human 
form that I may be a power, a benefaction, and a joy upon the 
earth !" it cries again unto its keepers. And lo ! utterly regardless 
of eternal interests at stake, the supplying fountains are befouled, 
scattered, exhausted in sensuous excitements, in material gratification. 
" Give me the calm repose of a contented exaltation, that my la- 
boratory may be a heaven and its creations divine !" once more it 
calls to its surroundings. But its cares of this world, and " the de- 
ceitfulness of riches," and tyranny of custom, and slavery of habit, 
drown all responses to its far-echoing petition in a Babel-like confu- 
sion. 
The eloquence of the disfiguring mark, representing some unsat- 
isfied craving, has been only partially comprehended, leading simply 274 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
to a carefulness not to disregard wants of diet or of drink ; but not 
accepted as an index to the cause of all mental, moral, and physical 
defects. 
Hence the self-formative spirit ushers its new creation upon the 
earth-life stage of action dwarfed and unbalanced, every atom of its 
being plaintive with protest against the grand defrauding ; when it 
might have been a perfect, artistic, human-divine, worthy to be called 
the son of God as well as the son of man. 
Fig. 78.-The posterior portions of the lungs, and below, 
the broad muscle that separates the chest from the abdo- 
men, conveying the danger of compressing and restraining 
these organs, as is almost universally practiced. 
The young child having made its debut through agonizing com- 
pulsion rather than instinctive energy, the quick, eager, pleasurable 
pantings after the lacteal fluid, of satisfactory, healthful conditions, 
degenerate to the suffering wail of feebleness and starvation. "It is 
sick," says the careful nurse, and regardless of its native desires or 
protests, its stomach is forced to receive that which still further de- 
pletes its organization by yet another compulsatory, unnatural action ; 
the organs intended to simplify and gently relieve the system of such METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
275 
material as had yielded up all needed properties being forced to drain 
the whole body of vitalizing elements by repeated purgation. 
The lungs, struggling anxiously for the oxygen that is too often 
measurably excluded with the sunlight from their function ; the 
muscles, feebly striving to assert and develop their powers ; the 
blood, flowing with its freighted vessels of aliment through every 
channel of the body, these are compressed, restrained, impeded by the 
unwise swaddling, dictated by the caprice of any passing fashion. 
Alas for the motor, the spirit, attraction, affection, desire, demand, 
imprisoned in each deprived atom of the beseeching being ! Alas 
for the real needs so utterly unheeded ! What shall respond to the 
far-penetrating cry ? Who shall " roll away the stone from the sepul- 
chre" of wisdom ? 
Every organ in common with the lungs, heart, and brain, has 
been constrained from its legitimate action, and thus is laid a broad 
foundation for the physical, mental, and moral defects denominated 
disease. 
And yet you are at a loss to know why your race is more liable to 
sickness and premature death than the animals that do your bidding 
-why care and culture are less sure to perfect your children than 
they are to produce satisfactory results with the fruit-tree and the 
flower ! Let us solve you the problem. 
To a normally-generated, rightfully-balanced organization, with 
an unfailing supply for all its instinctive and intuitive demands, 
desire is an impossibility. But by the actors upon earth's stage to- 
day, perfectly normal conditions are unobtainable, and it is our pur- 
pose to treat of human interests from the stand-point of the present. 
Of the inhabitants of my once beloved home, your beautiful 
planet, from extreme age to earliest infancy, every one is even now 
experiencing more or less of suffering and disease. And its surface is 
thickly dotted with the manipulations of medicine, morality, and 
theology, that are intrusted to the corrective measures against these 
growing evils, by its credulous inhabitants. " Break the will, and 
change the heart, and crucify the affections," exhorts the preacher. 
" Fine, imprison, and hang !" commands the judge. " Bleed, vomit, 
purge, leech, sweat, and blister !" counsels the physician ; and " Rob- 
bery, robbery, robbery!" sighs depleted nature at each added out 
rage. Again we assert that disease is a deficiency, and not an excess, 
although its manifestations may be through some excessive action or 
accumulation. And the true philosophy of all cure is to supply the 
lacking elements and restore the original powers ; any forced, un- 
natural action invariably being followed by an equally abnormal reac- 276 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
tion which renders the " last state" of the victim " worse than the 
first!" Almost all cases of chronic diseases and life-long invalids are 
the result of drastic medicines, and not of original derangements ; and 
could calomel become a conscious personality, it would be entitled to 
the very throne of the Inferno, for its fiendish subjugation of the 
phys ical interests of the human family. (See cut of salivated 
patient, page 12.) 
The law upon which the allopathic mode of practice is founded is 
this : The self-formative, self-protective, self-adjusting power, which 
is the indwelling spirit, rouses with increased energy to repel all 
foreign destructive agents introduced into the system. Hence, if 
from some defect there is an accumulation of the waste substance 
which should be expelled through the appropriate channels ; if the 
subject be over-bilious, or dropsical, or phlegmatic, the self-adjusting 
force produces fever to burn out 
the obnoxious particles. Then if 
there be & poison introduced into 
the stomach, the threatened dan- 
ger is so much greater that the 
whole citadel is aroused, and the 
lesser evil, swallowed up of the 
greater, is combated with increas- 
ed vigor, until both enemies are 
expelled, if sufficient vitality re- 
mains : but with a fearful expen- 
diture of the native supplies of 
life-sustaining forces I The pool* 
victim of a mistaken materia me- 
dica lies stranded, dismantled, helpless, until, little by little, the 
drained atoms can draw from magnetic spheres, and the vivifying 
atmosphere, and the eagerly craved diet, each exhausted property, 
and nature becomes herself again. 
It is as though you were slowly and wearily toiling upward 
with a burden too heavy for your strength, when suddenly it is 
doubled upon your shoulders, with the imperative necessity of reach- 
ing a certain point in the distance. With a mighty compulsatory 
effort of the will, you rush on with accelerated speed, but only the 
more quickly to fall exhausted by the wayside. 
Or, as in the case of a civil war, the unalarmed government moves 
slowly and cautiously, confidently aware of its capability to subdue 
the traitors without harm or exhaustion to itself; but if a foreign 
power rush in to the aid of the authorities, every resource is violent- 
Fig. 79.-The Old Man borne down 
with Allopathic Drugs. METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
277 
ly taxed to meet the new expenditure, without regard to suffering 
and devastation, until the enemy is effectually conquered. But the 
ravages of the so-called curative far surpass the injurious effects of 
the native disease. 
Gradually the light of the true principle is dawning upon the 
schools. The champion agent of the false idea of heaping robbery 
upon robbery, the lancet, has fallen into deserved disrepute. And even 
the fact that bleeding was once an approved method of destroying 
life under the pretense of preserving it, has nearly passed from the 
memory of the oldest inhabitant. 
But while it was in vogue, woe to any disciple of reform who 
zealously proved to the enfeebled victims that to deprive their physi- 
cal body of its most important, life-sustaining supply was to destroy 
life, and not to save it. Even yet the sanguinary scenes of profes- 
sional bloodletting fling a shadow upon the soul-life of its advocates 
and practitioners, filling them with increasing earnestness in their 
desire to introduce an improved practice based upojj logical 
premises. 
Bloodletting was only a more palpable robbery than the various 
remedial practices still extant ; and as increasing intelligence held it 
up to contempt, so continually are advance steps being taken-a 
blind reaching after the true philosophy. 
Hahnemann made a great advance when teaching his followers to 
rely upon the secondary or reactionary effects of drugs reduced to 
infinitesimal doses, for its benefits desired, in the stead of the first 
violent result of huge quantities, invariably followed by conditions 
far worse than the original disease. 
The reaction being salutary, no greater harm is done than aggra- 
vating by a very little symptoms already existing. And in many 
cases the true idea is touched, though not comprehended, as the 
symptoms in each individual case are only indications of nature's 
mode of cure ; to increase them in complete harmony with nature's 
plan is to aid nature in effort at self-adjustment. 
The difficulty lies in making sure that poisons and deleterious 
substances are so fully understood that all their consequences are 
certain to be in harmony with nature's self-instituted action. As a 
corrective of allopathic misapprehension and depletion, and by sub- 
stituting a mode of practice relying upon the secondary instead of 
the primary effect of drugs, and minute rather than heroic quanti- 
ties, homeopathy has done immeasurable good ; but it has utterly 
failed of announcing hygienic law-of becoming an intelligent 
interpreter of nature. 278 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
Eclecticism is the result of still further insight, an attempt to 
aid nature by supplying needed elements ; unlike the schools before 
mentioned, successful just in proportion to individual comprehension, 
and susceptible of continual modification and improvement ; not 
enslaved by arbitrary formulas of the past. But it is yet superficial 
in its scope ; dealing with material atoms rather than spiritual forces, 
with effects rather than causes ; partially understanding and reaching 
after the true idea, but not fully en rapport. Still further toward 
the light the electrician presents his claims as a medical reformer, 
Fig. 80.-The Mother offering her Child to the Healer, 
with vast advantage to the world. But, again, while wisely calling 
in one of life's vitalizing forces to remove obstructions and restore 
an equalized circulating action throughout the system, while striving 
to restore the equilibrium which is health, the practitioner falls short 
of the ultimatum in so far as he deals with unconscious material 
agents, to overcome physical defects, regardless of mental discontent 
and spiritual moods. 
The healer of the future, the apostle of the new school of restora- 
tion, catches intuitively the cry of the unmet demand of the patient, 
and by s'o much as he is a developed medium for higher intelligent 
powers, is enabled to comprehend and supply it. For the medical sa- 
vants of the past are neither idle nor forgetful of their chosen profession, METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
279 
and, pursuing their researches in the realm of causes, are acquiring 
the knowledge and the power to impart through the organism of the 
psychic just the required elements, whether spiritual, mental, or 
physical. He stands by the wayside, like the Nazarene of old, and, 
sustained by the influx from the higher life, " virtue goes out of 
him" down into springs of human existence, responsive to the im- 
prisoned motor in each famished atom whose complaining call for 
proper aliment is disease. 
An overburdened mother places her puling child in his arms. 
Poor child ! who has ever given a thought to the struggles of its 
soul-life for recognition and sustenance ? or has realized the least 
necessity for regarding its intuitive desires ? 
Fig. 81.-The Healer restoring the Paralyzed, the Gouty and 
Rheumatic. 
He neither commands it to thrust out its tongue, nor counts the 
pulsations of its wrist ; but folding it to his bosom, from his 
magnetic fullness he fills it with joyous strength and hope and love, 
teaches how to understand its varied wants, and judiciously supply 
them ; and sends it forth with every organ quickened to perform its 
function, enabled to gather into itself a vigorous humanhood. 
A young man wallows to his feet from the very slum of dissipa- 
tion. So abjectly sin-sick, and sick of sin, that he can not choose 
but be touched with compassion, as he pleads for help to put on 
again the garments of an honored manhood. The controlling power 
casts out the debauching demons, restores ambition, faith, and self- 
respect, inter-permeates the entire being with high resolves, eluci- 
dates the effects of baneful habit, the consequences of disregarded 
law-and degradation is but the absence of positive good, as dark- 
ness is only the absence of light ; by infusing the spiritual proper- 
ties of all positive good he is " every whit whole." 280 
METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
With beating pulse, and throbbing temples, and burning surface, 
a poor sufferer from pitiless fever next approaches the apostle of 
restoration. Again the magnetic hand is stretched forth, a medica- 
ed electricity passes from " the crown of the head to the sole of the 
foot," aiding the natural forces, first, to open the pores ; secondly, 
to eject the secretions ; thirdly, to equalize the circulation ; fourthly, 
to repose in a refreshing sleep ; and fifthly, to '•'■'believe and be saved." 
For, as the exercise of the believing will is necessary to call into 
action the appropriate organs to accomplish any desired purpose, so 
is the exercise of the believing will equally a requisite to the recep- 
tion of the spiritual elements that shall render those servants of the 
spirit sound and energetic in their action. Thus believing, the dim 
of vision, the dull of hearing, the obtuse of touch or taste or scent, 
the lame, the halt, the palsied, are inter-permeated with the supplying 
ethereal fluid, quickening, cleansing, impelling and expelling, and 
more than all feeding, through the psychic vicegerent of the angel- 
world, all the exhausted forces. 
The healer of the future will be prepared for his specific labor 
by a birthright of generous sympathy, of affectionate impressibility, 
of magnetic purity and power and spiritual consecration. 
Already the voices " crying in the wilderness" are heard all over 
your planet ; already the glow and sparkle of health and happiness 
is lifting up the features long pallid with hopeless suffering, induced 
by an unenlightened materia medica. 
Already are the vivifying rays of the sun, the exhilarating forces 
of a varied atmosphere, the purifying power of ocean, spring, and 
shower, the constructive capability of a well-ordered diet, and the 
proper equalizing of the clothing and warmth of the body, becom- 
ing topics of discussion, interest, and faith to the superseding of an 
ignorant swallowing of drugs. 
Already is the fact dawning upon the consciousness of the pro- 
gressive that the suffering can obtain instantaneous relief, the 
exhausted immediate rest, and the despondent sudden hope, faith, 
and joy by sympathetic association, or even entering the sphere of 
those whose spiritual development and physical organization abound 
with "virtue" that went out from the Jesus of Nazareth. 
Already very many have been released from the apparent clutches 
of death, raised to hygienic enjoyment never before experienced, by 
the touch of the healer and the control of the disembodied ; and 
this beneficent provision of the infinite is too needfully desirable to 
be disregarded : thus the ratio of approach unto the true idea will 
be as the ratio of the accelerated speed of falling bodies, by the law 
of gravitation. Therefore, ye who first have clambered upward into METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS. 
281 
the rays be not disheartened, though the multitude hear not now 
your voice. More persuasive voices than yours will soon reach them 
through intuition and experience. 
" Hunger will break through a stone wall," asserts the ancient 
adage, and disease is the breach in the wall which it is useless to 
repair until the assailant is opposed. 
Food for the bone, food for the muscle, food for the blood, food 
for the brain, food for the mind, etc. etc., until all that constitutes a 
perfect human being is abundantly supplied, is the continual demand 
or hunger that may not be disregarded with impunity. 
Feed the child with that which does not properly build up his 
whole being, and if he gorge himself to his own hurt, it is the un- 
appeased hunger that is the cause ; the excess is but the effect. If 
the quality is adapted to the need, the quantity craved will never 
exceed it. But the longer and the more arbitrarily the required 
property is withheld, the more clamorous is the want, the more 
desperate the effort to meet it, and therefore the more dangerous the 
excess. And what is true of the child is equally true of the adult, 
while each dearth and excess has continually widened and deepened 
the " breach" in the wall, and rendered the assailant more formidable. 
Every additional surfeit having caused an exhaustion of vital 
forces that lessened the control of the will, and increased the vehe- 
mence of the craving by producing conditions requiring still larger 
supplies of health-restoring material. 
And however unfortunately balanced the brain may be, the same 
law holds true. Its demands are legitimate to its formation. 
The ravenous beast is no longei' ravenous, but tame and passive 
when thoroughly satiated. And would you teach the lower to do 
the bidding of the higher, it must be by approaching and controlling 
it when in a passive state. 
Therefore, we would say to the theologians, " Break' not the will, 
but enlighten and crown it I" And to the judiciary, " Remove 
temptation by supplying needs, and substitute early culturing kind- 
ness for later punishment." And to the physician, " Supply or 
instruct your patient to gather all that flesh, and blood, and bone, 
and muscle, and nerve, and brain, and soul .require, and fling to the 
winds all depleting, compulsatory practice." 
Thus shall the mental, moral, and physical deficiencies gradually 
be restored, and resulting disease grow less as affection, attraction, 
desire, demand are indicated and respected, until " the kingdoms of 
this world," mineral, vegetable, animal, and ethereal, are become the 
kingdoms of the children of men. 
John Abernethy. TWENTY-SIXTH SECTION. 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE BY THE "TRUE 
IDEA" HEALER. 
Power of habit over nature-My moderate glass does not hurt me-Tobacco does 
not hurt me-Opium does not hurt me-Strong tea and coffee do not hurt 
me-Tight lacing does not hurt me-Procreative powers impaired-Nature 
pays no interest except on accumulated capital-The exercise of a part 
strengthens a part-The dyspeptic lady-The bowed-down old man-Bad 
liver-Pills and physic thrown to the dogs-Magnetism and magnetic sleep 
substituted-Hereditary scrofula-Allegory of temptation-Sad cause for 
deficiency of nerve-force-A mighty resolve to be clean-A grand ambition 
to make the body a fit temple for the immortal spirit-No drug can reach, 
no priest console-The queenly monarch, Health, only waiting to dethrone 
Habit-I have not long to live-You must live forever-The engine reversed 
-A grand resolve-Nature a most beneficent mother. 
N a preceding dissertation we explained that disease is 
a defective condition of the organs, fluids, or forces of 
the being ; and that its symptomatic manifestations, 
as pain, fever, lethargy, etc., are the self-adjusting 
struggles of nature-an index to the deficiency ; that 
the " True Idea" of healing is restoration, and a 
supplying of those properties the absence of which 
is the cause of the derangement ; that the "Healer 
of the Future" is a rightfully organized psychic, so 
susceptible to the influence of the higher intelligen- 
ces, the disembodied human beings, that they can 
impart just in the needed proportion, through his 
agency, the spiritual properties of all substances, and the vital forces 
of all life, to those who believe in and accept his ministrations. 
While that condition is but partially attained, the healer must neces- 
sarily rely upon the co-operation of the patient, in seeking for himself 284 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
the material to supply any organ or force, whose normal measure is 
not full. 
That he may do that effectually, he must be able to analyze and 
suitably adapt the diet and drink, the atmosphere and magnetism, of 
his patient to his needful conditions. 
If the derangement is recent and its symptoms acute, nature is 
quick and energetic in her recuperative efforts-the required changes 
plainly indicated, and the desired results easily produced. But if 
the deficiency be transmitted and the disease hereditary, the very 
self-adjusting property of nature becomes itself an ally, and an 
abnormal " second nature" is induced, that is dangerously quiescent ; 
as the most alarming form of disease is that wherein it gains insidi- 
ously upon its unconscious victim, and makes no demonstrative sign. 
An illustration of this latter proposition is found in the pernicious 
habits of using stimulants or narcotics. " My moderate glass does 
not hurt me !" exclaims the middle-aged drinker. " I have taken it 
every day for thirty years, and am none the worse for it." And yet 
for twenty-five years he has been kindling in his whole being that 
which slowly and surely has been burning out his native constitu- 
tional powers, until they have no strength to protest against the mis- 
take ; and without warning he falls at last, overcome of some attack 
at which nature would have laughed if left in possession of her 
faculties. 
"Tobacco does not hurt me! I have used it from boyhood !" 
insists the inveterate smoker and chewer ; and yet an invidious enemy 
has foully subjugated the entire citadel of his person, and all its 
operating servants are abject slaves, not to their original gracious 
monarch, Nature, but to a wretched traitor, whose every emanation 
is a disgust to the truly pure. 
"Opium-eating does not hurt me !" contends the doomed devotee 
of this vice. " It is meat, and drink, and rest, and satisfaction." 
And even while exclaiming, destruction of mind and body is in rapid 
progress. 
"Strong tea and coffee do not hurt me ; they sustain me through 
miracles of effort that I could not possibly endure without their aid." 
And even while the speaker speaks, the throbbing brain and trembling 
nerves and sleepless pain, are revealing the " trail of the serpent," all 
the way of the life-line. 
" Tight lacing does not hurt me!" is another weak assertion ; 
while a growing imbecility, both of body and of mind, proves itself 
most fully by the fact that it is not realized. 
All these are examples of nature overcome, and the substitution HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
285 
of a vitiated second nature whose cravings should never be mistaken 
for the healthful affections of a normal development. Resulting from 
such pernicious habits, and the impaired procreative conditions occa- 
sioned by them, j,s hereditary disease. 
The grand difficulty in removing, or rather repairing, it consists 
in the fact that nature is in a degree overcome, and fails to cry aloud 
for the natural remedies. Such being the case, the instinctive and 
intuitive demands of a well-balanced, healthful organization must 
guide to the gradual supplying of the deficiencies and elimination of 
the superinduced second nature. 
"Consumption is hereditary in our family!" sadly thinks the 
anxious mother as she carefully 
guards the life of the precious 
first-born, fearful of the summer's 
heat and the winter's cold. Bear- 
ing his burdens, she unwisely 
pampers an indolent effeminacy, 
until, breathing in the atmosphere 
of foreboding solicitude, he is in- 
deed overcome, as nature pays no 
interest except upon accumulated 
capital. 
"He came of a consumptive 
family !" infers the " True Idea" 
healer, as he observes the narrow 
chest, and pallid lip, and lingering 
pace; and he places him among the 
cheerful, the active, the strong, 
and encourages him to imitate their robust appetites and habits, 
teaches him to expand and exercise each enfeebled organ, and feeds 
him with all that can build up blood, and nerve, and muscle ; and 
above all, stimulates faith, hope, and courage: and the restoration is 
a certainty. It is the exercise of a part that strengthens the part, 
always supplying all needed properties to sustain every effort. You 
recognize this principle in your care for your animals, adapting the 
contents of the crib with observant wisdom to the bearing of burdens, 
the flying of races, or the recuperative rest, ever conscious that per- 
severing use is a requisite of increasing power. 
Here is a young lady constitutionally dyspeptic. The drooping 
" second nature" inclines her to shrink from the open air, and cold 
water, hearty diet, and active exercise. She compresses various parts 
of her body, impeding circulation, loads some parts with clothing, and 
Fig. 82.-Dyspeptic Young Lady. 286 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
leaves others thinly protected ; sits in enervating gases of a furnace- 
heated " register;" burns out all healthful sentiment by the constant, 
sickly excitement of sensational fiction ; and grieves that hereditary 
disease is incurable. Our healer bids her take long, useful walks that 
shall exhilarate the higher faculties of the mind as well as the powers 
of the body; to confine herself to the plainest and most nutritious 
articles of diet, varying and increasing in strict accordance with the 
healthful appetite wakened by profitable fatigue ; but most strictly 
to refrain from urging, tempting, or stimulating it when indifferent, 
or capricious, or trespassing upon the stomach's needful, well-ordered 
rest. 
Yonder lies a prematurely old man-an invalid of more than a 
score of years, haggard and discouraged with intense suffering! 
"Hereditarily, and therefore in- 
curably so"-he confidently tells 
you ; and the healer interrogates 
him as to his practiced methods of 
attempted recovery. " My liver is 
bad, so bad that I am compelled 
to take calomel frequently. My 
kidneys do not properly perform 
their, functions, and I make con- 
stant use of digitalis. I am so 
weak that I am compelled to use 
stimulants freely ; so nervous that 
the most powerful anodynes can 
scarcely give me rest." With the 
might of a generous sympathy and 
overshadowing spirit-power, he 
seizes him by both attenuated 
hands to pull him from the hill of 
wretched habits into which he has fallen. "Are you strong?" he 
asks, " brave, and strong, and persevering ? Can you endure a tithe 
of what you have suffered in the descent, for the sake of regaining 
what you have lost ?" Then he casts into the fire-less fierce than 
those they have kindled-the instruments of torture and dissolution 
that have flattered him with false hopes ; of which each had begotten 
the necessity for the others-the purgative for the stimulant, the sti- 
mulant for the nervine, the nervine for the diuretic, and they again 
for the favorite mineral of the profession, in a continued rotation, 
ending only in entire destruction of all nature's provisions for sus- 
taining the operations of human life. The treacherous poisons con- 
Fig. 83.-The Prematurely Old Man. 
"My Liver is Bad." HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
287 
sumed, the process of reconstruction commences. Oh ! how slowly 
and painfully she gathers up the broken threads, rearranges warp and 
woof, adjusts her loom, and plies again the shuttle of human life. 
With persistent lovingness the healer passes his magnetic fingers 
soothingly down the nerve-centres of the vertebra, to restore from 
his own nerve-forces the loss occasioned by the use of stupefying 
drugs the reaction of which redoubled the uneasiness. Oh ! oh ! how 
long and patiently he labors; for the sufferings through the artificial 
craving are pitiless indeed. But at length magnetic sleep, most 
blessed physician, softly but firmly holds the pulses of the patient. 
Not the locking-up of the external faculties, while intensified thought 
in troubled labor struggles with the grotesque or the terrible, until 
the later weariness continually ex- 
ceeds the first; but calm, sweet for- 
getfulness, which refreshes body, 
soul, and spirit. 
Magnetic sleep! that brings the 
whole being en rapport with the 
angel-world, and feeds it from the 
exhaustless forces of infinite spirit! 
Then the slow cleansing and 
renewing, by sunshine, air, water ; 
the rejuvenating by fresh inspira- 
tions and aspirations; arid the 
mighty awakening of a righteous 
will. How wearisome and labori- 
ous are the processes by which the 
broken bone is joined together in 
nature's wonderful laboratory, each atom joined to its appropriate 
atom, and all fully restored to original uses ! So wearisome and 
laborious are the processes by which each of these defective organs 
is recuperated, atom by atom, until the wheels of time turn back- 
ward, and, buoyant with more than the fire of younger years, with an 
intelligent instinctive health, the sometime invalid breaks the prison 
of " hereditary disease" and slavish habit, and " Richard is himself," 
far more than his former self, again. 
Hereditary Scrofula, what a terror it has been to many and many 
a heart! How many have seen loved one after loved one sink into 
an untimely grave, of lingering disease accounted for by that terse 
sentence ! How many have lost heart to hope or strive for vigorous 
health by discovering its relentless signs, enlarging joints and in- 
creasing glands, or labored breathing, or cankered membranes I And 
Fig. 84.-Magnetizing. 288 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
yet that, too, is subject to natural law. The " Puritan Fathers" have 
been strenuous in claiming all the duties of children. Alas ! that 
they failed to instruct parents with regard to their duties to their 
children. 
As it would seem that a supreme power constructing vessels of 
clay, endowing them with the necessity of suffering or enjoyment, 
whether they will or not, and compelling an eternal existence, from 
any conscientious stand-point would be considered under highest obli- 
gations to make that existence tolerable ; so fathers and mothers vio- 
late all honorable sense of responsibility if they force upon children 
a life, all too meagre at the best, and fail to do their utmost to ren- 
der it acceptable. And yet every 
additional example of scrofula is a 
verdict of guilty against fathers 
and mothers, an evidence of disre- 
garded obligations. 
Pitifully enough, the pedigree 
extends farther back than the 
" oldest families " can boast, and 
the " coat of arms " never needs 
reburnishing, as it becomes more 
and more conspicuous in each suc- 
ceeding generation. 
"In the beginning" it was by 
disregarding the natural law of re- 
production ; by an undesired ex- 
haustion of nerve-force that should 
have fed the new life, and a conse- 
quent psychological impress, passional irritation. 
In the second step, it was the attraction of one individual, thus 
deprived of self controlling will-power, by a deficiency of nerve-force, 
and abnormal cravings, for another similarly organized, and a second 
generation inheriting a two-fold proportion of like propensities. And 
so on and on, down an inclined plane, until " the third and fourth gen- 
erations," when excesses and abuses too often will have culminated in 
loathsome disease-white-swellings, fever-sores, lung complaints, a 
suppurating disposition all over the body, often modified by a mingling 
of pure blood and healthful nerve-fluid, more frequently aggravated 
by like attracting like. 
A mighty resolve to be dean! 
The healer finds his task, in the most deplorable cases, a truly 
arduous one. First, he must arouse a mighty resolve to be clean. 
Fig. 85.-Goitre of the Neck or 
Thyroid Gland, showing Heredi- 
tary Scrofula. 289 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
And since the will-power has become so enervated, he must from his 
own psychic force supply the capital stock of the renewing resolve. 
Then, by winning encouragement, he leads his patient to vigorous 
abstemiousness from all exciting or stimulating habits of living or of 
thought; a plain, spare diet, active exercise in the open air, vigorous 
friction and bathing of the entire surface of the body, to induce 
energetic circulation that shall remove all obstructing impurities, and 
a careful supplying of all exhausted elements with health-restoring 
material ; while making sure that the waste matter of the system 
is removed at the proper times by the natural processes. 
A grand ambition to make the body a fit temple for an immortal 
spirit, is the first great requisite of soundness, and purity, and a har- 
monious life. 
The healer's only hope of success rests in his capacity of awaken- 
ing that ambition, and sustaining its active operation, through the 
Fig. 86.-The Breakwater. 
long scenes of trying effort necessary to the restoration of this class 
of patients. But it is a choice between a living death of continuous 
suffering and incompetency, which no drug can reach and no priest 
console, and a conquest, greater than the armies, over the pursuing 
foes of ages, which constitutes him at least the saviour of himself 
and possibly of many to follow after him. 
It is the rearing of a breakwater against inflowing tides of de- 
generacy, well worthy years of fortitude and contest. O ye scrofu- 
lous of to-day I apply to the healers who alone can aid you in your 
self-restoration, and, patiently striving until nature is re-established 
upon her throne, obey her highest law, and give to the world a future 
race of untainted men and women, of conscientious fathers and 
mothers, considerate of the rights of their posterity ; of men and 
women with their " second-sight " so intensified that they can look 290 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
backward and forward, and learn wise lessons from the sorrows of 
time; and who, tracing the fearful law of consequences, will never 
dare lightly to invoke from the realm of the unknown an immortal 
human consciousness ; but holding in such reverence the highest 
office of procreation, that all other interests and emotions shall be- 
come subservient to its infinite importance. Down brakes, and re- 
Fig. 87.-Down Brakes, and reverse the Engine ! 
verse engine ! and however rugged the ascent, clamber higher and 
higher, until you have combated and conquered every habit that 
causes a deterioration of the human race. 
Without this radical reconstruction of motives, activities, and 
habits, upon a truly rational basis, the quieting of suffering, often 
mistaken for the cure of disease, is only the cutting back of its buds 
to give it a more hardy and vigorous growth. Especially is this true 
if the suffering be quieted by suspending natural action, and block- 
ing all the wheels of life's conscious machinery, as is the approved 
mode of dealing with the great schoolmaster, pain. And the more 
inveterate the practice, the more quickly will the upas overshadow 
the whole being. 
It is in the circumstance of hereditary disease that the necessity 
for the official aid of the "True Idea" healer is especially manifest, 
as it is only then that nature is inefficient; and inefficient there only 
because she has been subjugated or turned aside from the normal 
exercise of her powers. 
The engine may be whole ; the water in the boiler, and the fuel 
properly adjusted; unless the spark is duly applied that kindles the 
flame that produces the steam, which is the motive-power, the train 
remains helplessly inert. So the capacity for self-restoration may not 
be hopelessly destroyed : the queenly monarch, Health, may only wait 
for the dethroning of her rival, Habit; her suffering subject may be 
groaning beneath the usurper's burdens, and long to return to his 
rightful allegiance; but he has become so much the slave of the ex- 
isting tyranny that some electric spark from the altar of a loyal life HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
291 
is absolutely needful to the kindling of the glowing fires of faith 
hope, pride, and resolute determination, which alone can produce the 
motive-power sufficient to proceed to the desired end. 
" I shall stay but briefly at the best. My anodynes, and stimu- 
lants, and appetizing dainties render life possibly supportable ; and 
why not languidly slide down the hill, though the thorns are lacera- 
ting all the way? I can not fight the dreadful battles with this 
' second nature ' that must be to subdue it, for I have no courage 
left." So think and feel the millions who are constructing hells of 
suffering imbecility for succeeding generations. 
"You have not long to live" ? Why, you must live forever! and 
the longer you go downward, the farther and more difficult the ascent 
to the serene heights of self-approbation. 
" You have no courage left" ? Then let me fill your empty cup 
from the overflowing fountain of my own enthusiasm, saith the 
"True Idea" healer ; and it is a real substance from an abounding 
vitality that he imparts to every faltering atom until the weak are 
strong, and the coward brave, and the " engine" at last reversed, the 
spark applied to nature's reserved supply of fuel, and the train moves 
onward-slowly-laboring against head-winds at first, scant of mo- 
tive-power at first, shaken by every obstructing obstacle at first, puf- 
fing, and groaning, and swaying, with its mighty efforts at the first ; 
but gathering power, and gaining speed, and assuming majesty of 
invincible determination as it gets fully under way. 
In co-operating with the healer for the eradication of hereditary 
disease, the patient should become assured of the changes really 
needed to restore normal conditions; of climate, of atmosphere, of 
water, of diet, of rest, of exercise, of recreation, of magnetic states, 
of social surroundings. This knowledge gained, whenever he finds 
the power of habit too extreme for his strength of will, whenever he 
finds his power of body too severe for his fortitude of mind, when- 
ever he finds himself failing to walk in the light of that knowledge, 
then let him be sure and hasten to the healer (the council fire), to be 
impressed anew with horror for the conditions of the past, and a 
grand resolve to dignify the body, as the only means of eventually 
glorifying the spirit. 
Nor is it upon the principle that " sacrifice" of offering is merito- 
rious, or self-denial a virtue, that he thus rigorously perseveres in a 
sublime self-control. 
The fury of the battle will render the peace gained by eventual 
conquest a very heaven of content. 
The alterative effect of each self-denying abstinence will give a 292 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
new relish to viands no longer harmful, a compensating zest to natu- 
ral appetites, and a heartier appreciation of health, and purity, and 
self-approval than could have been enjoyed but for the fiery ordeal 
into the crucible of which his nature has been cast. 
"I do not believe so much in contest ; I think nature about 
right.'1'1 Reverently we observe, "Yes !" But it is the deformities 
and sorrows of hereditary defects against which we contend ; and 
the more relentlessly we assail them, the more worthy are we to be- 
come her hand-maids and high-priests ; the more shall we flourish in 
the sunshine of her smiles, the more luxuriantly grow, full-fed from 
her bounteous table. 
But how to distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit ! 
between the rightful, gracious sovereign, and the low-born usurper ! 
By a close analysis of cause and effect. 
Whatever lowers the standard of physical purity, beauty, and 
strength ; whatever detracts, by never so little, from the highest 
sense of honor, self-respect, and magnanimity ; whatever retards in 
any degree the fullest intellectual and spiritual unfoldinent, is the 
outgrowth of hereditary defects, and is to be treated as the abnor- 
mal second nature, resulting from hereditary defects. Every practice 
of the life should be thoroughly assayed by each individual long 
before it becomes a habit; for then he will mistake the voices, and 
too often listen to the deadly foe, and think it the voice of the true 
friend. Oh ! how wretchedly nature becomes subjugated before she 
will cease to cry out against tobacco, alcohol, opium, and the various 
outrages of custom and fashion ! And alas for the traitor to her 
laws, when her voice is finally hushed, and he listens to the impor- 
tunities of habit ! But she is a most beneficent mother, and the 
children who listen to her voice and are instructed by the discipline 
of pain and sorrow, although sadly warped by pre-natal mistakes, 
will be safely guided back "to the green pastures, and beside the 
still waters" of her ever-delightful domains. And her voice is never 
more persuasive than when the healer approaches. What a gentle 
hush of calm content, of delicious restfulness, of hallowed joy, steals 
over the satisfied senses when receiving the spiritual influx, even from 
" the hem of his garment " I 
And each increase of development intensifies this susceptibility 
and appreciation. The dividend on the bank stock of nature is con- 
tinuous, with wonderfully increasing ratio. Innumerable instances of 
entire eradication of hereditary disease by this gradual returning to 
normal conditions through the aid of the healer are already known. 
Individuals to whom life was a burden, who had sought all through HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
293 
the domain of drugs and artificial appliances, and been " nothing 
bettered, but rather made worse," made whole by a brightened hope 
and strengthened will-power, and received vitality ; a firm overcom- 
ing of evil, and a healthful supplying all health-restoring demands. 
And there can be no miracles performed ! It is they who expect 
some marvelous display of unnatural action who are disappointed ; 
not they who are willing to " dip in Jordan seven times." 
Fig. 88.-A Plunge-Bath in the Sea. 
The simplest methods of restoring deficient particles or elements 
are not to be despised. A walk in the open air, a plunge in the sea, 
a draught from the mountain or mineral spring, subsisting for the 
needed time upon fruit, or fish, or unbolted meal, just what is most 
requisite to supply the lacking property, or that which fails to feed 
abnormal appetites. In referring to the inefficient efforts of cure, 
we only include those acting upon the false basis of depleting instead 
of replenishing. The higher life has impressed many a noble soul 
yet in the form, with curative measures of untold benefit. 
Take, for example, the " Inhaling Tube," and " me- 
dicated apparatus" for breathing pure medicated va- 
pors into diseased lungs, of Andrew Stone, M.D., 
which supplies the lungs with nature's own ingredi- 
ents, as they could in no other way be reached. 
(See further illustration and description in section " Consump- 
tion," page 76.) 
Fig. 89.-Inhaling. 294 
HEREDITARY DISEASE ERADICABLE. 
It will yet become one of the supplies of each household, as 
people learn that health is the one great requisite of happiness, the 
foundation-stone of all human excellence and achievement, the one 
thing needful, possible, and an uncompromising duty. 
Fig. 90. 
Take also the magnetic inductor, where its quick, powerful action 
may overcome torpidity or paralysis. Take any and all means to 
restore, that have not the first or secondary effect to weaken or 
destroy ; relying, O immortal! upon the divine life within and above 
you, to impel you to never-tiring efforts to render the body a fit temple 
for the pervading presence of the wise and noble, the tender and 
true inhabitants of the more satisfactory sphere whose brightness is 
round about you alway. 
• John Abernethy. TWENTY-SEVENTH SECTION. 
SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
The true healer is born-Jesus the prince of healers-The agonies of Gethsemane 
no fable-Diagnosis intuitive with the true healer-Diseases induced by the 
law of sympathy-The most energetic will degenerate if his powers are not 
used-Negative condition dangerous-The law explained-The positive 
physician or nurse seldom takes the disease-Doubting, boding people 
should not nurse or be with the sick-Perfect harmony between patient and 
healer should exist-Insane people should never be shut up together-In- 
sanity cured only by right magnetic conditions-Jesus cured the insane- 
The same law now exists-Young and old people should not mingle to- 
gether-The law-Error of husband and wife sleeping in the same bed- 
The young child should not sleep with an aged or negative person-Danger 
of young marrying the old-A sympathetic healer injured by absorbing 
tobacco and opium from the patient. 
HE " True Idea" healer is born, not made! He 
inhales and exhales the virtue which emanates 
from Jesus, the prince of healers, with his first 
demands upon his native element; and gives am- 
ple occasion to his own " Madonna" to " ponder" 
wonderful things "in her heart." Waning ma- 
trons delight to enfold his tiny form in their arms, 
to rejuvenate upon the nectar of his life, the balm 
of his breath. Sickly children reach out for the 
dew of his moist palms, brighten in the warmth 
of his smiles, and sit down strengthened and con- 
tented in the aura of his presence, all unconscious of the principle or 
power that attracts, overshadows, and enthralls them. 
Are any sad? his full eyes glisten with pearly pity while yet their 
own are dry ; and he laughs with glee among the joyful, even though 
they give no outward expression of their self-gratulation. 
Whoever may be gathered together, all wait for the one satisfac- 296 
SYMPATHY THE " TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
tory footstep. Whatever voice is heard in relating opinions or occur- 
rences, all listen for the one contenting tone. 
There is a hush and hum of concentrated will, of successful effort, 
of restful, pleasurable life of which he is everywhere and always the 
pivoted centre. Do we speak of a human prodigy ? By no means. 
Every gathering of unrepressed childhood supplies a more or less 
perfectly developed representative of our model. 
Enviable ? not wholly so ; for " he takes your infirmities and 
bears your sicknesses," sinks with your despondency, falters with your 
weakness, and is poisoned by your impurity ; the great antitype of 
the scape-goat bearing away the sins of the multitude into the wilder- 
ness of his own interior conflicts. 
By so much as others are refreshed, to the like extent is he laden 
with burdens not his own, which ofttimes impel him unseen and 
unheard to give wild vent to sorrows that come he knows not whence 
or how, and to shrink dismayed from moods and impulses that have 
no hidden spring in his own ingenuous nature. The agonies of Gethse- 
mane are no fable, neither confined to the one worshiped hero of an 
obscure past. 
Yet by the very nature of the genus to which he belongs, and 
perforce of his appointed mission, he is content to walk with un- 
washed, bleeding feet through dark, treacherous ravines of trial and 
disease, if he have only safely bridged them for the pleasant passage 
of the many tender and unwary ones, who never dream of the cost 
of their immunity from peril, as they gaze upon the calm serenity 
of his uplifted brow or feel the dauntless energy of his beneficent 
spirit. 
Happy the age and the people that shall recognize, understand, 
and benefit by him from " the beginning ; " strengthening with his 
strength and growing with his growth ; enkindling anew the dumb 
embers of their chill benevolences at the ever-genial flame of his 
glowing enthusiasms. 
To-day men presume to rebuke and condemn him for that very 
diffusive sympathy that is salvation from disease, that exuberance of 
life-fullness that is feeding the hungry with his flesh and his blood ; 
and the serpent-tongue of detraction darts its venom at that which it 
may well fear, since it will in time banish it from society as effectu- 
ally as St. Patrick performed that office for other snakes of the 
" Emerald Island." 
He needs not to diagnose disease, babbling with learned ignorance 
of spines, and livers, and diaphragms ; he feels the pain, the uneasi- 
ness, the defect that is reaching out for the needed elements, the SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA5' OF HEALING. 
297 
required particles which it is his province to supply, and can recount 
to you far better than you can relate to him, all that nature's voices 
of warning or entreaty are causing you to endure by your denomi- 
nated aches, pains, sickness, or disease. 
Not only does he feel them, but suddenly you find them relieved, 
and yourself "every whit whole." You make no heroic effort to 
expel by violence the darkness and the cold, you admit heat and light, 
and they are gone already. Thus it is needless to attack the organs 
of the body as traitors and rebels, who must be coerced into perform- 
ing their legitimate duty ; by supplying the native forces through 
this wondrous sympathetic interchange, the whole machinery of the 
mysterious human mechanism moves harmoniously to the desired 
results. 
Nor is it the body alone that is replenished ; rather is the mind 
first quickened to its normal tone through the grand equipoise of this 
sympathetic, natural-born healer, and its power over the body renders 
the second process only normal. A majority of all infirmities, indeed, 
are induced by the same law of sympathy, because not understood 
and fully developed. 
Here is one with a birthright inheritance of the healing power, 
who knows nothing of its laws, or even of its existence. He takes 
upon himself the disordered conditions of those who are en rapport 
with him or magnetically attracted to him, and exercises no effort of 
the will, no intelligence of the mind, to regain an equalized circula- 
tion. 
In the mean time the magnetic vital forces which, understandingly 
employed, would be constantly refreshing himself and others, are 
becoming like stagnant pools from disuse, instead of limpid, gurg- 
ling streamlets, which they should be. Thus he, naturally so power- 
ful and positive, becomes pitiably negative, and subject to accumulat- 
ing ills. 
All around you are examples of this sad result of undeveloped 
natural gifts. Let the best practitioner of sympathetic healing 
refrain from exercise of his powers, at the time of his most perfect 
physical equilibrium, strong, robust, hopeful, happy, and he will 
rapidly degenerate into the dyspeptic lassitude that will render him 
an easy prey to all sufferings of those who surround him. 
Let the asthmatic, lymphatic, nervous, quiescent psychic be com- 
pelled to treat vigorously and scientifically half a score of sick peo- 
ple each day, and he will soon find a renewed life tingling through 
every fibre of his being, and becomes vitalized from the crown of his 
head to the sole of his feet. 298 
SYMPATHY THE " TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
But you may ask, how he shall learn to employ his gifts scienti- 
fically. How does the young bird learn to fly ? There is a natural 
instinctive guidance, if we will but follow it. It is wse, continual 
practice, in accordance with these intuitive impressions, that explains 
the science hidden therein. Observe such a born healer as we have 
attempted to delineate, and you will find him as soon as he can totter 
to the side of any one in pain, patting with gentle hands and mur- 
muring with soothing tones until the sufferer is quieted. The only 
difficulty is in the cultivated incredulity and repression. 
The child who is thus endowed above his fellows is too often made 
to feel that he is "a strong child," subjected to ridicule or reproof, or, 
at the least, treated with no recognition of his powers and acknow- 
ledgment of his success. 
Hence he endeavors to re-cast himself into the same mould that 
has given shape to his companions, and his inheritance wastes away. 
Whoever of any age, station, or employment, feels this impelling 
desire to hasten to the suffering with such efforts at relief as are a 
spontaneity, should religiously obey the sacred voice of a higher 
nature both for his own sake and humanity's. Otherwise, he, too, will 
find some mysterious disease from some unknown cause sapping the 
very fountains of his life. For this sympathetic condition reaches 
beyond the material life. And whoever thus becomes negatively 
inefficient assumes an attitude peculiarly favorable to obsession. 
Here is a weak one just released from the material form, whose 
maladies had been petted and nursed, until they were a cherished 
part of his existence. He is not able to emerge from that abnormal 
condition at once, yet he can find no field for its indulgence among 
the disembodied ; therefore, through the natural law of " like to like," 
he gravitates unto such a defenseless organization ; and the well- 
enlightened seer after he beholds these darker spirits reproducing the 
old maladies upon patients who do not dream of the origin of their 
pain, and who can only be relieved by instructing them to come in 
sympathy with healthful, active, well-balanced intelligences. And 
how can this result be produced ? In the same manner that you, 
would encourage a child in its first attempt at locomotion. Infuse 
self-reliance, courage, ambitious energy, into both the embodied and 
disembodied. The healer will baptize both into a powerful mag- 
netic spiritual buoyancy until the lame man shall leap as a hare 
and the insane become clothed and in their right minds. 
The phenomena of infectious diseases result in a great measure 
from the same law of unemployed sympathetic conditions. It is not 
the zealous nurse or the forcible physician who falls a prey to them. SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
299 
They who, without fear or dread, exert every power to throw off the 
disease from others, with an overmastering faith that they shall suc- 
ceed, are sure to stay its progress and remain unharmed ; while those 
who become panic-stricken, and, making no mental effort, expect the 
worst, realize the fullness of their expectations. 
Of course cleanliness and purity, and all wholesome conditions, 
are presupposed as indispensables, in every case to which we refer. 
Let every one who harbors a doubt of the recovery of a patient 
or the success of a treatment, overcome it with positive hope, if possi- 
ble ; if not, they should remove themselves so far from the scene as 
to leave no shadow of their want of faith behind them. 
For this principle of sympathy is so subtle that that doubt will 
increase and multiply itself in all minds and become a positive power 
in active contest with the angel of healing whose brooding pinions 
can not penetrate this antagonistic element. Let every one who is 
indifferent to the patient also withdraw, as the presence of such chill- 
ing natures in the atmosphere of sympathetic healing is like a cold 
draught through a sunny parlor, overcoming all the vivifying warmth. 
One grand law always to be sacredly regarded is this : there should 
be perfect harmony and affectionate attraction between the healer and 
the patient. No one should ever permit the treatment of a healer, 
however successful in other cases, whose presence is irksome, whose 
touch is unpleasant, or whose efforts produce weariness j for the ex- 
istence of such emotions proves conclusively that the true sympa- 
thetic relations necessary to beneficial results are not established 
between the two. This necessity of adaptability between healer and 
patient can not be too strenuously insisted upon. 
The great truth that all are healers unto all such as are cheered, 
brightened, and stimulated by their presence, can not be too persist- 
ently inculcated. The stern reality that the weak, diseased, may 
fatally prey upon the sympathetic who do not understand the neces- 
sity of becoming positive to them, and the method of throwing off 
disease, can not be too authoritatively asserted. 
The approved fact that no individual can be continually sur- 
rounded by, and acting in, presences and conditions that are repug- 
nant to his highest nature, that torture his finest feelings, that oppress 
and depress him, without deteriorating physically as well as mentally 
and spiritually, and eventually becoming a confirmed invalid, should 
be made so effectively apparent as to open the prison-doors of all 
thus circumstanced, and convict them of crime if they persist in such 
suicidal permissions. For this sympathy is a transforming power, 300 
SYMPATHY THE 11 TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
modifying every living creature to the similitude of its surroundings, 
in a greater or less degree. 
Hence, the manifest folly of shutting up together the poor unbal- 
anced brains of the insane. A perfectly sane, sympathetic person 
placed among them would soon become the veriest madman of them 
all. What hope, then, of restoration where there is every thing to 
aggravate the condition, and nothing to overbalance it? The majo- 
rity of those confined in mad-houses were first weakened by igno- 
rance of psychological laws, and negatively sympathetic ; then, 
oppressed by some disappointment or physical derangement, they 
attracted to themselves spirits equally unfortunate, and each increas- 
ing and aggravating the maladies of the other, they are eventually 
incarcerated within the very influences which are most deleterious, 
namely, with other poor creatures in the same pitiable condition ; and 
thus, as the mountain streamlet becomes at length a mighty river by 
combining its waters with other rivulets no larger than itself, so the 
comparatively trifling evil becomes overwhelming by these manifold 
complications. 
We hesitate not to assert that the harmonizing influence of a 
fully developed sympathetic healer, one who is magnetically attractive 
to him, and undisturbed by any opposing current of thought or feel- 
ing, will quickly restore him to the right use of his reason. And it 
is, indeed, time that the attention of an enlightened age was forcibly 
called to this momentous subject. 
The restoring of the reason, or " casting out devils," was one of 
the chief of Christ's labors of love, one of the evidences of his embo- 
died Godhead. And yet, who accepts the glorious prerogative of be- 
coming his true apostle in this most commendable work ? since He 
came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill! This also was accom- 
plished through adherence to -the law of a well-balanced mentality. 
That law is not abrogated, and the time is swiftly approaching 
when it will again be understood ; when the first approaches of 
insanity will be followed by untiring efforts to place the victim-not 
among hundreds more crazy than himself-but under the control of 
some loving, pitying magnetizer, who shall so readily enter into his 
needs and supply them, take upon himself the darkness, and fill the 
overburdened mind with rest and light, that the danger is scarcely 
realized before it is forever overcome! But you will tell us that the 
insane grow rapidly worse many times, under the anxious solicitude, 
the loving cares of their most sympathizing friends. True ! But it 
is either those who are either negative to them, and continually mani- 
fest their fear and solicitude, thus setting free mental forces that are SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
301 
directly opposed to harmonizing conditions, or they practice the 
positive assumption of authority, which equally repeats, over and 
over again, to the tortured consciousness, " You are insane ! You 
are insane !" 
Place a perfectly rational, but negative, easily psychologized 
person among people who fully believe him to be insane ; let them 
persistently treat him as if he were so ; shut him out from all influ- 
ence of those who understand and have faith in him, and he will 
become so saturated with the thoughts and feelings that surround 
him that he will actually be to all intents and purposes just what 
they suppose him to be. Per contra, place a really disordered mind 
among those stronger than itself, who have perfect faith that it is 
rapidly resuming its normal condition, and it will become permeated 
with that spirit likewise, and the acting and reacting of that faith 
will help to work out its own accomplishment. 
Not more sure is the law that heated bodies 
will give out of their caloric unto the surround- 
ing colder ones, until the temperature is equal- 
ized-the cold warmed, and the warmer cooled 
-or that differing solutions of liquids, when 
mingled with each, impart their qualities unto 
the other, until there results a compound of all 
unlike any of the simples, than that human be- 
ings, by association, interchange the peculiar 
elements, thoughts, feelings, and conditions 
characteristic of their individualities. 
They only who are certain of an unfailing influx from higher life 
should venture to submit, in a degree disproportionate to their posi- 
tive control, to surroundings which can lower them in the tone of 
their moral, mental, or physical being. The mingling of the aged 
and the young is a violation of this law, only in a yet more 
objectionable manner. 
It is only the most lamentable ignorance that will place the ten- 
der, sympathetic, affectionate child in the same couch, or too much 
in the same room, even, with the enfeebled old man or woman. 
Whoever does so will find it soon fading, and becoming languid and 
listless, entirely bereft of the buoyant energy appertaining to its years. 
Many a little one has had all the dewy freshness of its young 
life exhaled by the drouth of feverish, waning age ; or the un- 
healthful conditions of those who have it in charge ; and when it 
faltered and drooped, pozsonotzs drugs were sent ravaging through 
its withered luxuriance to complete the devastation begun. 
Fig. 91. 302 
SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA5' OF HEALING. 
[We call to mind many instances of this nature witnessed in the 
years of our general practice ; but more vividly one pretty female 
child about four years of age, whom we had frequently seen while 
attending others of the family, then possessing the ruddy hue of 
health, and who became endeared to us because she strikingly favored 
a darling daughter we had not long before buried in a coral reef in 
Florida, and also, because her mother had gone to the spirit-world. 
At length we were called specially to administer to this little girl, 
who was fast drooping. Finding no organic disease, we inquired if 
she did not sleep with a maiden aunt with whom she was living, and 
who also was subject to painful paroxysms of spasmodic asthma. 
On being answered in the affirmative, the whole cause was easily 
understood. The maiden aunt was living at the awful expense of 
the child. 
We at once advised a correction of 
magnetic relations, with other hygiene, 
when the child soon recruited without 
any use of medicines, and resumed her 
cheerful, healthy vigor and glow. 
-Ed.] 
So, many a Hebe of youth, beauty, 
and strength has grown old before 
her time, prematurely faded, wearied, 
and disgusted or vailed with the green 
sod, by uniting herself with one very 
much her senior, and feeding him 
from her unreplenished fountain of 
life's precious capital. Yet in all these 
examples there is a wisely-ordained 
method by which the aging in years 
may be constantly young in all life-full characteristics. We do not 
advocate the depriving of them of any needed supply ; we only in- 
culcate the wisdom of confining all expenditures to the surplus in 
the treasury, and never infringing upon the original capital. 
For example, there is a superabundance of animal spirits always 
engendered by the youthful, as nature is ever very bountiful in her 
provisions. This overflow should be sacredly dedicated to the feeble 
or the aged, with the earliest lessons received by the child. Thus 
the intelligent habit would be formed of employing beneficially all 
the good gifts of being, broadening their rivers, and deepening their 
springs, until the capacity for giving and receiving would be- 
Fig. 92.-Hebe. SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
303 
come continually increased. "For there is that giveth and yet 
increaseth." 
This practice of rendering all exuberance beneficent in its use 
would not only preserve the activity and enjoyment of the older 
members of society, but would effectually relieve society of all reck- 
less dissipation, which is only the foam and effervescence of unappro- 
priated, excessive animal life. 
And yet men compound nauseous bitters, and powders, and pills, 
adding misery to misery, when the natural outflow of life-supplying 
elements are only becoming enemies by disuse or abuse. 
Here, again, in the domain of sympathy, is the wretched result of 
befouling all the psychic forces of the system, the electric aura, the 
magnetic emanations most intensely realized. What do we mean ? 
Simply this : you have exhausted the power of some organ of your 
body by taxing it too heavily. Its proper functions are not per- 
formed. The consequence is oppression, weariness, pain. A sympa- 
thetic senses all your suffering and approaches your sphere to 
impart of his abounding vital strength. But he is a sympathetic, 
and as such sensitive to all that is thrown from your body in the in- 
visible perspiration. He is nauseated by tobacco, narcotized by 
opium, intoxicated by drugged alcohol, poisoned by dyes, paints, 
and pomatum, nerve-strained by tea and coffee, and clogged with 
unwashed disease. He finds a wall less penetrable than if made of 
brick or stone, between him and the unfortunate victim of ignorance 
and vice ; for all filthy, deleterious habits are vicious, as abundantly 
proven by their tendencies and results. This is neither fanciful nor 
exaggerated. 
Sympathetics daily are overpowered, for the time, by a deathly 
sickness, rendering life intolerable, through immersion in these con- 
taminated spheres ; the results of sitting by or conversing with those 
whose habits are unwholesome, whose thoughts are impure. How 
important, then, to the daily happiness, to the most absorbing 
interests of all humanity, that this Jaw should be understood ! 
Hence, as you love and desire the most perfect of all things, the 
newest, freshest, fairest, fullest, ripest, mellowest, so perfect your 
own being by understanding and obeying all hygienic, spiritual 
principles, that you, too, may be loved and desired, attractive and 
attracted, to the best. As you shrink from the decaying, blighted, 
worm-eaten, tainted, or filthy, so preserve your physical, moral, and 
spiritual nature from all things, from heinous crime down to a carious 
tooth, that shall attaint these emanations from your person. For it 304 
SYMPATHY THE "TRUE IDEA" OF HEALING. 
rests with each individual to choose, through his mode of life, 
whether he will be as a summer rain or deadly sirocco to the fair 
fields of humanity through which his orbit passes. 
John Abernethy. TWENTY-EIGHTH SECTION. 
THE NECESSITY OF A COMBINATION OF HEALERS. 
Fading and sinking of the young wife-She needs genial, cherishing influences 
for a sore heart, instead of calomel and quinine, affectionate kindness instead 
of scorpions of poisonous drugs-A unity of forces-A failure of the most 
celebrated in some cases no argument against the principle-Causes of fail- 
ures explained-Faults of mediums-How to be avoided-Be upright, 
truthful, pure, you will then be guided to unfailing fountains-Excessive 
depletion of nerve-force the cause of ill-health-How restored and bal- 
anced by the new gospel of healing. 
HE conditions of the present age, as developed by 
the era of force, are extremely adverse to the grand 
possibilities of the "True Idea" of healing. 
The very walls of every public hall, and building, 
and conveyance, almost of every dwelling, are psy- 
chometrized with influences spiritual, emotional, and 
physical, fiercely antagonistic to the fair Goddess of 
Hygeia, who presides over this beneficent art. 
Laboring individually, the healer repairs to the 
dwelling of his patient to enact the restoring angel, 
and repair the ravages of erroneous habits and un- 
toward surroundings. He finds, perhaps, a fragile and beautiful 
flower, fading before the summer has scarce commenced its career, a 
wife and mother sinking beneath her duties at the very threshold of 
her kingdom ; and he called upon to supply the prematurely exhaust- 
ed fountains of strength, and force, and courage. If he chance to 
have all the requisites of the case in his organization and control, he 
still finds the same causes that have induced the present state of the 
patient in full force and operation. If he lifts her out of the weak- 
ness, pain, and gloom, it is only to find her gradually sinking again 
and again into the same unfortunate position. Why ? Because the 306 
THE NECESSITY OF A 
causes have not been removed. The delicate peach must have soil, 
atmosphere, and climate adapted to the daintiness of the peach ; and 
the mighty oak that which its majesty demands, to perfect their re- 
spective developments ; and none the less the tender sensitives of hu- 
manity must have all genial, cherishing influences to perfect and re- 
tain the exquisite bloom of their beauty. To impart vitality to such 
a one while still surrounded by 
all things gross and inharmo- 
nious and laden with burdens 
exceeding the power of her be- 
ing, is only to imitate the 
school-boy, who laboriously 
drags his little playmate to the 
top of the hill, only to see him 
slide rapidly back again to the 
original starting-point. And 
then the world tells him he has 
performed no cure ! To restore 
is quite enough to expect of the 
healer. To so obey his instruc- 
tions as to maintain the restora- 
tion is only the reasonable duty 
of the patient, or those whose 
unwholesome lives have been 
the occasion of disaster. 
Decaying vegetables in a 
basement, imperfect and foul 
sewerage, uncleanly, offensive 
closets, and even unventilated 
rooms and unwashed persons, 
will rapidly counteract all the 
psychic virtue of the healer. 
None the less so will indolence, 
luxury, or discontent ; likewise 
undue excitement, or indul- 
gence in any emotion or passion. And still more counteractive, 
more delusive, more difficult to overcome, are the unfavorable social 
influences. Many a wounded one has taken calomel or quinine for a 
sore heart, and asking for the bread and fishes of affectionate kind- 
ness has been fed with the "stones and scorpions of poisonous drugs." 
In each individual case, the healer must be so thoroughly in 
sympathy with his patient as to readily reach beyond symptomatic 
Fig. 93.-The Young Wife and Mo- 
ther SINKING AT THE VERY THRESHOLD 
of her Kingdom. COMBINATION OF HEALERS. 
307 
effects and divine the causes which require to be removed ; then so 
powerfully positive to the patient and her surroundings, as to intro- 
duce through all her orbit the psychometric and psychologic atmo- 
sphere that shall revivify her life, to so impress upon those who hold 
her destiny in their hands with the necessity of removing all that 
is repulsive to her, and supplying all that is desirable of refining, 
purifying, brightening all things that affect her, that she shall move 
in a new world that shall nourish and not destroy her. But he who 
is sufficiently gentle, winning, and generous to assimilate with the 
finest is rarely sufficiently positive and authoritative to overcome the 
coarsest. 
Hence the call for a combination of healers, a unity of forces ' the 
more so as the healers themselves have yet reached but imperfect de- 
velopment, and the age of belief in and acceptance of their mission 
has not fully arrived. Just so much of the force of will as is re- 
quired to overcome incredulity and superinduce belief, is refracted 
from its direct course to the seat of the disease ; and, if this resistance 
be great, becomes like a spent ball when at last it reaches the mark. 
Therefore, the highest degree of success can be attained only by a well- 
arranged battery of media laboring in perfectly harmonious unison 
and yet widely differing in temperament and individual character- 
istics. As all the prismatic colors combine to give pure, colorless at- 
mosphere, so all the wide range of adapting forces should combine 
in the united media to constitute the unfailing conditions of speedy 
and permanent cure. 
Of the most celebrated and successful healers yet produced, it is 
commonly remarked, that they perform wonderful cures, and yet fail 
in the majority of instances. Every healer is himself aware of the 
fact that it is only upon certain temperaments, and under certain con- 
ditions, that he accomplishes complete cures. 
Now, if this board of healers be so combined as to sustain and 
generate power for each other ; so graduated that one can lift the 
lower patients the first step in the upward ascent, and another can 
take those upon the first step and lift them to the second, and the 
next in order take them one degree higher, and so on and on until 
the beautiful height of well-balanced forces and vitalized being is 
gained, then there will be no failure, but every patient can be guar- 
anteed an absolute cure, unless they put off their treatment until 
some vital organ is entirely destroyed. Where there is an accumulated 
psychometric influence of disbelief hanging heavily upon the very 
walls, where there is a dense atmosphere of gross materiality per- 
vading every apartment of the dwelling, where ignorance and as- 308 
THE NECESSITY OF A 
surance back each other combatively against every innovation upon 
their crudeness, a medium who is not so far above their plane as to 
be hopelessly repelled and crushed by it, who is so far above it as to 
be powerfully positive to it, having an exceeding amount of combat- 
ive assurance, combined with intelligent magnetic and electric con- 
trol, and indomitably generous energy, is necessary to do wonderful 
works. And if his powers are expended in overcoming the original 
antagonisms, then another endowed with the winning persuasiveness 
that can captivate the will and mind, then another that can supply 
the needed vitality, sympathy, health, etc. 
It is true when the band of controlling spirits embody all these 
various characteristics, they can manifest them all, one by one, 
through the same medium, to a certain extent. But the system soon 
becomes overtaxed, and, after a season of remarkable success, they 
are surprised to find that the favorable results of their manipulations, 
which they had learned to expect as certain, no longer manifest them- 
selves, and many that they considered cured soon relapse into their 
former condition. And thus losing faith in themselves, they fail to 
sustain the dignity and verity of this mission. Whereas, if only ex- 
ercised in the capacity to which they are best adapted, if abundantly 
sustained by the freely-generated magnetism of a rightly-arranged 
battery, they are certainly increasing in power and capacity, contin- 
ually excelling themselves in the magnitude of their accomplish- 
ments. 
Again, to perform offices necessary to the restoration of a patient, 
various psychical conditions are necessary. For example, to see the 
positive appearance of the various organs of the system clairvoyant- 
ly, to learn in that manner how great are the ravages already made 
by disease, and what are the prospects of a speedy or retarded cure, 
is often necessary, to satisfy the mind of the patient, if for no other 
reason. To facilitate this spiritual insight, the medium must be in 
his most passive negative state, that the disembodied intelligences 
may psychologize him with this clear view of existing conditions. 
Having thus subdued his will-power and become subject to the will 
of another for the purpose, he is rendered unfit, for the time, for that 
positive exercise of this same potent will-power which is requisite to 
expel the disease and awaken the slumbering energies of the patient. 
Consequently he must induce upon his organization (or his control 
must do this for him) an entire change from positive to negative, 
then back again from negative to positive ; which is as injurious in 
its effects upon the system as though he were to pass from a very cold 
air to a heated room, and from extreme heat to severe cold, again and 309 
COMBINATION OF HEALERS. 
again. It produces, indeed, a succession of shocks upon the system, 
requiring an expenditure of vitality which the fully-occupied medium 
can by no means afford to dissipate. 
Ignorance of these truths, or a compulsory disregard of them, 
has caused many a most efficient healer to fall exhausted in the way, 
and make his exit from the mundane life when most sadly needed 
here. 
It is not unusual for those who arc investigating these phenomena 
to call upon a healer to enter a promiscuous company and tell each 
member of it, first, what spirit-friends he can see near him (condition 
number one, materialization); secondly, what they died of, when and 
where (condition number two, psychological retrospect) ; thirdly, 
their names (condition number three, clairaudience); fourthly, what 
ails him (condition number four, sympathetic z'n-sight) ; and fifthly, 
to remove the disease or give him treatment; involving a fifth condi- 
tion entirely the reverse of each and all of these, a positive, com- 
manding, powerfully electric condition. 
If the medium is sufficiently passive and approbative to endeavor 
to meet all these demands, he does not fully succeed in any of them, 
and finds himself miserably exhausted by the futile attempt. 
If he does not make the effort, he expects to be.severely criti- 
cised and censured, and realizes his expectations. 
Now, every medium should have his specific field of labor ; should 
form his own conditions directed by his control, and never permit 
himself to be swerved from it. 
lie should never permit himself to take the position of a menial, 
and become subject to commands. He should be passive to his influ- 
ences, when they are such as he desires, moved by them as they in 
the realm of causes, find how they can best act upon him, and, un- 
moved by the exactions of ignorance, and its twin brother intole- 
rance, undaunted by failure or reprimand, he should hold himself en- 
tirely positive to those who consult him. Thus, and thus only, will 
he become the never-failing vehicle of electric "virtue," that is, life, 
health, strength, and happiness. As certainly as the seeker after 
spiritual light and healing assumes the position of commander, critic, 
and judge, so surely does he fail to receive his baptism from the 
angel-world. Here, indeed, is the necessity of becoming as little 
children in order to "enter the kingdom of heaven," fully demon- 
strated. Do we counsel you to set your own reason at naught ? Nay, 
verily ! we instruct you how to be reasonable in your treatment of an 
important subject. And as you expect every one in the material 
province of life to succeed just in proportion to his adjustment to 310 
THE NECESSITY OF A 
that which is his natural forte, just as you feel it the workman's clue 
to select his own tools, and his own mode of applying them ; so in 
this higher sphere of action, leave every agent of the kind invisibles 
perfectly free to work out human weal in his own time and manner ; 
throwing out no opposing influence of malignant feeling to thwart 
both him and yourself. 
If you are suffering from any form of disease, only find the 
healer whose magnetism attracts you, whose electrical forces thrill 
you, whose presence inspires you with faith, hope, and courage, and 
then yielding passively to the mode of treatment adopted by his 
control, do not demand, but acceptI freely receiving what is abun- 
dantly given, and the restoration is certain. 
But, you may ask, are you not in danger of being imposed upon ? 
If your own life is good and true, your own motives pure, and you 
follow the above directions, I answer nay ! You will never be 
attracted to or have faith in an impostor. If you are yourself a 
living lie, then will you move in an atmosphere of falsehood, 
receiving measure for measure of such as you give to the world. It 
is not more certain that he who never takes his morning dram is sure 
to detect its odor in the breath of the drinker, while he who like- 
wise imbibes discovers nothing, than that the conscientious, truthful 
person will be repelled by fraud and imposture, detecting the coun- 
terfeit by an instinct more subtle than the sense of smelling or of 
tasting, and equally unerring. If he is himself imbued with the 
elements of hypocrisy, then indeed he may pass by the ingenuous, 
and join hands with deceit, " like attracting like," according to im- 
mutable law. This is the beautiful, heaven-ordained principle of 
compensation. Hence, be upright, truthful, pure, and your attrac- 
tions will guide you to unfailing fountains of " the elixir of life," 
floating downward from the risen pure ones for whomsoever " will 
receive it." 
Do we refer to the attractions depending upon sexual differences ? 
Certainly not !' Although the same principle should guide every 
one in those important interests of life. 
But the healer comes under the control of various intelligences of 
either sex and the control is adapted to the needs of the patient. 
Many a debilitated female owes her condition to excessive depletion 
in that direction. Treated by the opposite sex, she is confirmed in 
her complaints rather than lifted out of them. It is the exhausted 
female qualities that need replenishing, and the excessive male 
magnetism that requires to be absolved. In such a case, a female of 
positive feminity, of overflowing sympathy, of gentle, tender affection- COMBINATION OF HEALERS. 
311 
ateness, controlled by some pure male spirit of high intellectuality, 
having long outgrown the impulses of the base brain, would be an 
irresistible magnet to the patient, and an unfailing physician. 
Thus, a man who, from his boyhood onward, has been a reckless 
spendthrift of his life-forces through sexual excesses and abuses, 
will find a far more powerful fascination in a lofty, self-controlled, 
self-poised, luxuriant manhood, influenced by some stately Diana of 
the spirit-world, white as the fallen snow, and chaste as the glittering 
ice, than any voluptuary of the other sex could possibly inspire. And 
Fig. 94.-The Spiritual Diana. 
from such alone could he receive the power of a true manhood, 
after having reduced himself to the degraded plane of a debauchee. 
On the contrary, when the individuality has been defrauded of its 
constitutional needs, where the sins are of omission rather than com- 
mission, then, forsooth, the attractions will be between the two 
sexes, and should be as righteously obeyed. Still, be it understood, 
in our frequent allusions to the attractions, we have no reference to 
differentiation of sex. You pause to admire the beauty of the 
rose or the lily. It has attracted you through your love of the beau- 
tiful. You turn aside to inhale the odors of the heliotrope or mig- 
nonette. It has attracted you through your love of its fragrance. 
You gather eagerly the freshly-ripened strawberries and peaches. 312 
THE NECESSITY OF A COMBINATION OF HEALERS. 
They have attracted you through your love of their delicate flavors. 
Each and all supply some demand of your system, feed some con- 
stitutional hunger, draw you to them by virtue of the satisfying 
supply which they contain for you. In like manner, the desire for 
health finds voice in pain, uneasiness, and an attraction toward those 
who hold the requisite particles or elements that are needed in restora- 
tion ; one healer holding the attractive power over one patient ; and 
another, of entirely different temperament and capacity, irresistibly 
calling another to his sphere; one overcoming the undeveloped 
spirits who hold a patient in abject thralldom ; another overslaughing 
the gross psychometric influences that hang like an incubus to their 
surroundings ; another, setting all the machinery of the physical 
organs into healthful activity by vigorous manipulations ; another 
quieting all undue nervous irritation by soothing, magnetic, reposeful 
rest; another, lifting the mind to the serene heights of buoyant con- 
fidence, perforce of his own majestic strength ; and so on and on, 
every human being holding the issues of life and death for many 
fellow humans in his own hands, if he will but be instructed, if he 
will but develop his capacities, if he will but follow his attractions. 
From these analyses of modes, conditions, and necessities, you 
will readily perceive that to insure restoration to all, there should be 
a gathering of all the varieties needed, a harmonious blending of 
sexes and temperaments, of powers and controls ; each sustaining all 
the others, all supporting and perfecting each member of the union ; 
each following his own especial forte and mission, all so combining 
as to meet every need of every form of disease, every variety of 
organization, every freak of personality. That the time may come 
that all desirable qualifications may unite in one person, may be pos- 
sible ; that it has not yet arrived, proves the wisdom and beauty of 
such a fraternal union of the heaven-crowned disciples of the " new 
GOSPEL OF HEALING." 
John Abernethy. TWENTY-NINTH SECTION. 
HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE, AND RESTORED BY THE 
VIRTUE OF THE "HEALER" ACCORDING TO THE 
"TRUE IDEA." 
Hygienic conditions necessary for speedy cure-Fevers, boils, ulcers, etc., 
only curative indications-Diseases are nature's physicians-Bathing in 
some one form an essential aid to health-Self-government the most god- 
like, the most remunerative-Every dwelling should esteem its bath-room 
a necessity-Be made receptive-Blood indications-The compressed air- 
bath-Man an epitome of the universe-So far imperfect when deprived of 
whatever belongs to him-The solar rays mighty in their effects-The sun- 
bath-Earth-bath-The foot-bath-The shower-bath-Electric and spiritual 
forces. 
N FORMER dissertations we have labored assidu- 
ously to impress you with the necessity of attrac- 
tion, congeniality, sympathy, and faith between the 
healer and the healed. We have shown the impor- 
tance of all favorable conditions to spontaneous, 
immediate, infallible cure. At this time we propose 
to make suggestions relative to the hygienic princi- 
ples and mode of life which would place an indi- 
vidual in an attitude of ready susceptibility to the 
" Holy Ghost," transmitted by the higher intelligen- 
ces through favorable human organisms. 
We have already alluded to the necessity of a judicious diet, and 
will hereafter enter fully into the merits and application of the 
various fruits, vegetables, and cereals, fish, flesh, and fowl, in general 
use. For the present, we will call the attention to a most important 
adjunct to the electric forces of the healer, namely, bathing. The 
pa rticles or atoms of our bodies are being thrown off from the body 
when they have subserved their legitimate purpose, involving an 
entire change to the bony structure once in seven years, and the 314 
HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
remainder, in an active, healthful individual, nearly once in each year. 
These particles give place to the new formation, not yet exhausted 
of their life-sustaining elements, which are continuously supplied by 
the food you eat, the liquids you drink, the air you breathe, and the 
sphere of your associates. 
If the involuntary nerves are enabled to keep up a perfect balance 
of power between these wastes and repairs of the body, nature will 
not be called upon to introduce fevers to burn up the unthrown-off, 
worn-out matter, or vomiting, or purging, or coughing, or catarrhal 
discharges from various sources, or ulcers, boils, tumors, etc. etc., to 
expel it from the system. 
These diseases, as you term them, which you treat as enemies, are 
only nature's physicians, striving to perform a needed work, and so 
far from being arrested in their labors, should be aided to perform it 
without exhaustion to the patient ; or, what is far better, the habits 
should be so ordered as to prevent our kind mother Nature from the 
necessity of resorting to such extreme and unpleasant measures. 
If this waste, this effete, obnoxious substance, be freely and fully 
disposed of, this result surely will be gained. Remember, it is only 
gust sufficiently to secure this end that we propose and recommend 
the aids upon which we are about to dwell at length. You may ask 
how you can know when that result is precisely obtained ; how you 
can understand the so far and no farther? We answer, by careful 
observance of effects. That which refreshes and invigorates is legiti- 
mate. That which depresses, weakens, becomes repulsive, is in that 
" still small voice" peremptorily forbidden. 
There are individuals who have passed their three-score and ten 
years who are as firm in flesh and muscle, as vivid in color, as 
lustrous in expression, as buoyant in feeling, and as powerful in 
bone, sinew, and thought, as any in their best "prime" can boast of 
being-kept thus by their habits. Question them, and you will in- 
variably find that bathing, in its various forms, has been made a 
scientific aid in freeing the system of all unwholesome, decaying 
matter. The matron of seventy will come from her bath as rosy 
and glowing as the maid of sixteen, if she has made it her assistant 
from the beginning. And the snow-crowned sire will be as delicate 
of touch, or pure of breath and emanation, as the youthful Adonis, 
if he only order his habits with that intent from his youth through 
all the trying experiences of manhood, the too often blighting, 
withering, poisoning experiences of manhood. And it is, indeed, 
well worth the study, persevering, self-controlling effort. Of all 
governments ever instituted or conceived, self-government is the most HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
315 
godlike, the most glorious, the most remunerative. Its subjects are 
kingly and queenly all; are crowned with honors that increase, and 
brighten, and blossom into blessings through the enlarging cycles of 
a magnificent hereafter. Self-government, not in the guise of sacri- 
fices and offerings and unreasoning denials, but as a judicious aid-de- 
camp to the divine instincts of an immortal being, as a firm resolve 
to do all that the highest development of a wonderful humanity 
requires. Deeply implanted in the divinest part of every conscious- 
ness is the desire to be attractive, to attract that which is purest, 
truest, loveliest. That which is laden with the old, worn-out parti- 
cles of originally unwholesome pabulum, that which is reeking with 
nauseating effluvia, which is a drug and a drag upon the fresh elasti- 
city of pure aspiration, is not attractive except to that which is more 
pitiable than itself. Hence we say that self-government is more 
highly remunerative ; for the grandly self-poised, clean, glowing, 
powerful man or woman wins on all beholders. 
As it requires different and widely differing Healers to meet the 
demands of different individuals and cases, so various modes of 
bathing are required, according to the temperaments and conditions 
of persons. The infant, accustomed from the first to a daily immer- 
sion in cool soft water, and the invigorating magnetism of a health- 
ful hand, briskly but gently applied to the entire surface, will delight 
in that element in its natural temperature, sporting like the wild 
duck in its exhilarating waves. Other conditions being favorable, 
he will have a firm, polished surface, glowing and shining as he 
emerges from his daily ablution, proof against atmospheric changes 
and the sudden closing of the pores which causes so much of the 
existing sickness; the pores, those little escape-valves, covering 
minutely and sensitively every portion of the body, so numerous and 
faithful that there can be no opportunity for pent-up poisons if they 
are permitted to perform their office. (See illustration of the pores, 
page 155.) But if the child have not been thus reared, and the pores 
have not been habitually operative, then occasionally the process 
should be stimulated by a more effective mode of procedure. Every 
dwelling should esteem its bath-room as imperative a necessity as 
pantry or earth-closet. It should be so constructed that its appoint- 
ments and various modes of application will invariably open the 
pores and remove the waste particles, by increasing the potency of 
the bath as the obstructions are more obstinate. The provision for 
daily immersions should be such that weekly at least, or more fre- 
quently if required, the temperature can be gradually increased, while 
the body in a perfectly easy, reclining posture, passively macerates 316 
HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
until there is a free perspiration. Then there should be a quick dash 
of cold water, to prevent a sensitiveness to the atmosphere, by calling 
the blood vigorously to the surface through the reactionary effect. 
This, where there is confirmed disease, should be medicated according 
to the needs, as the pores are in a highly receptive condition, and 
readily absorb and take back to the places just vacated by the waste 
thrown off, such properties as are most needed. Then, indeed, is 
the healing " virtue" most readily received. " Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost," said Christ. The "breathing upon them" would have pro- 
duced no effect had they not first been made receptive. 
There may be certain conditions of the cuticle of the body, in 
which this free use of water is not desirable. If there is dread and 
dislike of it, such a condition is undoubtedly indicated, in which case 
the temperature of the room should be gradually raised until the 
pores are relieved by perspiration as before, followed by sponging 
off thoroughly of that which is thrown out, and brisk magnetic rub- 
bing. If the blood is dark, thick, heavy, labored in its circulation, 
this thinning, quickening, refining process should be persistently 
repeated. If the liver and lungs and kidneys are seemingly toiling 
under burdens too heavy for them, and the whole system is continu- 
ally tired before their impeded efforts, then, also, there should be un- 
failing reinforcements through these natural aids. When the cleans- 
ing process is perfectly performed, and the whole being is "swept 
and garnished," there still remains the necessity of supplying what 
may be lacking through previous infringements on natural laws. 
Here is the sedentary person, who, confined largely within four 
walls, sits day after day over desk or needle, the life-sustaining oxy- 
gen so abundantly provided in the atmosphere they have failed to 
" receive." Thus the life-forces are meagre and debilitated. 
No amount of cleansing would meet that peculiar need. Some 
mode of supplying rapidly and profusely that of which they have 
defrauded themselves, of which in all probability they will continue 
to defraud themselves, becomes a great requisite to theix* speedy 
restoration. 
This need has been happily met in the 
COMPRESSED AIR-BATH. 
This great invention, by which the patient can be surrounded by 
an atmosphere enriched manifold in its quantity of oxygen, and in- 
hale at each breath a larger proportion of the precious gas than he* 
would receive in a day, in a close, ill-ventilated room, is to become a HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
317 
powerful ally in the work of restoration. Remember, its necessity 
can be guarded against by sufficient daily care to fully inflate 
the lungs and replenish the system with good outer air, and preven- 
tion is far better than cure. But as a curative to those long de- 
prived by ignorance or indifference, it is invaluable. You are lan- 
guid, nerveless, spiritless, and do not know why. You lack oxygen. 
You take a seat within this ingenious cage, and the air is pumped in 
upon you more and more forcibly till you feel every air-cell in your 
body filled* to its utmost capacity. You go out with springing foot- 
step and eager impulse. 
You thought you were sick, and behold you are well. That con- 
tinual asking for something needed that you call rest lessens, and dis- 
content is satisfied, and you wonder at the change. 
There is another most frequent defrauding of the human system 
of God's munificent provision. We mean the direct rays of the sun. 
Warmth does not supply their place. They have particles peculiar to 
themselves which must take place in the building up of a healthy 
human being. As man is but an epitome of the universe, and levies 
Fig. 95.-The Compressed Air-Bath. 318 
HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
upon all forms and modes of existence to perfect himself, he is so far 
imperfect as he is deprived of whatever belongs to him inherent in 
any of those manifestations of being. The, solar rays are mighty in 
their effects upon all planetary animation. The plant grows pale 
and sickly and dies, unsustained by them ; and joyously, with all its 
tendrils and fibres reaches outward toward them, if the least crevice 
or fissure in its surrounding walls provide it the opportunity. The 
animal exerts all its instinctive power to secure to itself the utmost 
luxuriance of its brightness. But reasoning men and women permit 
pride, and avarice, and indifference to debar them from its vivifying 
blessedness. " Close the blinds tightly, and let fall the curtains, and 
wear the vails, and sit in the shadows I" says Pride, " the sunshine 
will tarnish your complexion." And nature revenges herself by 
faded, lustreless looks, and sallow, cadaverous countenances. " Shut 
out the sunshine and live in the basement!" says Avarice ; " it will 
save the expense of renewing faded carpets and soiled upholstery." 
And nature revenges herself by presenting the huge bills of the 
family physician, with an attendant train of nurses and additional 
outrages. 
Again we contend that an habitual securing of a suitable amount 
of the benefits of the sun's rays upon the system may obviate the ne- 
cessity of remedial agencies in this direction. But as we are daily 
with people as we find them, and conditions as they already exist, we 
find an urgent demand for another mode of bathing, namely, immers- 
ing the entire surface of the body in the life-awakening rays of the 
bright centre of our solar system. 
There should be a chosen retreat so protected from atmospheric 
changes and observation that in the sensuous enjoyment of the melo- 
dious summer insects who swim, and sing, and revel in the brightness 
of an August morning, you could divest yourself of all care, anxiety, 
inharmony, and clothing, and loathe freely in the unobstructed, daz- 
zling ether. (See cut of the Sun-Bath, page 16.) 
The temperature of the Sun-Closet should be a natural blood- 
heat, or so as to produce an agreeable warmth only. In mid-summer 
it should be tempered by ice, or sought at the early hour, otherwise 
the electric forces will be so intensely powerful as to over-charge the 
brain, and produce deleterious effects. A few months of daily expe- 
rience in such a bath would rescue precious lives from the unexplain- 
able decline, which baffles physicians and strikes terror to the soul in 
so many cases of the fair but fragile flowers, reared in luxury of 
fashion, but alas I with poverty of the heaven-ordained, life-sustain- 
ing elements, and restore them to strength, affection, and happiness. HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
319 
EARTH-BATH. 
There is yet another bath, still less understood, but of great effi- 
cacy, the means of which should be provided by every complete insti- 
tution for the restoration of all. Most of you have learned by ex- 
perience how quickly the moistened earth will extract all poison, and 
relieve the pain, when you chance to be stung by a poisonous insect. 
The soil contains such a combination of elements or supplies an anti- 
dote for the excess of any one of 'them, which becomes destructive 
only through its excess. 
In all infectious diseases, all sufferings from malaria, all putrid 
conditions, all offensive odors, every thing that indicates poison in the 
blood, a bath in a rich, generous portion of soil will act as effica- 
ciously and supremely as it does in deodorizing excrementitial impuri- 
ties. It extracts poison, cleanses, and counteracts the most loath- 
some affections. 
For this, also, there should be 
a Closet prepared, of equable 
temperature ; an opportunity to 
take a perfectly easy position- 
sitting is the most favorable, as 
it is not easily shifted-and the 
soil should be arranged to cover 
every position of the body, and 
the position maintained until it 
becomes irksome or fatiguing. 
By a patient persistence in this 
bath, many a poor creature, 
loathing himself and loathed of others year after year, might be 
restored again to normal conditions. 
There are, also, local baths, to which we might particularly call 
the attention. 
Especially the Foot-Bath, cold or cool when there is a tendency 
of the blood to recede from the extremities and oppress the brain. 
These should be taken each night, only water enough to cover the 
feet, continued until reaction produces a warm sensation in the water, 
then briskly rubbed and manipulated until the circulation is fully 
established ; warm when there is inflammatory action about the vitals, 
and immediate relief is the object desired. 
Also Shower-Baths and Douches for extreme cases when a sud- 
den shock is required to restore equilibrium of the system, as in fits, 
falls, wounds, bruises, etc. etc. 
Fig. 96.-Local or Partial Bathing. 320 
HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
These are all preliminary remedial measures, to prepare the sys- 
tem for a receptivity of the electric forces, the spiritual virtue ! The 
first may often seem to succeed without 
the last, and the latter without the for- 
mer ; but the healers should be forti- 
fied to cope with all cases and condi- 
tions, so that the resorting to them and 
submitting to their efforts should be 
equivalent to being made " every whit 
whole." 
And water is nature's grand sol- 
vent. It is the purifier that goes before 
and casts out the resident demons of 
Impurity, Pain, Imbecility, and Disgust, 
that the good angels Ease, Health, 
Strength, and Happiness may take up 
their abode in the beautiful, cleanly 
temple of a perfected human body. " I 
indeed baptize you with water," but 
the baptism of fire needeth to follow, the electric fire that is the life, 
the motor of all animation. Water is the John Baptist, preparing 
the way for the " Holy Ghost " of spirit-forces that is too nearly 
allied to the divine to permeate, and shine through, and etherealize 
the gross and the unclean. The confirmed invalid so loses energy, 
hope, ambition, that the necessary effort to perform this physical 
purification appalls him. Besides, only a very small minority have 
the facilities for such complete ablutions, or the wisdom to employ 
them judiciously ; certainly not 
the resolution to put them into 
practice, and bring them to success- 
ful issue. 
Then, if they are a power for 
good, they are also a power for 
injury, as every light casts its sha- 
dow, and need to be thoroughly un- 
derstood, in all their actions, reac- 
tions, and consequences ! How im- 
portant, then, that there should be 
provided some harmonious, happy 
Home, under the supervision of 
spiritually enlightened, scientific 
minds, where every mode and shade and degree of hygiene help is 
Fig. 97.-Shower-Bath. 
Fig. 98.-One Form of Douche 
USED IN THE INSTITUTE. HOW TO BE RECEPTIVE. 
321 
constantly accessible ; where those too dispirited to " work out their 
own salvation" from suffering and sorrow can be borne in the arms 
of the grandly strong, self-governed ones over the thorny ways of 
reconstruction. For so widely has the human family diverged from 
natural laws, so invariably are they addicted to pernicious habits, 
that the work of regeneration rises from all mythical obscurity to the 
proportions of a stern reality to those who would be perfect; since 
each body needs at least its " full year," to change all the particles 
of which it is composed, for those new ones pure, fresh, clean, that 
may be acquired by perfect habits. 
Do you think we are robbing life of its enjoyments by imposing 
so much of effort, of self-control? Far-from it! True it is that the 
enjoyment of the inebriate is banished for the time, if he abstain 
from his cups ; but it is only to rise to the higher delights of a manly 
sobriety. Thus with every abstinence from the harmful. Its enjoy- 
ments soar as far above all baneful pleasures as the shining heavens 
over-arch the cloud-covered surface of the earth. And it is only 
against such gratifications as react in suffering and loss that we con- 
tend. It is only for such restorative measures as bring the delights 
of all perfect uses of all God's wondrous gifts that we plead, and 
persuade, and propose to prepare. 
The restoration once complete, what a joy is life ! what elasticity 
of spirit 1 what vigor of performance! what zest of appetite ! what 
intensity of enjoyment! what exquisite anticipation ! what sublimity 
of inspiration! what restfulness of soul! 
O Hygeia ! they who will not strive for thee, magnificent God- 
dess ! have no spark of the divine electric fire in their craven souls! 
They who will not fight valiantly to overcome their enemies deserve 
their vassalage, however galled, heart-sore, abject thou leavest them 
to be ! They who will deprive thy kingdom of the pride and glory 
of lordly subjects, at the bidding of sensuous appetite, deserve the 
traitor's gyves and fetters with which they soon are bound. 
Thou sittest in dazzling beauty enthroned upon the saintly heights 
of wisdom, and the sceptre that thou swayest glitters with this magic 
word that unlocketh all thy treasures, " Self-Government." 
John Abernethy. THIRTIETH SECTION. 
THE EXERCISE AND USE OF ALL THE ORGANS AND 
POWERS OF THE HUMAN BEING A PREVENTIVE 
AND CURATIVE OF DISEASE. 
Every organ essential-The systematic use of, essential to harmony-The pores, 
their great function in eliminating effete matter-The electric forces, how 
eliminated and balanced-The brain the key-stone of the royal arch-Toil 
without the glow of satisfaction prostrating-Failure of clergymen in not 
properly exercising and harmoniously balancing every organ and faculty 
dailyA perfectly healthy mother essential to the development of the " com- 
ing man "-Lofty endeavor needed-The model health Institute must com- 
bine an art-gallery, a library, instruction in music, ingenious discussions, and 
logical philosophy-A cultivation of shrubbery or garden-While boating, 
sailing, fishing, sporting, and gymnastic exercises with music should be 
regularly alternated and varied-Far more satisfactory to build wisely than 
to repair-" I have not been well since the birth of my child !" the plaintive 
wail of thousands-A thousand little mounds upon the hill-side-Glowing 
advantages at our Hygienic Home. 
HE inventor and constructor, who is wise in his 
department, has no cog, wheel, spring, or appli- 
ance of any kind in his mechanism but what is a 
necessity to its complete operation. The loss or 
disuse of the least detail in his design destroys the 
harmonious effect of the whole. And that which 
is most elaborate and ingenious in its construction 
always performs an office commensurate with the 
wonders of its construction. If man is an offshoot 
of the great designing power, he but follows the 
law of that power in thus adapting means to ends 
and permitting no waste of forces or material. Hence it is but logi- 
cal to conclude that every capacity, every possibility of our humani- 
ty, which is so fearfully and wonderfully made, must be in harmoni- 
ous action, to preserve its perfect equilibrium. The systematic use 324 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
of every organ and faculty strengthens, increases, and perfects that 
part of the being. We dwelt at length upon the action and use of 
the pores of the surface of the body, in the previous lecture, and re- 
storative measures when they have ceased to be active. But their im- 
perfect action is but the result of some previous defective action of 
other portions of the body. A vigorous exercise of the wonderful 
machinery of muscle and sinew, which enables such subtle and vari- 
ous movements of the entire structure, will bring through the pores 
the waste particles, which, having yielded to the body all their life- 
Fig. 99.-Exercise for the Muscles. 
sustaining elements, are useless, and hence to be cast out in that 
manner. 
The frequent starting of the perspiration is a provision of the 
body which can not fall into disuse without disastrous effect upon the 
healthful conditions. And the vigorous exercise of any of the organs 
or forces, consequently, has a tendency to produce that effect. There- 
fore, if any of them fall into disuse, this free circulation is by just 
so much impeded, and the whole system gradually undermined. It 
is equally true of the circulation of the blood ; also of the electric 
forces. Vigorous exercise of the mental or material machinery of THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
325 
the body sends them tingling to every part of the system, keeping 
up a perfect equilibrium of action, in proportion to the skill mani- 
fested in keeping up an equality of exercise of all the capacity of the 
being. Commencing with the key-stone of the royal arch of mental 
and physical, namely, the brain, every organ which is found in its 
wonderful mechanism (and their number will be greatly increased as 
man becomes enlightened sufficiently to find and locate them), every 
organ, which is but an index of power and capacity, should be called 
Fig. 100.-Organs indicating the various Faculties of the Mind. 
into exercise to the full extent of its possibilities. Take individuali- 
ty and benevolence, for instance, the front and crown of the whole 
structure ; when fully active in their highest manifestations, the 
whole person is thrilled, glowing, moistened, for the time well. A 
weary invalid will rouse from the languid couch to most unusual 
exertions at their kindly call, and find the effort peculiarly beneficial. 
The toil without the glow of satisfaction accompanying it would 
leave them prostrated with fatigue, unless it result from the pleasura- 
ble employment of some other legitimate power. Who has not 326 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
seen the weak and fragile aroused to superhuman exertion at the 
bidding of reverence and marvelousness ? The calling into intense 
action of these organs by religious excitement will account for the 
seeming supernatural powers often attending these conditions. 
It is nature's inexpressible delight in being so far understood and 
believed in as to be trusted with such work as she is conscious of be- 
ing abundantly competent to perform. Equally wonderful is the 
sudden energy, endurance, and might, that feeble persons will exhibit 
in avenging themselves of a great wrong, or destroying some danger- 
ous beast or reptile. 
'Combativeness and destructiveness have the same great pleasure 
in proving their innate capacity. Thus with the social faculties ; 
what delight in an affectionate household, when all the powers of 
every member are in vigorous exercise in preparing the sweet sur- 
prises of the holiday gifts ! No time for sickness, languor, and com- 
plainings there. All are aglow with the loving activity that is an 
" open sesame" to the fair mansion of the goddess Ilygeia ! And if 
the development of one faculty or one group of faculties be thus 
beneficial, what magnificent results may be gained by the full, har- 
monious action of all the capacities of the whole being ! If you 
look into the faces of your fellow-beings and read there the hiero- 
glyphics of discontent, misanthropy, and weariness of life, be assured 
that, consciously or unconsciously, there is within that breast a sense 
of unused powers, of possibilities worthy an immortal being that 
have never been called into manifestation, a knowledge of latent ca- 
pabilities crying out against the injustice of their imprisonment. It 
matters not whether there be one talent or ten in any direction, the 
folded napkin is an instrument of torture that leaves its ever-sensi- 
tive scars upon the whole being. Not more surely do moth and rust 
corrupt materials fallen into disemployment than discontent and con- 
sequent disease seize upon organisms whose every capacity is not 
fully and agreeably called into exercise. 
Neither can the base-brain predominate in activity over the top- 
brain, or the top-brain be exercised to the exclusion of the organs 
below it, without throwing the system out of balance. Nor yet can 
the muscular system be developed to the exclusion of the mentality, 
or the intellectual drafted upon to the neglect of bone, sinew, and 
muscle. And even between the upper and lower limbs the same 
equilibrium should be maintained. 
The curiously underlying and interconnected muscles starting at 
the base of the brain, and extending between, over, and around the 
shoulder-blades and down the arms, may be developed to a wonder- THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
327 
ful degree of power, and the touch of the finger to astonishing pre- 
cision, as mechanics, artists, and various employments demonstrate ; 
but he who neglects to give the equally remarkable muscles of loins, 
and hips, and legs their due proportion of activity, soon suffers in 
some way from this lack of equality, and becomes an unbalanced 
individuality. He whose employment makes heavy demands upon the 
intellect should surround himself early with all social delights, should 
see to it that every faculty not especially called upon by his particu- 
lar profession shall have free scope and a due share of his attentive 
culture. And unfailingly should he make sure that every muscle of 
the body, every nerve and fibre, is so employed each day as to raise 
Fig. 101.-Boating for Health. 
no mutiny in his system, through a sense of injustice. If your clergy 
will observe this admonition, the long vacations will become pre- 
ventives and not cures, and you will not find them broken and debili- 
tated in the prime of life. Let them ride, and walk, and boat, and 
enter into all athletic games that, while calling upon muscle and 
sinew, also stimulate competition and awaken all the organs of the 
brain disused in their clerical endeavors. Let them see to it that 
no faculty remains dormant, and instead of dyspeptic, abnormal 
views of life and its duties and privileges, we shall have a broad, 
divine humanity stimulated into growth by their teachings. 328 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
Equally let your barristers remember the devotional, conscientious 
elements of their being, with a neglect of no law, as principle of 
their nature, with some attention to physical activity, and they will 
escape the usual idiosyncrasies of their class. And the mechanics 
and farmers who shall arouse in them the absolute necessity of culti- 
vating all the mentality, and developing "whatsoever things are 
lovely " while following their avocations ! Will you say that we are 
teaching impracticabilities? That to excel in any direction one must 
be devoted to a specialty ? We answer, that the seeming loss of time 
and concentration is far more than repaid in enduring health, unfail- 
ing energy, and the buoyancy-of mental and physical equilibrium. 
It is as though you bring a solid phalanx of armed soldiers to the 
contest, instead of a scanty number, continually conscious of an un- 
due proportion of heavy burdens. All your powers working together 
will " remove mountains," where the few over-taxed members of the 
body would succumb to mole-hills. 
Never until these principles are acted upon, will your planet ex- 
hibit a race of mothers capable of bequeathing to its progressing 
ages the " coming man" so anxiously desired, the coming manhood 
that will redeem all the dark features of the present. 
The affluent ride and dress and exhibit, the teachers teach, the 
seamstress sews, and the domestic serves, all with one accord seeking 
upon whom they may roll the burdens of their existence and become 
settled. Here and there, thank heaven! a glorious exception, who 
strives earnestly to play upon every string of the golden harp of hu- 
manity intrusted to her, and thus produce a grand, full symphony of 
harmonious existence, instead of the one solitary key-note that grates 
so harshly always heard alone. 
O woman of the nineteenth century ! are you capable of active 
exercise, of deep reasoning, of ingenious constructing, of lofty en- 
deavor, of benevolent enterprise? Fail to use the last and best of 
your capabilities, and you become the helpless, peevish, puny, suffer- 
ing, discontented creature that gives the world slum, and not glorious, 
human, divine creations for the succeeding generation. 
But we are treating of curopathy and the means of restoration 
for those who have not been reared in these hygienic measures. An 
institution, to meet the wants of mankind as they are, to enable the 
evangelists of the new gospel of health to successfully perform their 
mission, should contain facilities for calling into pleasurable action 
such powers of the patient as have been overlooked or neglected, 
and thus, through entering their protest, have produced the disquie- 
tude of disease. THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
329 
For the perceptive faculties there should be an Art-Gallery, paint- 
inn's, and sculpture, and all things curious and instructive ; also every 
facility for cultivating whatever talent is longing to represent itself 
in that direction. 
In the selected band of healers one at least should be qualified to 
enter into sympathy with the naturally artistic, and aid them to the 
full enjoyment of their native gifts. The pleasurable excitement of 
this alone would lead many a crushed genius out from the gloom of 
many maladies into the enjoyment of healthful conditions. 
Then for the reflective faculties, libraries expressing every 
science, all history, the cream of poesy, and the desirable of fiction. 
Apparatuses for illustrating the occult sciences: teachers to explain 
the same. 
But would not this he a school rather than a " medical institute" ? 
Certainly, the great School of Restoration-, the seminary of per- 
fect health, including mental, moral, and physical balance. 
Then the claims of the top-brain should receive their share of 
consideration. Grand anthems of devotion, the sublime of the 
spiritual, and all that can be known of the supermundane, should 
have every advantage for their enjoyment and investigation. Deep 
discussions, and profound utterances, and frank admissions, and 
ingenious doubtings, and subtle reasonings, until all can project their 
interior growth unto the conciousness of others. All can free them- 
selves of the pent-up emotional thought that becomes morbid if 
Fig. 102.-Art-Gallery of the Institution. 330 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
Fig. 103.-Library of the Institution. THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
331 
inert, as standing pools must even stagnate. So from the highest to 
the lowest, free scope for all in their legitimate, discreet, perfected 
uses ; the useful and the agreeable so skillfully combined that the 
agreeable is always overflowing with wisest uses, and the useful is 
always blossoming with highest pleasures. 
In developing the muscular system, this may be equally true. 
The performing of instrumental music calls a large variety of most 
subtle machinery into active exertion, at the same time it is giving 
most exquisite enjoyment to numerous organs of the brain. 
So, cultivating shrubbery, fruits, and flowers brings another 
Fig. 104.-Cultivation of Shrubbery develops Healthy Magnetism. 
range of muscle and fibre into activity ; while the laborer is invigo- 
rated by pure air, he inhales the sweet sunshine in which he bathes, 
the earth's magnetic balm which rises to envelop him, and fragrant 
odors of vegetation in which he revels. 
The long brisk walks needful for the development of most impor- 
tant mechanism in the human structure ; these, too, may be made to 
the abodes of sorrow or of want, combining the best of the brain- 
power with the most important of the bodily, by gratifying benevo- 
lence, conscientiousness, and the social provisions by each hour of 
useful recreation. 332 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
Dancing, so much misdoubted, so much feared, so much forbid- 
den, so much enjoyed, is one of the most effective modes of calling a 
large proportion of mental and physical forces into intense employ- 
ment. Because so intense it is easily 
excessive, and hence the many objec- 
tions to its indulgence. Yet wisely tem- 
pered to the needs and capacities, it is an 
adjunct to all curative measures that 
can by no means be disregarded. Let it 
have its daily place, O ye wise develop- 
ers and healers ! only hold it firmly as 
your servant, and never permit from it 
the least aggression upon pleasurable 
duties. The glow of electric forces, the free opening of the pores, the 
rhythm, the grace, the aesthetic culture, the delight, should by no 
means be lost to society, because, forsooth, like every other good, it 
has also its possibility of evil. Each light must necessarily cast a 
shadow. 
Boating, the peculiar movements of the arms, shoulders, the 
whole body even, occasioned by a skillful manipulation of the oars, 
can not be surpassed in its favorable effects on muscular develop- 
ment. 
Gymnastics should be so understood and practiced that daily 
exercise of the whole body, until the surface of the flesh is moist and 
supple, should be a necessary of hygienic routine. Every thing 
tending to physical development that at the same time pleases, 
exhilarates, and delights, should be comprehended in the details of 
this "city of refuge" from the "avenger" of broken laws, disease. 
Then, O ye puny, half-made sufferers ! hasten therein, and be re- 
constructed ! By the aid of all natural elements, all hygienic habits, 
all transmitted " virtue," and the wisdom of the spirit-worlds, we 
will build you anew. So much for bone, so much for sinew, so much 
for blood, for flesh, for nerve, for mag- 
netism, for electricity, for mentality; 
atom by atom, we will supply all that 
nature has been prevented from gather- 
ing by the bonds under which false hab- 
its and conditions have placed her. 
And ye who have taken upon yourselves the responsibility of 
calling from the great unknown a new individuality, who have 
placed a so finely organized, sensitively endowed, " fearfully made" 
being as yourself, under the stern necessity of living, see to it that 
Fig. 1O5.-Dancing for Health 
Fig. 106.-Boating. THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
333 
you make that life a blessing and not a curse. You question the 
kindness of a creator who ordained a hell for his humanity, and yet 
stamp your progeny with the real hell before they behold the light. 
If, from the ignorance or fatuity of your ancestors, you have nothing 
but hell to bequeath to them, send the mother at the beginning, 
where, under all these life-inspiring and life-perfecting aids, she can 
build up hygienically the new being that will either bless or curse 
her in proportion as she performs her work artistically or otherwise. 
This entire change of surroundings, this entering into a paradise 
Fig. 107.-The Madonna of the Present Age. 
of active repose, this being gladdened, purified, fed, and strengthen- 
ed, through the mysterious accomplishments of gestation, will enable 
the mother to bestow upon the world such a grand creation of human 
beauty, power, and intellect, that she will be entitled to the saluta- 
tion bestowed upon the Madonna of old, " Blessed art thou among 
women I" 
It is far more satisfactory to build wisely than to continually 
repair. And for those whose surroundings are not such as would 
call the highest faculties of the mother into happy exercise, who can 
not aid her scientifically in performing her work for posterity in 
accordance with her absolute obligation to the new life she dares to 334 
THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
summon, such an Institution as we are faintly outlining should be 
hailed as the greatest conceivable blessing. And the little, shapely, 
firm, and polished bodies, well-balanced brains, and happy disposi- 
tions thus developed, would be the redemption of the world. 
" I have not been well since the birth of my child !" is the plain- 
tive wail of thousands. And for each of those thousands, there are 
several thousands more, who suffer through their sufferings, and are 
dragged downward by their descent; and many thousands of little 
mounds upon the hill-side, and in the valley, over which bitterest 
tears have been shed, and where brightest hopes have been buried, 
against the repetition of which nature is continually lifting up 
pleading hands of protest. And yet more fearfully sad, many thou- 
sands in insane retreats, in idiot asylums, in deformed conditions, 
in every position of wretchedness, calling for some mighty embargo 
upon this contraband traffic in human lives. So loud the cry, heaven 
and earth is moved to construct a temple of salvation for the 
mothers, who can be so sustained through those trying duties as to 
find life renewed and youth prolonged, every capacity increased, 
every pleasure heightened, every blessing multiplied an hundred 
fold; and for the fathers, who may glory in blooming matrons and 
sturdy heirs, instead of the waiting feebleness that will overshadow 
the most vigorous manhood ; and for the children, who will not be 
compelled to crawl through the inefficient, misanthropic, suffering 
earth-life, and require reincarnation to gain a respectable spirit-form, 
but who will hail existence as a glorious boon, inheriting Archi- 
medes' lever of electric power, and the fulcrum of a well-balanced 
organization upon which to sustain it. 
A highly impressional motherly medium, or healer, especially 
adapted to this most important department, will be considered indis- 
pensable to Our Hygienic Temple. THE USE OF THE POWERS. 
335 
Fig. 108.-The Gymnasium of the Institution. THIRTY-FIRST SECTION. 
THE SCIENTIFIC SELECTION OF FOOD INDISPENSABLE 
TO HEALTH. 
E HAVE endeavored to impress the fact that all 
debility, pain, uneasiness, discontent, etc., are 
voices issuing from the atoms of conscious being, 
peremptorily calling for elements which have 
failed to reach them in the natural mode. We 
have argued that a normal, or perfectly healthful, 
appetite was a correct guide to the supplying of 
each demand. 
We have also claimed that a most pernicious 
and unnatural habit of living, eating, and drink- 
ing, has so perverted these saving instincts that 
nearly every member of the human family needs a radical recon- 
structing to render it safe to follow his spontaneous appetites. 
As every dose of active medicine creates a demand for its repeti- 
tion by impairing natural powers and rendering artificial forces 
necessary, so every article of unassimilating food creates an unnatu- 
ral desire for more of the same kind by throwing the forces of the 
system into an abnormal condition of active effort to adjust them- 
selves to the superinduced state. 
As, for instance, you excite the stomach to unhealthful activity 
by pepper and mustard and spices, you create a demand for some- 
thing not legitimate to the system to overcome that irritation, and 
you send tea, coffee, ale, or wine to subdue the insurgents. In per- 
forming that office, however, they arouse new demands for other 
foreign aids, to restore the still more disorganized forces. And thus 
on and on ad infinitum. And as this corrupting of the natural 
instincts commences with an infancy already warped by inheriting 
pre-natal conditions, and moves through the daily life with constant- 338 
THE SCIENTIFIC SELECTION OF FOOD 
ly increasing power, there needs to be a scientific guide, through 
rigid analysis, to the actual required elements of the human system, 
looking to the daily diet for their supply. 
We shall endeavor to show you how to select such articles of food 
as shall build up such parts and powers of the body as are most 
deficient, and hence diseased or debilitated. Are you lean, or cold, 
and restless, and nervous? You require such articles of diet as are 
rich in carbon, to supply fuel to the lungs, and heat to the system, 
and fat to the flesh. Only in such proportions, however, as are 
thoroughly digestible, or only what is fully and easily digested, is 
converted to the uses for which it is designed, going out into the 
blood and bone and muscle to meet this demand. 
These carboniferous articles are fat meats, good butter, sugar, 
molasses, corn diet, rice, potatoes, etc. ; that which is most appetizing 
and enjoyable always being selected, of course. 
Have you much call upon the forces of the brain-mentality 
over-taxed, and a resulting nervous debility ? Choose the diet rich 
in phosphates, oat-meal, fish, pearl-barley, beans, peas, milk, etc. 
Are your bowels inactive, failing to perform their duty of regu- 
larly removing the exhausted, decaying substance rejected by blood 
and body, which is poisonous to the whole system if remaining where 
myriad little mouths and inhalers of all the vital organs must be 
continually taking up the decomposing effluvia ? Then before you 
become a victim to that inveterate foe to health, confirmed constipa- 
tion, persist in an abundant diet of all seasonable and to you most 
delicious fruits and vegetables, at whatever painstaking and cost 
they may be required. Let your bread be unbolted wheat-meal, your 
whole diet cooling, coarse, and plain. 
If you have a craving appetite, and by gratifying it are becom- 
ing fleshy, dull, listless, indifferent, deficient in all mental power and 
desirable energy, then select the food less carboniferous and more 
abundant in nitrogen, lean beef, Southern corn, beans, oat-meal, bar- 
ley, fish, cheese, etc. It often occurs that the system needs some of 
the properties of certain articles of food, to supply activity of brain 
and muscles, or some other vital force, while it is unable effectually 
to work up all the accompanying material. Nature, all-bountiful 
and wise, has a most satisfactory provision for this condition. The 
juices of all fruits and some vegetables contain acids which are use- 
ful in eliminating these unneeded and therefore harmful elements. 
And by this same divine provision the desire for these acids is clamo- 
rous when the system is overcharged with alkaline impurities. This 
desire should always be fully gratified. INDISPENSABLE TO HEALTH. 
339 
It is often the case that there will be a temporary disturbance of 
the bowels or other organs of the body, by a free indulgence in 
what is thus ci-aved, and you may suppose that the articles do not 
agree with you. But by a little judicious persistence, you find that 
the very disturbance has wrought out a desirable and a beneficial 
change of condition. 
Different fruits contain acids that variously affect the system, and 
the choice of the appetite indicates which will be best adapted to 
the existing need. These acids are variously denominated malic, 
oxalic, tartaric, citric, etc. Oxalic acid exists in plants rather than 
fruits, and particularly in sorrel. The only plant used at the table 
containing this acid is garden rhubarb, which is well adapted to the 
change of the system, from its wintry needs to the thinner blood and 
more passive of the early warmer months. 
The fact that oxalic acid, as organized in plants, may be whole- 
some, however, should not deceive any one with regard to its poison- 
ous nature when disorganized, or the result of chemical action, as in 
the case of the oxalic acid of the shops. This fact of the entire 
change of the effect of properties as they pass through chemical 
changes, should never be lost sight of, as from ignorance on that point 
arise the gravest dietary mistakes that are constituting the Americans 
a nation of dyspeptics. 
The more nearly a native state is retained in the grains, vegeta- 
bles, and fruits, the more perfect is the adaptation to the varying 
bodily needs. 
Citric acid is especially adapted to the state indefinitely termed 
bilious, as in its intense, penetrating action, it resolves and throws 
out at the pores the clogged, thickened juices that by inactivity of 
the liver have been unhealthfully accumulating. This acid is found 
most abundantly in the lemon, orange, lime, citron, shaddock, and 
some others. It is also in the cranberry, currant, strawberry, rasp- 
berry, cherry, bilberry, and tamarind; but is there modified by an 
equal quantity of malic acid, and is milder and more especially 
adapted to the aid of digestion. 
Tartaric acid is the name applied to the active principle of grapes, 
tamarinds, pine-apples, and mulberries, producing a slightly stimulat- 
ing or tonic effect upon the quickened system, especially favorable in 
its action upon the sluggish, adipose individual who has indulged too 
freely in carbonaceous food. 
The acid more especially developed in apples, termed malic acid, 
prevails in a large assortment of fruits and vegetables, pears, peaches, 
plums, cherries, elderberries, tomatoes, etc. etc. It enters into most 340 
THE SCIENTIFIC SELECTION OF FOOD 
healthful and invigorating combination with all articles of diet, and 
should in some form constitute an important part of every day's food. 
Every family should have a generous supply of malacized fruits 
where the appetite for them can be fully gratified, it being a much 
wiser provision than drugs and medicines, or prepared sweetmeats 
and stimulating foods, which are equally pernicious in their effects. 
Many a spring epidemic and prevailing fever, with accompanying 
grief and bereavement, would be prevented by accepting this most 
friendly provision for our physical needs, and benefiting fully by its 
possibilities. 
Professor Nye, of Cleveland, Ohio, has perfected and patented a 
plan for preserving fruits, vegetables, and all other dietetics, which 
should form a part of the furniture of every house; as by it every 
family can have for the entire year all these acids in their natural 
form of organized fruits and vegetables, perfect in flavor, and luxuri- 
ously healthful. When this preservator is generally understood and 
introduced, people will be induced to return to the primitive use of 
natural food, and thus learn to enjoy in the highest degree the pleas- 
ures of a luxurious table that is at the same time health-promoting, 
and the zest of a perfectly natural appetite. 
The objects to be attained by such a fruit-preserving apparatus 
are simply coldness, dryness, purity, absence of light, sameness of 
temperature, exclusion of oxygen ; and the exercise of scientific 
knowledge and constructive genius will enable many an individual to 
supply himself with this great desideratum of health and enjoyment; 
as, while life is preserved in either animal or vegetable matter, vita] 
law is supreme; but when life ceases, chemical law assumes control, 
as manifested in fermentation or putrefaction, each of which is dis- 
organization, and evolves deleterious elements. 
Hence when the healthful craving for these native acids is an- 
swered by a supply of vinegar, or alcohol, or fermented wines* the 
beneficial results are impaired or counteracted by the chemical 
changes involving decay; while by having such a preservative, 
every man could have in his cellar his wine or cider, from the most 
delicious grapes, apples, pears, peaches, cherries, berries, etc., repre- 
senting a choice of more than fifty different beverages, delicious and 
wholesome, containing in their natural condition all the acids which 
the system requires, without any adulteration with deleterious ele- 
ments. In dwelling so fully upon the natural selection of food, the 
question may arise how to decide which is a normal and what an ab- 
normal craving or desire. We will enable you to ascertain. First 
give the stomach and system an entire rest from all the effects of 
habit by living at least for one week upon some one article of well- INDISPENSABLE TO HEALTH. 
341 
known nutritious properties, such as oat-meal gruel or cakes, or 
cracked wheat, mush, or pearl-barley, giving the appetite abundant 
opportunity to become sufficiently pronounced and keen in its relish 
of that for which it calls when unbiased by the effects of deleterious 
substances. By an occasional discipline of such a nature, the sense 
of taste may be kept perfect in its discriminations, always provided 
there be no urging or unnatural stimulating of the appetite for food. 
Especially should the prospective mother be intent upon an intel- 
ligent understanding and application of these principles, wisely se- 
lecting such a diet as shall give bone and sinew, firm flesh, and glow- 
ing blood, vitality, and intellect to the creation of her love. Let her 
live upon fine flour, rich cakes, highly-dressed puddings, and plenty 
of butter, and she will look upon her child with regret for its feeble, 
sickly appearance, with torture for its sufferings, with constant fears 
of its early loss, which doubtless will be fully realized. 
Mothers especially should realize that sugar and butter have no 
elements at all to supply muscle, bones, or brains, and fine flour has 
very little. While, therefore, all animals in their natural state raise 
their young and bring them perfectly developed to full maturity, a 
perfectly-developed child is a rare exception to the general rule, while 
one half of these precious little ones are ijiourned and wept over in 
death before the age of five years, and a small proportion gain, 
through suffering and constant care, a more or less enfeebled maturi- 
ty. And to every reflecting mind the reason must be obvious: We 
do not supply the life-forces in their natural proportions by a scien- 
tific understanding of the elements which we use as food. 
In connection with food, of course drink should also be consid- 
ered. And another great need of every family, indispensable to 
healthful conditions, is an approved filter for all the water permitted 
to enter the system. Without this, no water can be obtained per- 
fectly pure, as even that which comes from the clouds contains traces 
of mineral, animal, and vegetable matter, while that procured from 
springs and streams is invariably impregnated with salts and mineral 
matters which are the sources of many diseases. And it is the more 
dangerous because its effects may be for a long time unperceived, and 
yet really laying up in store for the individual such diseases as colic, 
numbness, pain in the bones, loins, constipation, fits, cramps, etc. 
Water containing organic matter can be effectually filtered through 
sand and charcoal. Boiling also purifies it, and is a means within the 
command of every individual. It is a good precaution not to drink 
water that has not been boiled. 
These measures of using wholesome food and drink will prepare 
the way for the grandest results of healing. THIRTY-SECOND SECTION. 
HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
BY SIR ASTLEY PASTON COOPER. 
T IS my purpose to treat this subject so fully at some 
time, as to make it impossible for those coming after 
me to have any such thing as hernia to treat of. 
But in a work of this kind I can merely glance 
at the common and recognized forms of the malady, 
with a slight outline of the treatment to be pursued. 
I want, and intend to write, a monograph that 
shall be suitable for children to read, that can even 
be used as a text-book in school, to teach young 
people how they may strengthen and preserve the 
abdominal muscles to prevent the alarmingly preva- 
lent occurrence of this trouble. 
Man as an animal having been evolved from the lower orders of 
animal life, demands a widely different arrangement for the support 
of the internal viscera, owing to his different position in the act of 
locomotion, that is, on two feet and erect, the vertebrae forming a 
very nearly perpendicular line from the head downward. 
Perhaps nature has not made full and sufficient provision for this 
peculiarity of organization in man, or perhaps her plans are not 
perfected yet. It will be an interesting point in this connection to 
study the cases of hernia for a few hundred years back, and see in 
what proportion or ratio they have increased or decreased, when 
compared with the entire population. 
I think the result will be largely in favor of the fact that men are 
less liable to ruptures now than formerly, though it is a trouble far 
too prevalent even now, and one that should be carefully guarded 
against. It would naturally seem that women would be far more 344 
HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
liable to rupture than men, not only from their greater constitutional 
delicacy, but from the terrible strain that the whole system under- 
goes in the process of childbirth, as well as in the increased weight 
and pressure brought to bear upon the abdominal muscles during the 
process of gestation ; but the statistics show that this is not the 
case. 
More than four times as many men as women suffer from this 
trouble, and that too in different countries and climates, and under 
circumstances so various as to prove beyond a doubt that the predis- 
posing causes are universal and not local. In the way of dress, too, 
it would seem that women labored under every disadvantage, wear- 
ing the clothes tight about the waist and heavy about the hips, thus 
pressing down upon the abdomen ; but the compressing of the chest 
lessens the power of the diaphragm, and therefore does not leave so 
much force to be exerted in causing the mus- 
cles in the lumbar region to act. Thus it is 
that even apparent evils will sometimes coun- 
terbalance each other. 
But children, especially boys, should be 
taught that sudden and violent muscular exer- 
tion is liable to produce permanent evils, from 
which they may suffer all their lives. Boys, 
and girls, too, should be taught to exercise reg- 
ularly, and develop every muscle up to its full 
quota of strength, so that all the organs may 
be active and healthy, and the internal viscera firmly and thoroughly 
supported. 
Many a boy, in playing ball, so wrenches and over-exerts himself 
that hernia is either the immediate result or the inevitable conse- 
quence. 
Hundreds of cases of rupture can be traced to the wrestling and 
contending of the play-ground, hundreds more to the immoderate 
and injudicious exercise of the gymnasium. 
Exercise is a good thing, a first-rate method of improving the 
strength and developing the muscular system ; but there is always a 
possibility of making exercise useful, and people very seldom hurt 
themselves with work. 
If the young men who go daily to the gymnasium, or pay from 
one to five dollars per week for the privilege of exercising at a 
"health-lift," should find some poor woman or deserving family, pay 
a dollar or so for coal, and then carry it up three or four flights of 
stairs, they would find their muscles improving, and heart and con- 
Fig. 109. HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
345 
science paying a big interest on the money invested. Or, if in the 
country, they should resolve themselves into a wood-sawing and 
splitting committee, and have, in addition to the village lyceuin, a 
regular system for shoveling snow, breaking roads, and cutting ice 
in the winter ; or repairing the highways, and raising crops for the 
poor in the summer, much needless waste of strength might be pre- 
vented, and much good done, besides the prevention of hernia with 
its attendant evils. 
The two extremes of not exercising enough and exercising too 
violently should be alike guarded against, and constantly increasing 
strength and safety will be the result. 
It may be well to mention here, that a case of hernia is almost 
certain to be accompanied or immediately followed by a weakness 
and loss of power in the sexual organs, often resulting in paralysis 
or atrophy. 
For this reason, if for no other, boys and young men should be 
especially careful about any spasmodic over-exertion. 
Up to the age of twelve, hernia very seldom occurs, but from 
that time onward, it increases in frequency and severity. 
There is, however, a peculiar species of rupture which occurs in 
infancy. This is fully treated in our work on the treatment of 
children, in sickness and health. 
The umbilical rupture, generally occurring soon after birth, is a 
protrusion of some part of the intestines at the navel. This can be 
cured by the careful adjustment of a piece of ivory or other smooth 
substance over the protruding tumor, and fastening it securely, yet 
with as little pressure as possible. 
This sometimes lasts for several months, rarely for a year. Any 
other rupture or apparent tumor in the case of an infant should be 
at once examined by a careful and practiced physician. But after 
this stage, rupture seldom occurs until, as I have already remarked, 
near the age of puberty. 
It should then be carefully guarded against, the system strengthen- 
ed by proper diet, the bowels kept regular and open by fruit and 
other laxative food, as costiveness has been known to produce and 
always aggravates rupture. 
Hernia or rupture is of three kinds, known as reducible, irreduci- 
ble, and strangulated hernia. 
Though the word hernia may be used to signify a protrusion of 
any body or organ from its natural position through an abnormal or 
accidental opening, and may therefore occur in any part of the body, 346 
HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
yet it is by general use restricted to signify protrusions of the 
abdominal viscera. 
Some parts of the abdomen, especially the inguinal and crural 
rings, are weaker, and therefore more liable to hernia than other local 
points. 
Reducible hernia usually shows itself in the form of a soft tumor 
or swelling somewhere about the lower part of the abdomen or 
groins. It occurs more frequently on the right than the left side, 
and shows that the membrane which surrounds and holds the intes- 
tines has broken or separated, thus letting a portion usually of the 
small intestine through the aperture thus formed, so that it rests 
against the outer wall of the abdomen, there causing distention or 
swelling. 
This swelling often originates suddenly, and is subject to change 
of size, being smaller when the patient lies down than when stand- 
ing, and larger after eating heartily, or any violent exertion, as 
going up or down stairs rapidly, lifting, running, or jumping. This 
very changefulness often leads the patient to think there is little or 
no danger, and perhaps that the trouble will cure itself. Vain 
hope I 
When a rupture is first discovered, a truss should be immediately 
procured that will fit lightly and easily, affording the weakened part 
all necessary support without irritation. The patient should lie upon 
his back, and a good magnetic physician should put the protrusion 
carefully and gently back in place. The hand should be held over 
the swelling until a slight perspiration gathers on the surface, then 
the truss should be gently but firmly adjusted, and worn continuous- 
ly, until it produces a feeling of weariness or irritation, only taking 
it off for bathing and rubbing freely, or for magnetic treatment. If 
a rupture is discovered or strongly suspected, and it is not possible 
to procure a truss at once, take a handkerchief or other soft bit of 
cloth, fold it into a thick pad about two inches square, dip it in hot 
water, and place it as hot as can be borne immediately over the 
swelling ; then wring out a towel in cold water, wrap it around the 
person tightly, holding the hot pad in place. Put plenty of dry 
wrapping over this, and lie down quietly. 
The hot pad will relax the muscles and allow the displaced mem- 
branes to return to their proper position, and the cold bandage will 
act as a tonic and strengthener. In mild cases, this has even been 
known to effect a permanent cure if the patient is very careful and 
lies still as much as possible ; but it is better to have a good truss 
neatly and carefully fitted, as it will prove at once a safeguard and 347 
HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
support; and if a cure be possible, nothing will do so much toward 
effecting it as a truss. 
When the intestine has protruded through the opening, and be- 
come so large that it can not readily be returned, the hernia is said to 
be " irreducible." 
In this state, a hollow pad should be fastened to the truss, large 
enough to receive the tumor and yet to press it very slightly. Good 
magnetic treatment will often cure a case of hernia that has been 
considered for years irreducible. It should be treated very gently, 
however, and with the utmost patience and caution. 
The one other form of rupture that we can refer to here is the 
" strangulated rupture." 
This occurs when so much of the intestine has been forced through 
an aperture that it can not be returned, and the opening has contract- 
ed, thus interfering with the circulation as well as the ordinary action 
of the intestines. This causes severe pain, nausea, vomiting, and 
other symptoms of distress. 
The patient should lie down-a hard bed is best-copious warm 
soap-and-water injections should be given, to thoroughly evacuate the 
bowels, warm bricks should be placed at the feet and thighs, to excite 
perspiration, and the fingers should be dexterously and carefully used 
to return the protrusion to its natural position. Good magnetic treat- 
ment is of the utmost importance, in allaying the tendency to inflam- 
mation and reducing the swelling. 
It has been the custom with some physicians to reduce the strength 
and relax the muscles by bleeding the patient until he fainted. Others 
use ether or chloroform to produce utter relaxation of the muscles 
and a species of faintness. 
Both these experiments are dangerous and unnecessary. The 
knife has sometimes been resorted to for dividing the cincture caused 
by the contracted muscles; but this too is an operation attended with 
great risk and often permanent ill effects. 
Patience and presence of mind will do all that needs to be done ; 
but ten, twelve, or even twenty-four hours may be needed to accom- 
plish the desired effect. 
Do not become discouraged, but with the fingers lightly yet firmly 
push back the protruded membrane. Steadiness of nerve and a strong 
magnetic current are the best dependence. A battery can be used to 
advantage when the swelling is reduced; but care must be taken in 
its application, lest it cause the aperture to close too suddenly and 
thus constrict some portion of the membrane that has not already re- 
sumed a normal position and action. 348 
HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
Rupture is sometimes said to be radically cured, when the visible 
tumor has been reduced; but let it be always borne in mind that a 
weakness of the abdomen is an inevitable consequence, and greater 
care and more constant thought must be exercised to guard against 
any future exciting cause of the difficulty. 
It was estimated, at a certain time in France, that of the appa- 
rently healthy men, not in hospitals and not under the care of any 
physician, between the ages of sixty and seventy-five years, one in 
every four suffered from rupture. 
There are various exciting causes which must tend in some degree 
to explain this. The constant use of wine, the unnatural stimulant 
that it supplies, and the consequent nervous excitement and frequent 
over-exertion to which it leads, probably has its effect in that direc- 
tion. 
But a proper course of living and exercise are the best prevent- 
ives, and it is most essential in this class of troubles to bear in mind 
constantly that prevention is better than cure. 
Some physicians apply ice or very cold water to strangulated 
hernia; but I have a dread of the nervous shock which these applica- 
tions cause. I think warm water is better, as tending more to relax 
the constricted ligaments and aid in the return of the whole structure 
to its normal state. 
Sometimes lying upon the back for a few days, and eating very 
little food with as little liquid as possible, will so act upon an appa- 
rently irreducible hernia that it will become reducible and may be re- 
turned to its proper position. Good magnetic treatment will then 
strengthen the whole system, and so make tense and firm the walls of 
the abdomen. 
People liable to rupture or already troubled with it should be 
especially careful about becoming angry or excited; should study 
self-control, and treat themselves tenderly and with great considera- 
tion; should take no stimulants, but eat plain, light food in abun- 
dance, exercise much, but cautiously not violently, and spend as much 
time as possible in a recumbent position. If it be possible to lie down 
during the day, should do so, and make the nights as long and quiet 
as possible. 
Bathe frequently, rub vigorously, especially about the loins, abdo- 
men, and back, and always if practicable have some healthy person 
do the rubbing. If obliged to rub yourself, use a long-handled flesh- 
brush covered with flannel or a bit of lamb-skin with the wool on. 
This will have a tendency to magnetize and strengthen the weak- 
ened ligatures. HERNIA OR RUPTURE. 
349 
The sun-bath should always be resorted to in cases of rupture, 
whether children or adults; and we propose to have at Dr. Stone's 
Institute a set of apparatus constructed on the most radical and 
thoughtful principles, designed especially for the treatment, certain 
relief, and ultimately permanent cure of all cases of rupture. We 
intend to teach children and young people, too, how they may avoid 
the possibility of rupture by living strong, pure, healthful lives. 
The brain should not be cultivated at the expense of the body, 
nor should any organ or set of organs be allowed to act to the detri- 
ment of the whole system or the depletion of the natural forces. 
Sometimes a rupture is caused by a severe fit of coughing; to 
obviate which, people should never allow themselves to cough severe- 
ly ; and a person with a rupture should, upon any indication of a cold 
or irritation of the throat or lungs, provide himself with some simple 
cold inhalant, to be used at any time when needed. 
Lifting heavy bodies should be strictly avoided, and the patient 
should be careful not to wear any clothing that in any way presses 
upon or irritates the protruding tumor. 
There is a case recorded of a boy who, becoming highly excited 
in a game of cricket, struck the ball with such force that he dislocated 
his shoulder and at the same instant caused a rupture of such size and 
severity that it soon became strangulated; mortification set in before 
proper medical assistance could be procured, and there being no one 
present with sufficient knowledge and presence of mind to render the 
necessary treatment of the case, the boy died. 
This and similar cases should warn boys to play with moderation, 
and not to make such excessive exertion as is liable to cripple them 
for all the rest of their lives. 
For rupture or hernia is sure to bring an attendant train of evils, 
that every reasonable being might well dread and shrink from with 
a horror akin to loathing. 
Therefore, boys, as you want to be strong, active men, avoid every 
form of indiscretion and excess in youth. Do not drink stimulants to 
steal away your brains, or exercise immoderately to weaken your 
muscles; but learn to make yourselves useful and reasonable, and in 
that way will you win true health and happiness. THIRTY-THIRD SECTION. 
MEDICINE. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
HE treatment of disease by medication can be traced 
back to very ancient times. 
Frequent allusions are made to it in the writings 
of Moses, when the priests were the physicians ; and 
they doubtless used magnetism, or laying on of 
hands, as a remedial agent even then, though the 
record seems to refer principally to the promoting of 
cleanliness and prevention of contagion. 
Pythagoras, Democritus, Heraclitus, and others 
devoted their lives alike to philosophy and medicine ; 
but Hippocrates was the first who set out with cer- 
tain theoretical principles, which were derived from the generaliza- 
tion of facts and observations, and professed to make these principles 
the basis of practice. 
For several centuries, there was no decided change in the history 
of medicine, until the establishment of the school of Alexandria, 
which was effected by the munificence of the Ptolemies, about three 
hundred years before the Christian era. 
So early as this, there was a strong prejudice against bleeding, 
and the use of many of the powerful poisonous or irritating reme- 
dies. 
This prejudice was largely owing to the teachings of Chrysippus, 
who believed in trusting mainly to diet, hygiene, and the curative 
principle in nature itself. 
The strong, brave souls who have given themselves up to philanthro- 
py have trusted their own intuitions, without need of law or rule. But 
in all ages, there have been many who have studied medicine as a pro- 352 
MEDICINE.-PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
fession and practiced it for a livelihood ; and these, having little or no 
faith in themselves, must have rules and data, a record of the experi- 
ence and observation of others, upon which to base their practice. 
It is for this class of people that what little we know of the sci- 
ence and art of medicine is written out and preserved. 
Andromachus prepared a medicine composed of sixty-four curi- 
ously compounded drugs, and named the Theriaca. It was exten- 
sively and popularly used for a long time. 
Pliny, the naturalist, and Dioscorides gave the best work of their 
lives to the advancement of the art of healing ; but Galen came, with 
clearer insight, quicker and more accurate intuition, and strong, 
swerveless will. The work of other men was dwarfed into compara- 
tive insignificance by the great strides he took in the cure, as if by 
magic, of the most difficult and dangerous cases. 
He had the most perfect faith in the wisdom and power of his 
spirit-guides, especially of yEsculapius, who came to him in dreams. 
Galen was a voluminous writer, as well as a faithful and tireless 
worker. He left books, that are still preserved in the original Greek, 
treating upon the subjects of anatomy, physiology, dietetics, hygiene, 
pathology, diagnosis, pharmacy, materia medica, and therapeutics, in- 
cluding surgery, besides his philosophical and miscellaneous works, 
his commentaries on Hippocrates, etc. He was known to be what is 
now termed a medium ; that is, one who received and promulgated 
the views and teachings of disembodied spirits ; and so great was his 
influence that, though before his time the medical profession was di- 
vided into several sects, who were always disputing -with one another, 
as, for example, the Dogmatic, Empiric, Eclectic, Pneumatic, and 
Episynthetic, yet after his time all these sects were merged in his 
followers. Again, the practice of medicine has become diverted from 
a single channel and divided into different schools. There is some 
natural rivalry between them, but not so much jealousy and ill- 
feeling as when, centuries ago, men were of less universal culture 
and kindliness than they are to-day. 
We have no need now of a Galen to unite the contentious ele- 
ments ; we only want to teach people to use their own reason and 
judgment. 
There is a wide difference between the practice of medicine from 
fifty to one hundred years ago and the most advanced methods and 
theories of to-day. 
To illustrate this, we will give a dissertation upon " Medicine as a 
Science and an Art," embodying the highest and best thoughts that 
the regular or old-school practice has taught. MEDICINE.-PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
353 
We give this principally to show our familiarity with the subject, 
and not as a rule of practice for any one to be guided by in treating 
cases that may come within his care or influence. 
The drugs and chemicals referred to in the so-called " regular 
practice" we do not approve of or use, and we only speak of them 
as being connected with a former system of medication. 
It was not until the ninth century that the works of Hippocrates 
and Galen, as well as those of Aristotle and Plato, were translated 
into Arabic. 
But the Arabian physicians prosecuted their researches and ex- 
periments with such zeal and patience that many valuable discoveries 
and inventions were made by them. 
They introduced to the European medical world the rich gums and 
spices of the East, such as cassia, camphor, myrrh, rhubarb, etc.; and 
they did good work in changing the crude mysteries of alchemy to 
the practical work of chemistry. They taught distillation, and the 
means of metals to their oxides and bases. 
In the fourteenth century, we have the first record of the dissec- 
tion of a human body. Though Galen gives evidence in his writings 
of a good knowledge of anatomy, it was derived from a study of the 
lower animals, as he refers to the fact of having dissected an ape, and 
deriving a knowledge of the human organism from it, which he had 
never before observed in any animal. He mentions, too, that the 
physicians who attended the Emperor Aurelius in his wars against 
the Germans had wonderful opportunities of studying anatomy by 
dissecting the bodies of the barbarians who fell in battle ; and he 
also refers, with evident regret, to the fact that JEsculapius came 
from the world of shadows and bade him remain in Rome, even 
after the emperor had ordered him to attend his royal personage in 
the campaign. It shows plainly that a certain confidence in and re- 
gard for the words of an angel visitant must then have been preva- 
lent, if even the commands of so stern and powerful an emperor 
could be set at naught by them. But in the year 1315, at Bologna, 
an Italian physician and anatomist, named Mondini di Luzzi, publicly 
dissected two human bodies, and demonstrated his teachings to his 
pupils by them. 
After this time, anatomical studies and experiments were carried 
on by dissection of human bodies, always with more or less secrecy, 
because there were no legal means of providing dead bodies for that 
purpose until less than fifty years ago. 
There are, however, good and sufficient means now lawfully made 
and provided for all who wish to study anatomy, and it is well for 354 
MEDICINE.-PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
young people of both sexes to have a good elementary knowledge of 
the human frame and its most frequent troubles and disturbances. 
Anatomy is variously divided. The comparison of the structures 
of different kinds of organic bodies is called comparative anatomy; 
the study and dissection of the lower animals is called zootomy; that 
of plants, phytotomy. Theoretical anatomy is divided into special 
and general phases. General anatomy gives a description of the ele- 
mentary tissues of which the systems and organs of the body are 
composed, and investigates their laws of formation and combination, 
as well as the changes through which they pass in various stages of 
life. Microscopic investigation, experiment, and earnest study have 
also added their quota of information in regard to the elementary 
textures, especially of the nerves. 
Special anatomy treats of the several parts and organs of the 
body, and their relation to or connection with each other. 
This should be studied in connection with physiology, and a good 
knowledge of structural anatomy will be found useful in whatever 
path of life a person may be called to walk. 
We know very well that medicine is not an exact science, and far 
from perfect as an art, and yet we have chosen to treat it as a sci- 
ence and an art, perhaps the more vividly to show its defects. Anato- 
my, physiology, physiognomy, and phrenology should all be carefully 
studied by the student of nature who would understand the tempera- 
mental peculiarities of his patients. 
It is true that much depends upon intuition, and the natural im- 
pressibility that renders one susceptible to impressions ; but all those 
finer spiritual faculties may be improved, and their power intensified, 
by practice and careful observation. 
To the student of medicine we would say, Never forget that the 
body is but the mystical temple wherein the soul dwells, through 
which it manifests itself more or less perfectly. And in all that you 
do for the body, do it with reference to the indwelling spirit, the soul. 
It is the highest mission of humanity to raise and elevate the 
standard of life by which the mind of man is governed, and healthy 
mental power depends very largely upon strong, pure blood and 
active nerves. 
It is difficult for the soul to manifest itself when the body is weak 
and diseased ; especially difficult, almost impossible, for it to reach its 
own highest possibilities of manifestation. Therefore, to the physi- 
cian is given a double charge and trust-that of ministering to the 
body, of relieving or preventing physical pain and suffering, and at 
the same time assisting the struggling spirit to express itself worthily. MEDICINE.-PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. 
355 
This is a branch of medical science not taught in the schools, not 
set down in the books, but worthy of consideration no less. And to 
the student who intends to make a life-work of the healing art, as 
well as to the humanitarian who intends to do all the good in his 
power to all who need his aid, we alike appeal for assistance in this 
work of advancing the spiritual interests and improving the facilities 
by which the work of spiritual expression and communion may go on. 
We call upon all who are interested in the progressive work of the 
world, in the benefiting of humanity, to give to this subject its due 
and proper attention ; to study medicine, not merely as a science and 
an art, but as a means for improving human kind, and making people 
better and happier. 
This is the true mission of the healer, and only in this way can 
the highest good be reached and' wrought.* 
We give this treatise upon the science and art of medicine, not as 
an expression of the highest intuition, but merely as an evidence of 
the best regular teaching which the schools have so far offered, and 
more especially the old or regular school of allopathy, though I be- 
lieve some physicians, and perhaps the whole faculty, repudiate that 
name of allopathic, declaring it to be only a nickname, given by those 
who call themselves homeopathists. 
However, I use the word merely as a distinctive term, without 
wishing to enter into-any discussion as to its significance. 
And in the following pages, what is said in regard to " medicine" 
may be understood to refer entirely to the " old school" or " regular" 
practice, used in conjunction with various drugs and chemicals 
whose efficacy and necessity in the curing of disease were at one time 
fully believed in, even by us who now repudiate them. 
Our object in treating disease is not merely to prolong the life of 
the individual, but to so act with nature as to allow the natural forces 
to reconstruct the diseased or debilitated organs, and thus perpetuate 
and reproduce natural and healthy life. 
With this purpose always in view, we invite the reader's atten- 
tion to the following. THIRTY-FOURTH SECTION. 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN AET. 
EDICINE is at once a Science and an Art. As a 
science, it treats of the causes, symptoms, progress, 
and terminations of disease, with the effects upon 
it of various medicinal agents. As an art, it con- 
sists in the application of the principles thus es- 
tablished to the cure or palliation of disease. 
Practical medicine evidently rests upon a thorough 
knowledge of anatomy and physiology as its only 
and true basis. For how are we to recognize dis- 
eased structure but by being familiar with the 
condition of the various organs in health, and 
minutely tracing every deviation from that standard ? Or how can 
we distinguish perverted function unless we have studied that func- 
tion in its healthy state, and accurately observed every departure 
therefrom ? A familiarity with hygiene, or the means of preserving 
health and preventing disease, is also highly important. 
The Institutes or Principles of medicine treat of those general 
facts and laws which have been observed to apply not only to indi- 
vidual cases or special disorders, but to certain classes of diseases, or 
to disease in general. Under this head are included general patholo- 
gy, which treats of all that pertains to the natural history of disease, 
and therapeutics, which explains the principles that apply to its treat- 
ment. General Pathology may further be subdivided into etiology, 
which treats of the causes of disease; semiology, which sets forth 
its symptoms and progress ; diagnosis, or the means of distinguishing 
diseases apparently similar; and prognosis, or the signs by which we 
judge of their course and probable result. Pathology also includes 
morbid anatomy, or a description of the various lesions and changes 358 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
of structure which occur in the course of or in consequence of dis- 
ease. 
We have spoken, and shall often have occasion to speak, of dis- 
ease. But what precise ideas do we attach to the word; how shall 
we define it ? " Disease," says Andral, " is any derangement whatever 
in the physical or vital laws which govern the economy." Chomel 
defines it to be " a notable alteration in the position or structure of 
parts or in the exercise of one or more functions." Williams's defi- 
nition is substantially that of Chomel, namely, " Disease is a changed 
condition or proportion of function or structure in one or more parts 
of the body." Dr. Symonds (in Library of Practical Medicine) calls 
it " an abnormal condition of, or a deranged action in, the whole or a 
part of a living system." And, again, according to Dr. Wood, "Dis- 
ease may be defined to be a derangement of the organization, or of 
one or more of the functions of the body." It is manifest that all 
these definitions are in substance identical. None of them attempt 
to tell what disease in its essential nature is-in truth, we do not and 
can not know ; but they all attempt to include its sensible phenomena. 
Instead of giving some distinction common to every class and species 
of disease, they point to the grand divisions of classification into 
structural and functional. They also define disease by calling it " a 
derangement" of the system, a departure from the natural or healthy 
state. Health has been defined as the state in which all the organs 
are perfect, and all the functions properly performed; but judged by 
this standard, there are very few healthy men. There are some 
words, such as time, truth, life, of which we have so clear an idea that 
it can not be improved by any definition. So it is with health, the 
gradations between it and disease are almost imperceptible, and it 
may be hard at times to draw the dividing line. On the whole, the 
old definition of Van Swieten is perhaps the best, " Disease is a devia- 
tion from health." 
The various definitions of disease point to the nosological distinc- 
tion of structural and functional diseases. Recent investigations in 
morbid anatomy show that many affections formerly supposed to be 
strictly functional are really attended with organic change. In this 
department, the microscope has already given important aid, and 
much may still be expected from its revelations. Yet the distinction 
seems to be founded in nature, and will probably always be received. 
United as the body is with an immaterial soul, it is but reasonable to 
suppose that affections of that soul-such, for instance, as some of 
those which produce insanity-should run their course without leav- 359 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
ing any trace of physical change behind them. None but an ex- 
treme materialist would always expect to find organic change. 
It has been a question for no little dispute what is the primary 
seat of disease. At one time, the Humoral Pathology prevailed, and 
all disease was referred to derangements of the fluids of the systems. 
Then followed the Solidists, who, overlooking the fluids, supposed the 
solids, especially the nervous system, to be the seat of disease. 
Neither theory was wholly right or wholly wrong; for diseases often 
seem to have a complex seat affecting both solids and fluids, blood 
and nerve. Thus in inflammation, a particular part seems first affect- 
ed, and we have in it heat, pain, redness, and swelling. But soon the 
fibrine of the blood becomes notably increased, and the secretions of 
the organ affected become perverted, and thus the fluids too are de- 
ranged. On the other hand, in typhoid fever and the exanthemata, 
the blood is undoubtedly the part first disordered, but soon we find 
the disease manifesting itself upon the skin or the glands of Peyer. 
Some diseases, as inflammation, cancer, and tubercle, may attack 
almost any one of the tissues of the body. Others, as dropsy, are 
limited to a few. Gout and rheumatism, though they may attack va- 
rious parts of the body, seem to be confined to one anatomical struc- 
ture, namely, the muscular and fibrous tissue. Age, climate, the sea- 
son of the year, and certain unknown conditions of the atmosphere, 
as in epidemics, seem also to have great influence in determining the 
attack upon special organs and structures of the body. But conside- 
rations of this kind come more naturally under the next head, name- 
ly, etiology, which explains the causes that tend to produce disease. 
ETIOLOGY. 
The most general signification of this is, according to its deriva- 
tion (Airt'tz, cause, and Zoyof, narration), the study of causes. In 
this connection, it is used to denote the study of morbific causes, 
that is, of every thing within and without the system which produces 
oi' tends to produce disease. The study is evidently one of no slight 
difficulty, since in the living system so many influences concur in pro- 
ducing a given result that it is not easy to assign their relative share 
of importance to each. Thus, four men shall be exposed to a certain 
morbific cause, as exposure to a draught of cold air; in one it may 
produce catarrh; in another, pneumonia; in a third, diarrhea; while 
the last shall escape unharmed. Here the previous state of the sys- 
tem operates so as to make one and the same cause produce effects 
essentially diverse. Again, many of the causes of disease are of so 360 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
subtle a nature that they elude our most accurate and refined modes 
of investigation. Such are the atmospheric influences which produce 
the various epidemic and endemic diseases. Certainty in a subject so 
obscure and complicated can only be obtained by numerous observa- 
tions and patient induction. Much doubtless remains to reward the 
future investigator in this interesting department. The progress of 
chemistry and microscopy, by enabling us to trace diseases to their 
earliest manifestations and simplest elements, may do much to re- 
veal their real causes. 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
The causes of disease have been variously classified, as into inter- 
nal and external, general and special, mechanical or chemical and 
physiological, proximate and remote, etc. The best-founded division 
seems to be that into the predisposing and exciting. An illustration 
has already been given of several individuals exposed to the same 
immediate cause, and yet no two of them similarly affected. This 
is manifestly owing to the pre-existing state of the system, by which 
one was wholly protected, while in the others the morbific cause fell 
with its full power upon the organs least able to resist it. Thus 
whatever tends to weaken the tone and vigor of the system, or of 
any particular organ, becomes a predisposing cause of disease. The 
exciting cause, on the other hand, is that which is the immediate 
occasion of disease. Thus, a person may have tubercles for a long 
time lying dormant in the lungs, when some severe effort shall at 
once bring on a serious attack of hemoptysis. A highly plethoric 
person may seem to be in the enjoyment of vigorous health, but, 
upon some unusual excitement or exertion, be at once struck down 
with apoplexy. 
A predisposing may by long continuance become an exciting 
cause of disease. A person of vigorous stomach may for a while 
indulge in eating quantities of indigestible food, and with apparent 
impunity. But a continuance of the habit is pretty certain to end 
in confirmed dyspepsia. 
There is a class of mechanical and chemical agents, which, when 
brought in contact with the living body, always produce their special 
effects. Thus, cutting instruments brought in contact with the 
tissues will always divide, caustics and corrosive substances will 
always disintegrate them. Chloroform inhaled into the lungs in 
sufficient quantity will not fail to produce insensibility, nor prussic 361 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
acid, if taken into the stomach, to produce coma and convulsions. 
These and similar agents have been called by Chomel general deter- 
mining causes of disease. Another class of agents, as malaria, the 
virus of small-pox and syphilis, the contagious principles of scarla- 
tina, typhus fever, etc., have been by him denominated specific deter- 
mining causes, as always a specific form of disease. These classes 
may, however, come with propriety under the head of exciting 
causes. 
PREDISPOSING CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
These are generally obscure or almost imperceptible in their mode 
of action, and produce their effects by long-continued subjection to 
their influence. Some of them act upon large masses of people or 
upon the community at large, and others are confined in their opera- 
tion to isolated individual cases. The former may be denominated 
general, the latter special, predisposing causes. 
GENERAL PREDISPOSING CAUSES. 
These are for the most part dependent on certain conditions of 
the atmosphere, or connected with certain local influences. The 
changes in the atmosphere which tend to produce disease, are 
especially those that affect its temperature and the amount of mois- 
ture, with the degree and kind of effluvia it contains. Sudden 
changes of the weather belong rather to the occasional and exciting 
causes of disease. A continued high temperature appears to increase 
the capillary and cutaneous circulation, and thus to create a tendency 
toward erysipelas and the various inflammations of the skin. By im- 
pairing the activity of respiration, it throws an additional burden 
upon the liver, of eliminating carbon from the system, and thus pre- 
disposes to hepatitis and biliary derangements. Heat, when con- 
joined with moisture, by diminishing the insensible perspiration 
increases the secretions from the mucous membranes, and thus pro- 
duces a tendency to affections of the bowels. This cause is especial- 
ly active in the neighborhood of marshes and other moist localities. 
To its influence in a great degree must be attributed the prevalence 
of that scourge of infancy in our country, the summer complaint or 
cholera infantum. 
A cold, dry atmosphere stimulates the activity of the respiration, 
and thus contributes to produce affections of the lungs, as also to 
hemorrhages and deep-seated inflammations generally. The combina- 362 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
tion of cold with moisture, on the other hand, predisposes to chronic 
diseases, as bronchitis, rheumatism, and tuberculosis. 
Air which remains long confined soon becomes impure and deci- 
dedly deleterious. The researches of Fodere {Influence des Agens 
physiques, p. 401) seem to show that the stagnation of air in the 
ravines of Valais is a principal cause of the goitre which there 
prevails. 
Light is an essential stimulus to the health of organized beings. 
Deprivation of it disposes to scurvy and anasarca. The researches 
of Milne-Edwards show that its action is essential to the proper 
development of the body, and that the absence of it tends to pro- 
duce the deformity of scrofulous children. Hildebrand has also 
proved that the withdrawal of light favored the contagion of 
typhus, and we have all had occasion to observe how various pesti- 
lential diseases are generated, or at least greatly aggravated in the 
dark and filthy portions of large cities. 
Seasons.-The registers of death show a remarkable difference 
in the prevalence of diseases at different periods of the year. The 
diseases of winter and spring are more acute, inflammatory, and 
amenable to treatment. Those of autumn are more obstinate, more 
liable to relapse, and oftener leave unpleasant sequel® in their train. 
Localities.-Different climates and localities exert peculiar in- 
fluences upon the human system. Southern climates are afflicted 
with yellow and bilious fevers. At the North, inflammations and 
affections of the lungs arc more frequent. The extreme cold of the 
Arctic regions, with the filthy habits of the inhabitants, conduces to 
the singular violence of contagious diseases when once introduced 
among them. 
City and country life dispose to different species of disease. The 
population of a crowded city, living amidst continual excitement, 
breathing an impure air, and often living on unhealthy food, are 
more subject to neuralgia, phthisis, and the diseases of debility ; 
while the inhabitants of the country are more disposed to acute 
diseases, and chronic affections are comparatively rare. 
A change of residence or of the mode of life, working as it does 
an entire revolution in the system, is a powerful predisposing cause 
of disease. The Irish, who in their own country know little or 
nothing of consumption, are here peculiarly liable, as statistics amply 
prove, to that desolating scourge. The inhabitants of malarious 
districts expose themselves with impunity to influences from which 
the stranger is sure to suffer severely. Persons removing from a 
cold or temperate region to one within the tropics are subject to 363 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
fevers and affections of the liver and bowels. A resort to stimulat- 
ing food or drink, to counteract the enervating effects of heat, 
is sure to aggravate the very troubles it seems to relieve. The only 
protection for persons thus circumstanced seems to be at once to 
adopt the customs, diet, and habits of the country to which they 
have come. Dr. Copland relates that " while traveling in some of 
the most unhealthy parts of intertropical Africa, he met with an 
Englishman who had lived there thirty or forty years in the enjoy- 
ment of perfect health, and who attributed this exemption from 
disease wholly to his having pursued as closely as possible the modes 
of life of the natives, and adopting their diet and beverage. 
Political institutions and the customs of society have a marked 
effect upon the prevalence of certain diseases. In free and highly 
civilized countries, where the intellectual faculties are stimulated to 
the highest degree of activity, and in times of revolution and gene- 
ral excitement, mental alienation is far more common than where 
the people live in idleness and contented ignorance. Our own 
country has gained an unenviable pre-eminence for the prevalence 
of insanity. 
SPECIAL PREDISPOSING CAUSES. 
These are such as act on the individual, rather than upon society 
at large. They include all that he is by birth, education, habits, age, 
sex, circumstances, etc. First of these is hereditary predisposition. 
"The ailments of our parents," says Bailion, "are inherited as well 
a§ their goods, and this sad inheritance is far more surely transmitted 
than any other." It is well known that scrofula, mania, epilepsy, 
gout, asthma, phthisis, rheumatism, etc., run in certain families. 
Sometimes the disease passes over one generation or portion of it, 
but reappears in the next. This proclivity does not appear at birth; 
rarely indeed it is congenital, as may be the case with syphilis or 
small-pox, but generally manifests itself in the process of growth 
and development. Scrofula and epilepsy appear in infancy, phthisis 
in youth, gout and gravel in middle life, and apoplexy still later. 
Age is another circumstance which has an important influence on 
the development of disease. Strophulus, hydrocephalus, and the af- 
fections which accompany dentition, mark the period of infancy. 
During childhood, or the interval from infancy to puberty, nature is 
especially occupied in developing the nervous system and apparatus 
of digestion. Hence we now find meningitis, epilepsy, chorea, disor- 364 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
dered bowels, and verminous affections. This, too, is the period for 
the prevalence of hooping-cough, croup, and the various exanthe- 
mata. Puberty is peculiarly liable, especially in females, to derange- 
ments of the nervous and vascular systems. During middle life, 
fevers and inflammations are common. Then, too, are laid the foun- 
dations for various chronic diseases. In old age, all the vital powers 
are subject to slow decay. The effects of previous neglect of the 
laws of health now become manifest. Dyspepsia, gout, organic dis- 
eases of the stomach and liver, ossification of the arteries and the 
valves of the heart, urinary complaints, with cerebral hemorrhage 
and softening of the brain, now appear. Some of these, as apo- 
plexy, scirrhus, and valvular disease, are almost limited to the period 
of advanced life, while typhoid fevei* rarely occurs after the age of 
fifty-five. 
Sex.-To most diseases both sexes are equally liable. Her pecu- 
liar organization exposes the female to affections of the uterus and 
derangements of the catamenia. Besides these, she is especially sub- 
ject to tubercular phthisis, cancer of the breast, chorea, hysteria, 
neuralgia, and indeed to the whole catalogue of nervous affections. 
Men, on the other hand, are more exposed to accidents and those 
complaints which are the direct effects of exposure to atmospheric 
changes, as rheumatism and inflammations, especially those of the 
deep-seated organs. 
Temperament, which is characterized by a predominance or de- 
ficiency of some function, predisposes to various diseases and also 
modifies them when developed. Thus the sanguine temperament 
which is marked by activity of the circulatory system and abundance 
of red blood, disposes to hemorrhages and acute inflammations. 
The bilious temperament, which is characterized by sluggishness of 
the biliary and digestive apparatus, conduces to diarrhea, hypochon- 
dria, inflammations of the membranes and organic degeneration. 
The lymphatic temperament, which is accompanied by a languid cir- 
culation and excess of white blood-corpuscles, disposes to scrofula, 
chronic discharges, and dropsy. The whole system is marked by 
languor and sluggishness. Diseases here tend to assume a chronic 
form. The nervous temperament is just the opposite of this, and is 
marked by irritability and excessive activity both of mind and body, 
but without corresponding powers of endurance. It predisposes to 
the neuroses, and, in other diseases, to delirium and disturbance of 
the functions of the brain. It is seldom that a perfect example of 
either of the temperaments is to be found. They are more commonly 
mixed and blended in every possible proportion. According, how- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
365 
ever, as each of the functions before mentioned predominates, will be 
the respective proclivity toward disease. 
Different occupations and modes of living create, as we might ex- 
pect, tendencies toward different diseases. Thus, literary men, clerks, 
and others whose habits are sedentary, are often subject to headaches, 
dyspepsia, and hemorrhoids. Singers and public speakers frequent- 
ly suffer from affections of the throat and larynx. 
The habitual use of animal food conduces to plethora and inflam- 
mation. The continued use of a poor, impoverishing diet is pro- 
ductive of scrofula, phthisis, and nervous derangements. Poverty, 
with want and anxiety which often attend upon it, is a fruitful cause 
of insanity, low fevers, and all the diseases which accompany or pro- 
ceed from debility. Indulgence in intoxicating drinks, if long con- 
tinued, destroys the tone of the digestive organs, deranges the liver, 
and over-stimulates the brain. The vigor and energy of the consti- 
tution are ruined, and the drunkard finally perishes, perhaps, from 
causes which would have been harmless to other men. 
Breathing an impure atmosphere is another fruitful source of dis- 
ease. It is only necessary to contrast for a moment the pale, cachectic 
appearance of the inhabitants of a crowded city with the ruddy coun- 
tenance and sturdy frame of the mountaineer to be convinced of the 
influence of this circumstance. There is no more powerful cause of 
all the diseases which arise from or depend upon debility and im- 
paired nutrition. 
Previous disease, apart from its general effect of impairing the 
constitution, often has a tendency to reproduce itself. An inflamed 
organ is often so far injured in structure or in function that it is 
strongly predisposed again to take on the same diseased action. The 
morbid products of disease also are always prone, upon the slightest 
exciting cause, to degeneration. Disease of the heart, by deranging 
the circulation, produces congestions of the veins and viscera, with a 
tendency to dropsy and hemorrhage. Rheumatism, gout, gravel, 
hysteria, and epilepsy are extremely apt to recur. This is probably 
dependent on some constitutional cause, some change produced by 
the first attack, or some imperfection in the organs of assimilation or 
secretion. The tendency of tubercular and cancerous deposits again 
and again to return is doubtless owing to the same cause. 
Excessive mental or physical exertion renders the system pecu- 
liarly susceptible to every morbific influence. It to the influence of 
these be added the depressing tendency of care and anxiety with loss 
of sleep, the nervous system becomes extremely irritable and is liable 
to sink from distinct disease. The depressing power of certain pas- 366 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
sions of the mind, as fear, grief, and despondency, is strikingly shown 
in the increased sickness and mortality which often pervades an army 
after a defeat or while retreating before a superior enemy. During 
the prevalence of epidemic and contagious diseases, it is well known 
that those who are the most timid and cautious are often the first to 
suffer. So, too, persons who are especially fearful of certain affec- 
tions, as phthisis and cancer, frequently fall victims to the diseases 
which they had so much feared. 
The effects of dress upon the system may be resolved into those 
of heat, cold, and compression. Of the two former we have spoken, 
under the head of general predisposing causes. The third deserves a 
moment's consideration. Tight cravats, by compressing the veins of 
the neck, interfere with the return of the blood from the head, and 
thus may induce epistaxis, disordered vision, and cerebral hemor- 
rhage. Small shoes deform the feet, produce corns and bunions, and 
by impeding the circulation may bring on in those predisposed at- 
tacks of gout. Still more serious are the effects of tight elastic cor- 
sets. They compress the stomach and liver, and thus interfere with 
the process of digestion; they prevent the descent of the diaphragm 
and diminish the expansion of the lungs ; they press down the bowels 
and viscera, and thus give rise to more prolapsus and other uterine 
derangement than all the abdominal supporters ever invented can 
remedy. 
Finally, pregnancy and the puerperal state deserve distinct notice 
as predisposing causes of disease. At this period, the female is pecu- 
liarly subject to vascular fullness and derangements of the nervous 
system and digestive apparatus. Parturition disposes to inflamma- 
tion of the mammae, peritoneum, uterus and its appendages. Anaemia, 
usually quite curable, we have found, when occurring at this period, 
singularly intractable and often fatal. 
EXCITING CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
These may be subdivided into the general, which may, according 
to circumstances, produce various forms of disease, and the specific, 
which are associated with some particular affection. It will be evi- 
dent that several of those already considered under the head of pre- 
disposing causes may, when long continued or when sudden and ener- 
getic in their action, become immediate causes of disease. 
Mechanical Causes.-These are endless. A few examples only 
will be given. Most of the accidents which fall under the care of the 367 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
surgeon are produced in this way. Such too are the obstructions 
caused by the presence of foreign bodies in the windpipe, esophagus, 
bowels, or urethra. A stone in the ureters or bladder and a gall-stone 
in the biliary ducts may mechanically excite an intense irritation. 
Minute particles of stone, iron, cotton, etc., often bring on disease of 
the air-passages in the workmen employed upon them. 
Chemical Causes.-These, too, are exceedingly numerous. Many 
of them are but partially understood, as our knowledge of animal 
chemistry and the various processes constantly going on in the econo- 
my is as yet very imperfect. To this head is to be referred the ac- 
tion of the acids, alkalies, and salts; also of heated metals, boiling 
liquids, and caustics. Some of these, as the preparations of lead, 
arsenic, and corrosive sublimate, from their producing serious effects 
when taken in minute quantities, are usually ranked as poisons. 
These may act in two ways; either by disintegrating the coats of the 
stomach or other tissues with which they are brought in contact, or 
by acting through the medium of the blood upon the nervous sys- 
tem. Animal and vegetable substances in a state of putrefaction 
generate a poison which seems to act by altering the constitution or 
impairing the vitality of the blood. Thus trifling dissecting wounds 
are, as is well known, attended by most serious results. Meat and 
vegetables brought to market in a state of incipient decomposition 
often suddenly produce, when eaten, alarming symptoms. The same 
poison may also be introduced into the system through the lungs, as 
by the pestilential air of large and crowded hospitals or besieged 
cities. All these diseases are of a typhoid or adynamic character, 
and usually attended by a fearful mortality. Somewhat similar to 
these are the effects produced by the bite or sting of venomous rep- 
tiles. Retention of the urine or feces also sometimes appears to give 
rise to a decomposition of those excretions, and the evolution of a 
poison which speedily deteriorates the blood, and diseases, if it does 
not destroy, the whole system. 
Sudden Changes of Temperature.-The general effects of heat 
and cold, when long continued, in predisposing to disease, have 
already been considered. They also act when in extreme degree as 
direct excitants of disease. A temperature above 212° Fahrenheit, if 
continued any great length of time, will of itself destroy life. In a 
lesser degree than 35° cold benumbs the sensibility, contracts the 
solids, and diminishes the capillary circulation. When the whole sur- 
face of the body is exposed, the blood is forced inward upon the in- 
ternal organs, the action of the heart is impeded, the innervation 
diminished, and unless relief is speedily afforded death may ensue. 368 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
In a still less degree cold arrests the cutaneous exhalation, impairs the 
innervation, and by forcing the blood upon the internal organs tends 
to produce in them congestion or inflammation. The organ nearest 
the part exposed, or the one that is weakest and least able to resist 
morbific influences, usually suffers most. Thus the air-passages, 
lungs, and large joints are the parts most frequently affected by colds. 
But it is when the body is freely perspiring and the whole system 
relaxed that sudden exposure to cold is most dangerous. The capil- 
laries being all relaxed, the effect of cold in driving inward the blood 
is then most seriously felt. The cutaneous exhalation is at once ar- 
rested, the entire system chilled and depressed, and the secretions 
generally suspended. A feverish reaction at length, and then the 
organ most intimately associated and sympathizing with the part ex- 
posed or most debilitated by previous influences is very liable to be- 
come inflamed. 
Some have attempted to explain the modus operands of cold by 
supposing it to act upon the nerves of the part exposed, and through 
them upon the central nervous system. A difficulty in the way of 
this explanation seems to be, the effect produced is not at all propor- 
tioned to the sensation which it excites. The severest colds are often 
taken unconsciously. A person may suffer a degree of cold actually 
benumbing without any bad result. But let him get his feet damp 
and chilled, or let him when perspiring be exposed to a draught of 
cold air, and though there may be but slight uncomfortable feeling at 
the time, he is pretty sure to suffer for his imprudence. 
Heat.-This agent acts more frequently as a predisposing than as 
an exciting cause of disease. A very high temperature rapidly ex- 
hausts the nervous energy, depresses all the functions, and finally 
brings on collapse. This seems to be the true explanation of the 
phenomena of sun-stroke, since experience has fully shown that the 
stimulating plan of treatment in cases of this character is generally 
the most effectual. A less degree of heat stimulates the circulation 
and tends to produce a state of feverish excitement. In a hot-air or 
vapor-bath the pulse is quickened, the skin becomes full and red, the 
head hot and throbbing, until the excessive heat is reduced by copi- 
ous perspiration. In warm climates, inflammations of the eyes and 
skin are very common. 
There are several other agencies, as errors in diet, excessive ha- 
bitual discharges, sudden suppression of discharges, loss of blood, 
fatigue, mental emotions, fear, anger, etc., which may act as exciting 
causes of disease: but most of them have been discussed under a 
previous head. 369 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
SPECIFIC CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
By specific causes we mean, not only those which produce certain 
distinct forms of disease, but those which are the only causes of 
those affections. Some diseases, however, which are ordinarily propa- 
gated by contagation, do sometimes appear to be generated sponta- 
neously. Syphilis, for instance, which, in the immense majority of 
cases, is spread by direct contact, is believed by many authorities to 
be capable under certain circumstances of being produced de novo. 
The diseases induced by this class of causes are denominated 
endemic, epidemic, and contagious. Endemic, from ev, among, and 
dr][iog, the people, are those which are produced by influences strictly 
local, and are generally limited to certain seasons and localities. In 
marked contrast to these are the epidemics, from ettl, upon, and 
people, which may occur at any time, and visit any place, traveling 
often with fearful speed from city to city, and country to country. 
Both seem to depend upon certain atmospheric influences, sometimes 
limited, sometimes wide-spread in their operation, obscure in their 
nature, and frequently baffling the most rigid investigation as to> 
their origin and primal cause. 
Endemic diseases may, under certain circumstances, become epi- 
demic. Thus the plague seems to originate in Upper Egypt, but 
sometimes sweeps over the world like a pestilence. India is the 
home and birthplace of cholera, but in epidemics it knows no country 
nor limits. 
Endemic Diseases.-These are permanent in the same place or 
recur at regular intervals. Among these may be enumerated goitre 
or hypertrophy of the thyroid gland, often accompanied by mental 
imbecility, an affection common in the valleys of Switzerland and 
the adjoining countries; also, elephantiasis in the West-Indies, 
ophthalmia in Egypt, plica polonica in Poland, and cholera infantum 
in the United States. 
But the largest and most important class of endemics are the 
diseases dependent on malaria. In countries where the temperature, 
for any considerable portion of the year, is above 80° Fahr., the 
neighborhoods of streams, marshes, and other moist, damp localities 
are apt to be infested with diseases marked by a peculiarly periodical 
character. This consists of a chill, ending in fever, and followed by 
a more or less complete remission. And this attack returns regularly 
at certain intervals. 
It is obviously impossible to give any satisfactory explanation 370 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
how or why malaria produces the effects it unquestionably does. 
We can only observe its laws and mode of operation. Now, 
abundant experience shows that the essential conditions of the gene- 
ration and prevalence of miasmata are a protracted high temperature, 
moisture, and the presence of vegetable decomposition. Malarious 
diseases seldom appear beyond the 56th degree of latitude, and they 
increase in virulence as we approach the equator. They also rarely 
occur at a temperature below 60° Fahr., even under circumstances 
otherwise favorable. In New-England, although a few days of every 
summer are intensely hot, the warm season is too short to produce them. 
In regions where they do occur, they seldom prevail till late in the 
season, and arc hence often termed autumnal fevers. 
A certain degree of moisture seems essential to the production of 
marsh miasmi, yet excessive rains act rather as a preventive. At 
such times it has been noticed that high grounds which ordinarily 
escape are more liable to suffer, while low lands are unusually 
healthy. It is after heavy rains, when a warm season with rapid 
evaporation and exhalation succeeds, that malarious diseases are most 
dangerous. The drawing off of an old mill-pond or reservoir during 
the summer is pretty sure to be followed by the evolution of mias- 
mata. 
The presence of vegetable decomposition seems to be another 
requisite to the production of malarious diseases. They occur most 
frequently in the neighborhood of marshes and swamps where vege- 
table matter has been accumulating for centuries. The deltas and 
banks of sluggish streams in tropical climates are sure to be infested 
with them. The same cause may explain their occurring late in the 
season when vegetable life has run its course and its various organic 
products are ready to be resolved into their primitive elements. To 
the same principle may be referred the virulence of miasmata in 
newly-settled countries. When the primitive forests are first cut off, 
and a virgin soil turned up to the rays of a burning sun, it is evident 
there must be a rapid decomposition of the organic elements in which 
such a soil must abound. With the progress of cultivation, as the 
land becomes drained and the soil covered by a new vegetation, 
malarious diseases gradually diminish or disappear. 
It seems to be a property of malaria that it seldom rises much 
above the surface of the ground. Thus the lodgers upon the lower 
floor of a house will not unfrequently suffer, while the occupants of 
the upper stories escape. The exhalation seems to resemble a fog 
which creeps along the surface of the ground, gathering over marshes 
and along the banks of streams. Like fogs, too, the malaria seems 371 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
to prevail in the early hours of morning and after the dews at night. 
Hence an important rule of prevention is to avoid, as far as possible, 
exposure at such hours. During the middle of the night, the miasm 
is peculiarly dangerous, especially during sleep, when the power of 
resisting every noxious agent seems to be diminished. Hence, armies 
in line of march or encamping in a malarious district, sleeping, as 
they must, in tents and on the ground, often suffer severely. 
Winds, too, seem to exert an important influence upon the preva- 
lence of miasm, often carrying it with them to a considerable dis- 
tance from the place where it originates. On the other hand, hills 
and trees seem to obstruct its progress. Thus mountains, perhaps 
by their affinity for vapors and exhalations, often protect regions 
beyond them. A grove of trees along the banks of a stream will 
sometimes check the spread of the malarious poison, and it has 
happened that a forest or an avenue, cut away for improving the 
prospect, has rendered a place previously healthy uninhabitable. 
We have spoken of malaria, the conditions of its origin, and the 
manner in which it is disseminated. But what in its essential nature 
is it, and how does it act upon the human system ? These are 
questions to which, in the present state of our knowledge upon the 
subject, we are not prepared to give a definite answer. Various 
theories have been proposed to account for its phenomena. The 
most plausible is that of Varro, revived in modern times by Dr. Hol- 
land, which attributes these effects to the existence of innumerable 
microscopic animalcula, and that of Dr. John K. Mitchell, which 
supposes them to be caused by the spores of cryptogamous plants. 
Both those theories account for many of the phenomena of malaria, 
but both are Jacking in positive evidence amounting to proof. Tn 
the present state of the case, they can only be regarded as elegant 
hypotheses. All that we really know is this, that in the circum- 
stances and under the conditions already enumerated a certain some- 
thing, called marsh miasm, is produced, which is capable of exciting 
in the human system the phenomena of intermittent and remittent 
fevers. 
Miasmata probably act upon the system by being taken into the 
lungs in the process of respiration. The air, Dr. Copland remarks, 
undergoes upon the respiratory surfaces a kind of digestion, certain 
elements entering into the circulation, and certain others given off, 
which have served the purposes of the economy. This author suppo- 
ses that miasmata produce their effect by acting upon the organic 
nerves distributed to the lungs and bronchi. It seems, however, a more 
probable explanation to suppose that it is absorbed into the blood, 372 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
and thus brought to act directly upon the central nervous system. 
A strong argument in favor of the last supposition is the fact that 
the blood undergoes certain marked changes in the class of diseases 
now under consideration. 
EPIDEMIC CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
The name endemic has been applied to the ordinary diseases of a 
region or place which apparently depend on strictly local causes. In 
this sense, typhoid fever might be called the endemic of New-Eng- 
land. But aside from these, there are occasional visitations of 
disease, prevailing over more or less extensive sections of country, 
and of a character strikingly different. These usually occur without 
any obvious cause, affect many individuals at the same time and 
place, continue for an uncertain period, and then disappear to recur 
perhaps in a few months, perhaps not for many years. To such com- 
plaints the name of epidemic has been applied, since like a blight 
they come at once upon a whole people. 
Some of this class of diseases may be traced to causes already men- 
tioned, as cold, heat, moisture, sudden changes of temperature, etc. 
Thus, catarrhs, croup, and rheumatism abound during the damp, chill- 
ing east winds of spring, diarrhea and dysentery in the latter part of 
summer. But occasionally new forms of disease occur, or old ones 
assume a new and formidable aspect, without our being able to 
ascribe them to any assignable cause. In this way, influenza may 
appear at any season and rage for a while, and then as mysteriously 
disappear. So diseases which are ordinarily propagated by infection, 
as typhus fever, small-pox, measles, etc., suddenly occur and spread 
with a rapidity and to an extent which can not be explained by the 
causes to which they are ordinarily due. Such has been the case 
from the earliest records of medicine, and indeed of history. 
Various have been the attempts to account for and explain; but after 
all the study and speculation there has been upon the subject, it 
may perhaps be truly said that we know as little of their real causes 
as did Hippocrates. 
But though we know nothing of the origin and essential nature 
of epidemic diseases, we can, as in the case of endemics, trace their 
effects and study the laws according to which they act. One pecu- 
liarity of this class of diseases is that they often give, to a greater 
or less extent, their own character to other diseases prevailing at the 
same time, and indeed sometimes for a long while subsequently. 
Thus, when cholera or dysentery prevail epidemically, all other MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
373 
affections of the stomach and bowels have a strong tendency to run 
into them. When affections of a typhoid character are very com- 
mon, even inflammations take on that general type, and no longer 
admit of free depletion. This general tendency of disease to assume 
a certain type, often remains long after the epidemic which imparted 
it has passed away. 
The consideration of the medical constitution or diathesis of a 
season is often a point of great practical importance. For instance, 
puerperal fever is ordinarily an inflammation of the peritoneum, or 
of some of the appendages of the uterus, and in such cases the 
treatment hitherto has been unsparing depletion. But, according to 
the authority of many close observers and men of great experience, 
it sometimes, with the same general symptoms, takes on a malignant 
form, in which bleeding is speedily fatal. 
Erysipelas and scarlatina are also diseases which vary extremely 
in their virulence, degree of danger, and proper treatment. Pneu- 
monia and dysentery, affections of a marked inflammatory character, 
and ordinarily requiring vigorous antiphlogistic treatment, at times 
assume a typhoid type, and require a cautious resort to stimulants. 
This epidemic tendency or diathesis seems to change after a time, 
and to be succeeded by another and another. At one time, inflamma- 
tions of the lungs or bowels are accompanied by marked derange- 
ment of the liver, and are hence called bilious dysentery or pneumo- 
nia respectively. Again the tendency will be for these complaints 
to be complicated with affections of the brain. A consideration of 
these facts may explain why it is that remedies which are at one 
time used and relied on, come afterward to be discarded. 
Another peculiarity of epidemics is, that they are most virulent 
at the outset, and as time goes on, they gradually decline, or, as it 
were, wear themselves out. At first, every plan of treatment fre- 
quently seems useless. This may be partly explained by supposing 
that those most predisposed are first attacked, while afterward the 
disease assails others who are more capable of resisting its influence. 
Be this as it may, the fact is undoubted, and in consequence remedies 
and modes of treatment used during the decline of the disease often 
acquire, in this way, a reputation entirely unwarranted. 
The prevalence of epidemics is sometimes owing to ordinary 
causes of disease. Thus, typhus fever often follows famine like a 
destroying pestilence. So dysentery, in the latter part of summer, is 
almost sure to follow in its malignant form upon the trail of a large 
army. Persons suffering from general causes of debility are most 
liable to suffer from epidemic diseases. It has been noticed, during 374 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
the prevalence of cholera, that a larger proportion of drunkards 
become its victims than of other classes in the community. In in- 
fluenza, the old and feeble are the first, and frequently the only ones 
who fall, and it has been already remarked that in every epidemic 
those who are most fearful of the disease are most likely to contract 
it. These circumstances have all been enumerated among the pre- 
disposing causes of disease. 
We have spoken of an epidemic tendency sometimes impressed 
for a series of years upon diseases, and that this after a while seems 
to decline, and is succeeded by a very different tendency. Thus in 
the time of Dr. Rush, and the early part of this century, fevers and 
other complaints assumed an inflammatory type, and depletion was 
carrid to an extent which would now be thought hazardous. A 
typhoid character has since been so strongly impressed upon disease 
that it has led some physicians almost wholly to abjure the lancet. 
Some observers have thought that they were able to discover a kind 
of periodicity in the return of epidemics and epidemic tendencies. 
And some have even gone so far as to predict the reappearance of 
certain diseases. More extended observations, however, seem to be 
requisite to settle this point. 
INFECTION AND CONTAGION. 
These terms are often used indiscriminately. In strictness, how- 
ever, the former applies to the communication of disease by a certain 
effluvia, as is the case with scarlatina and typhus fever ; the latter, to 
those which are propagated only by direct contact, as porrigo or 
gonorrhoea. Small-pox, on the other hand, seems capable of trans- 
mission in either mode. The whole class of diseases have the 
peculiar power each of reproducing themselves in those who, under 
favoring circumstances, are brought within their sphere of influence. 
The contagion of small-pox, porrigo, gonorrhoea, etc., always gives 
rise to the same affection. The modes in which these diseases are 
communicated are various. Small-pox, syphilis, etc., are transmitted 
by bringing a fluid which contains their specific virus in contact with 
the abraded surface of the skin, or with one of the mucous mem- 
branes. In other affections, as measles, typhus, etc., the contagious 
principle, which in this case seems to be seriform, and an exhalation 
from the bodies of the sick, is taken into the lungs, and thus probably 
absorbed into the blood. Scabies and porrigo are communicated by 
direct contact. MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
375 
The proof that strictly contagious diseases are directly transmit- 
ted from one individual to another is easy and convincing. Inocula- 
tion of a healthy individual with the specific virus is a ready and 
certain test. That infectious diseases are also communicated is in- 
ferred from the fact that those who are brought in contact or con- 
nection with the sick are far more likely to be affected than others. 
This proof is far from demonstrative, nor have we any certain test, 
when a disease is prevailing epidemically in a community, to deter- 
mine how far it is infectious. Accordingly there has been no small 
dispute among medical men upon this subject, some almost entirely 
denying that any disease can be transmitted in this manner, some 
asserting the contagiousness of cholera, dysentery, yellow and 
typhoid fevers. These questions have had an important practical 
bearing upon quarantine regulations, the distribution of patients in 
hospitals, etc. 
There is no doubt that many diseases ordinarily propagated by 
contagion may be at times produced by other causes, and, when pro- 
duced, extend themselves in the usual way. On the other hand, it 
seems highly probable that diseases not ordinarily contagious may, 
under certain circumstances, become so. Single cases of typhus, an 
affection which is beyond all question infectious, seldom communi- 
cate the disease to the attendants where proper precautions are 
observed. It is where many patients are crowded together in close 
and ill-ventilated rooms, that there is most danger of communicat- 
ing the disease. A new source of contagion seems to be generated. 
Erysipelas, cholera, dysentery, etc., may perhaps, under these condi- 
tions, become infectious. Typhoid fever, as it exists at Paris and in 
our country, is not supposed to be communicable. Yet it is said that 
there is abundant evidence of its being so in the villages and com- 
munes of France. 
A person is exposed to an infectious disease, but it is several days 
or weeks before any symptoms of it manifest themselves. This is 
called the period of incubation. During this time, the disease appears 
to be in the system, and working there. Liebig supposes that the 
specific virus acts like a ferment upon the blood, modifying all its 
elements and relations, chemical and vital. Other observers account 
for the fact by supposing the virus to contain the ova of animal- 
cula or vegetable germs which thus find a lodgment in the body, 
and during the period of incubation multiply and develop themselves 
into parasitic insects or microscopic plants, and that these constitute 
the disease. These speculations are purely hypothetical, and have no 
practical bearing. 376 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
A striking peculiarity of several infectious diseases is that they 
affect the human system but once. A single attack seems to exhaust 
all elements upon which the disease is capable of acting, and thus 
secures the patient from further danger. This protection, however, 
is not absolute, nor does it apply to diseases propagated by contact. 
One attack of syphilis or psora is no security against another. 
The matter of contagion may be absorbed by clothing, bedding, 
etc., and thus be conveyed to a great distance. Upon this property 
is founded the theory of quarantine, to prevent the importation of 
disease. Physicians attending cases of erysipelas, puerperal fever, 
and other infectious complaints, have need of extreme care lest they 
in turn become the means of spreading the disease. For the same 
reason, apartments occupied by the sick should be well ventilated, 
and disinfecting agents employed. A heat above 120° Fahr, is said 
to destroy the power of contagion. Cold does not seem to have this 
effect, as such complaints often prevail in winter and at high lati- 
tudes. Chlorine is probably the best and surest disinfectant. 
The diseases produced by infection are attended by marked 
changes in the constitution and quality of the blood. They are 
generally of febrile character, and self-limited ; that is, they run 
through a regular course of inception, progress, and decline, usually 
in a certain number of days. They are capable of being moderated, 
but not of being broken up or stopped by medical treatment. Most 
of them are of an adynamic character, and in their later stages 
require the use, often the free use, of stimulants. 
It may be well here briefly to review the resemblances and dif- 
ferences in the classes of disease proceeding from specific causes. 
Endemics depend on local causes, and recur at certain seasons. They 
may attack several individuals at once, but do not extend from one 
to another, and absence from the affected spots is a sure preventive. 
Epidemics seem to depend on wide-spread atmospheric influences, 
are not confined to time or place, and do not especially attack 
persons in the neighborhood of, or attending upon, those first 
affected. Infectious diseases first attack individuals, and then spread 
in every direction from them as from a centre, attacking particularly 
those who have the care of or are in intercourse with the sick. The 
only sure preventive from them is to avoid all connection with those 
affected. 
We have finished the consideration of the causes of disease, 
and now proceed to discuss the elements of which it is made up. 
Disease we have already defined as a deviation from health. Now, 
this deviation may affect the manner in which the vital processes 377 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
are performed, in which case it is called functional, or it may go on 
to destroy the constitution and structure of the tissues, when it is 
called organic. Disease as it ordinarily occurs is a complex, often a 
complicated affair, involving various functions and affecting more or 
less various structures. We propose to analyze it as we would a 
compound in organic chemistry, and to consider it first in its simplest 
elements, and secondly in its proximate forms. 
The basis of all the structures of the human body, physiology 
teaches us, is the simple nucleated cell. Out of this are formed and 
built up all the tissues that make up the entire frame. And doubt- 
less disease in its primary action affects the constitution, development, 
or vital properties of these cells. But with regard to most derange- 
ments, whether structural or functional, we have not yet been able to 
carry back our analysis to these ultimate elements. At present, we 
are obliged to rest contented with observing the processes of disease 
in the tissues and membranes formed by the combination of cells. 
Diseases are, in their commencement, generally functional. Fre- 
quently there are no apparent changes of structure, and if such do 
occur, it is usually at a later stage of the disease, and often as its 
results or consequences. We propose, therefore, to begin with dis- 
cussing the functional derangements, first, of the muscular ; second, 
of the nervous structures ; third, of the organs of secretion and 
excretion; and finally of the blood and the various constituents of 
which it is composed. The study of these topics will prepare us to 
investigate the proximate elements of disease, anaemia, plethora, 
congestion, and inflammation. Afterward we may proceed to con- 
sider the various diseases which result from structural changes. 
It is upon this general knowledge of the elements of diesase that 
special pathology is founded. Particular affections consist of these 
various morbid conditions and processes modified and combined 
according to the structure, position, and relations of the organs 
involved. General pathology stands in much the same relation to 
the study of special diseases as a knowledge of arithmetic does to 
the pursuit of the higher mathematics. It furnishes the general 
principles on which we are to proceed, and explains the processes 
which we are constantly compelled to employ. 
Much progress remains to be made before our knowledge of these 
subjects approaches the character of a perfect science. But surely 
we are more likely to go right by constantly recurring to principles 
already ascertained, reasoning by rigid induction from the known to 
the unknown, than by a course of blind empiricism. 378 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF DISEASE. 
Derangement of the functions of the muscular system. 
The characteristic vital property of muscular fibre is its power of 
responding to its appropriate stimuli. Some physiologists have sup- 
posed that this power of contractility was derived exclusively from 
the nervous system. The recent progress of opinion, however, has 
not tended to this conclusion. It has been shown that the entire 
brain and spinal- marrow may be removed, by slow degrees, from 
some of the lower classes of animals, without interfering with the 
action of the heart or of the muscular coat of the bowels. Yet we 
all know that a sudden and severe shock to the nervous system is 
capable of at once suspending the heart's motion. It would seem, 
therefore, that while contractility is an essential and inherent 
property of living muscular fibre, it is capable of being very much 
influenced by the state of the central nervous system. The natural 
stimulant of the heart's action is a proper supply of healthy blood. 
If the blood becomes increased in quantity or of a more stimulant 
quality, as may occur in plethora, the pulse at once becomes full and 
strong. If, from hemorrhage or insufficient nutrition, the blood 
becomes diminished or impoverished, the action of the circulatory 
system is faint and fluttering. The same rule doubtless holds good 
respecting the other non-striated muscles. Their healthy action 
depends jointly upon a due supply of nervous influence and arterial 
blood. 
This normal action of the moving fibre may be deranged by be- 
coming either excessive or deficient. Excessive irritability may show 
itself by the contractions being too strong, too protracted, or too 
quick and irregular. Thus, violent exertion, as in running, climbing, 
etc., by throwing the blood in increased quantity upon the heart, 
will stimulate that organ to more frequent and powerful action. So 
a man under high nervous excitement will accomplish feats of 
strength to which he is ordinarily inadequate. 
Protracted muscular contraction produces spasm or cramp. The 
pathological condition on which it depends may be a derangement in 
the supply of blood or of nervous influence, most frequently perhaps 
the latter. Examples of spasm occur in the muscles of the leg, in 
the stomach and bowels, in the ureters and gall-ducts, in the glottis, 
bronchial tubes, and esophagus. It is often induced, as in asthma, 
colic, etc., by the presence of some foreign and irritating matter. 
The state of cramp is usually attended by intense pain, caused per- 379 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
haps by pressure which it produces upon the nerves of sensation 
distributed to the parts. Tetanus is an example of spasm, affecting 
almost every muscle in the body, and, by exhausting nervous and vital 
excitability, speedily ending in death. 
Quick and irregular contraction denotes excitability without 
corresponding power. Thus, in pale, delicate children, slight causes 
of irritation are often sufficient to bring on spasm of the glottis, 
laryngismus stridulus, and even general convulsions. So, too, in 
debilitated persons, dyspepsia or a slight over-exertion will induce 
irregular and fluttering action of the heart. The same thing is seen, 
in less degree, in sudden starts and quick, uncertain movements of 
nervous persons. Still more marked examples of it are seen in the 
clonic spasm, or alternate contraction and relaxation of the muscles 
in epilepsy and hysteria. 
The treatment of excessive muscular irritability consists in 
measures to remove the pathological condition on which it depends. 
If there be undue supply of blood, we use depletion, sedatives, and 
evacuants. If the nervous system be unduly excited, narcotics, 
revulsives, and anti-spasmodics are plainly indicated. If the condi- 
tion be one of excitability without proportional strength, we resort 
to tonics. 
But muscular contractility may be deranged by being deficient as 
well as excessive, and this deficiency is often consequent upon a 
previous state of excitement. It is the order of nature respecting 
all the functions of the economy that every period of activity should 
be followed by repose. So over-fatigue and all unnatural effort or 
excitement are necessarily followed by exhaustion. Similar effects 
are sometimes produced by certain poisonous agents, as tobacco ; also 
by concussion of the brain and violent shock upon the nervous system. 
Loss of blood, imperfect nutrition, or the presence of some acute 
disease, as fever or inflammation, may be followed by the same 
results. 
Muscular irritability may, under some conditions, be difficult 
to excite. Extreme cold, and the influence of opium and other 
narcotics upon the brain, render the motions sluggish and torpid. 
The remedies for deficient muscular action must manifestly vary 
with the cause. This may 'be depression or diminished activity, 
debility or diminished power, and diminished excitability. Thus, 
when the body is suffering severe pain or acute inflammation, there 
may be a sensation of weakness while the powers of life are really 
intact. The treatment for such a case is obviously to remove the 
disease, which, like an incubus, is oppressing the system. A resort to 380 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
depletion and sedatives might be the only mode of restoring strength 
and vigor. If there be real debility, as from fatigue or insufficient 
food, rest and nourishment are the remedies required. If the system 
be under the influence of some poison or debilitated by disease, 
stimulants and support are plainly indicated ; or if the degree of 
depression be chronic and less marked, a tonic plan of treatment may 
meet the end desired. 
Perhaps there is no point in diagnosis of more practical impor- 
tance than this distinction of real debility from that which is merely 
apparent. It is obvious that the two conditions may demand directly 
opposite plans of treatment. How often, at the commencement of 
acute diseases, when reducing measures are proposed to subdue the 
violence of inflammation, do we hear officious saying, " O doctor ! he's 
so weak !" and at the same time, while the stomach fairly loathes 
every kind of nourishment, food is almost forced upon the unwilling 
patient. On the other hand, it is to be feared that the ineffective 
efforts of nature to rally and react against some depressing cause 
have been mistaken for inflammatory fever, and thus led to treatment 
which has only aggravated the disease. 
DERANGEMENTS AFFECTING TONICITY. 
Besides the vital property of acting responsively to its appro- 
priate stimulus, muscular fibre has another by which it is always kept 
in a state of slow, moderate contraction. This property, termed 
tonicity, is especially characteristic of the non-striated elastic fibre. 
By means of it the heads of bones are constantly maintained in 
the sockets of the joints, and a steady and uniform pressure kept 
up on the contents of the intestines and bladder. Its action also in 
the muscular coats of the arteries contributes essentially to the 
equalized and regular distribution of blood to every part of the 
body. The tonicity of one set of muscles is sometimes impaired, in 
which case those which antagonize them act unchecked. Thus 
paralysis of the external rectus muscle of the eye causes strabismus. 
Lead-palsy, which affects the extensor muscles of the arm, allows the 
flexors to draw up the hand. 
Excess of tonicity accompanies a state of plethora. The pulse is 
strong, the capillary circulation active, but the bowels are apt to be 
torpid and the secretions generally diminished. The tendency here 
is evidently to gout, hemorrhage, and apoplexy. 
The remedies for this state are such as relax the system and in- 381 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
crease the secretions. Moderate diet, exercise, warm bathing, and 
laxatives, will, if faithfully persevered in, seldom fail to work a cure. 
The opposite state of deficient tonicity in which the muscles are 
feeble and flabby, and the whole system relaxed, is also common. 
The stomach and bowels fail to contract properly on their contents, 
causing indigestion and costiveness, and allowing them to be dis- 
tended with wind. The heart's action is feeble or irritable, and the 
pulse soft and weak. In short, the whole body is in a state predis- 
posed to disease. 
A tonic plan of treatment is obviously the one adapted to such a 
state. Vigorous and regular exercise in the open air, cold bathing, 
nourishing diet, and certain medicines, as bark, iron, and the mineral 
acids, are the remedies required. 
We proceed next to consider 
FUNCTIONAL DERANGEMENTS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
The nervous system may be considered as divided into three 
parts : the cerebrum, which is especially the organ of the mind, and 
which presides over sensation, voluntary motion with mental and 
moral manifestation ; the spinal cord or excito-motor system, the 
centre of involuntary or reflex motions ; and finally, the great sympa- 
thetic nerve, which is supposed to preside over the functions of 
secretion and nutrition. The brain and spinal cord are sometimes 
termed the central, while the nerves distributed to the surface of the 
body and the muscles are called peripheral, portions of the nervous 
system. 
The first of the cerebral functions is sensation. This may be de- 
ranged by being excessive, deficient, or perverted ; and either of these 
derangements may affect the central nervous system or the nerves 
distributed to some particular part. Excessive general sensibility is 
owing to irritation of the nerve-centres. It occurs in active determi- 
nation of blood to the head, in which the slightest stimulus of light, 
sound, or motion becomes intensely painful. Unreal objects arise be- 
fore the eye more vivid than any thing in nature, while ringing and 
buzzing noises disturb the ear. A similar condition may occur when 
the system has been reduced by acute disease, chronic irritation, or 
wasting discharges. In a less degree, a similar state of things may 
be habitual in certain persons of delicate constitution and highly 
nervous temperament, especially where they have lived a life of luxu- 
rious self-indulgence and morbid excitement. Such are almost certain 
to suffer from headache, dyspepsia, low spirits, and various neuralgic 382 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
pains. Sedentary life, inattention to the calls of nature, resulting in 
habitual constipation; a culture addressed to the imagination and 
sensibilities rather than the understanding or the heart, all contribute 
powerfully to the same result. Such persons at length become per- 
petual invalids; every sensation becomes painful, the imagination is 
disordered, annoyances trifling to others seem to them intolerable; 
they sometimes fancy themselves afflicted with all the diseases flesh 
is heir to, and their symptoms may so closely assimilate real disease 
that no small degree of discrimination is necessary to distinguish be- 
tween them. 
The physical conditions generally associated with this state of 
morbid sensibility are a weak pulse, diminished capillary circulation, 
coldness of the extremities, headache, neuralgia, pains in various 
parts, especially in the back, and spinal tenderness. 
It is singular that symptoms so similar as those of active determi- 
nation of blood to an organ, and mere nervous irritability affecting it, 
should depend on pathological, conditions so opposite. The fact, 
however, is undoubted. A post-mortem examination of persons who 
have died from starvation exhibits the cerebrum highly congested. 
Children who have been greatly reduced by exhausting discharges 
from the bowels will often suddenly present all the symptoms of me- 
ningitis. Cholera and depressing poisons, as hydrocyanic acid, are 
often attended with convulsions, even at the moment of greatest pros- 
tration. 
The treatment of an affection depending on such diverse causes 
must of course vary considerably. Determination of blood to the 
brain must be met by local depletion, by cupping, by purgatives, cold 
to the head, and counter-irritation and magnetic rubbings. After all 
arterial excitement has been subdued, narcotics maybe useful; but 
previously to that, they only aggravate the existing congestion. 
Where, on the contrary, similar symptoms are owing to exhaustion, 
loss of blood, or wasting discharges, rest, nourishment, and even 
stimulants, may be indicated. There is sometimes a combination of 
local congestion with general debility which is extremely difficult to 
manage. In this case, we are obliged to give nourishment and sup- 
port while we strive to divert the excessive supply of blood from the 
brain to other organs. Here we must rely on local depletion, with 
cold to the head and counter-irritants. 
Those cases in which the whole constitution has become deranged 
and morbidly sensitive are often exceedingly troublesome. In fe- 
males, this condition is generally united with disordered menstruation. 
This should be corrected, the bowels regulated, and any other of the 383 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
functions, as the respiration, digestion, etc., which may be affected, ex- 
amined and attended to. The skin, which is apt to be dry and harsh, 
should be stimulated by bathing and friction. Exercise, amusement, 
fresh air, change of habits, with the use of the vegetable and mineral 
tonics, will do most that can be done toward effecting a cure. In 
these cases, faith often has a mysterious influence. Accordingly, it 
is among nervous and hypochondriacal cases that homeopathy and 
hydropathy boast of their greatest triumphs. 
But nervous sensibility may be deficient as well as excessive. 
The most striking example of this is coma, in which the action of the 
nerve-centres is suspended by pressure upon the brain or the effusion 
of a clot within its substance. Poisoning by narcotics, as opium, 
produces very similar effects. Excrementitious matters retained in 
the system seem to suspend the production of nerve-power, and stupor 
of course follows. There are persons who are constitutionally de- 
ficient in nervous susceptibility. They are usually of a sanguine or 
bilious temperament, good muscular development, and enjoy vigorous 
health. The tendency, however, with them is to costive habits, di- 
minished secretion, plethora, and ultimately gout or apoplexy. 
The remedies for diminished sensibility must vary with the cause. 
If this be congestion of the brain, derivants, etc., are indicated. If 
it be the condition of paralysis following congestion, electricity, 
strychnia, and other nervous stimulants may be tried ; but not until 
all arterial excitement has been subdued. In persons of torpid, 
lethargic temperament, cold bathing, exercise, and attention to the 
various secretions may be useful. 
Where sensibility is increased, it is also frequently perverted, 
especially in anaemical subjects. The appetite craves all kinds of 
disgusting things. There are prickling, tingling, burning sensations 
in various parts. These symptoms are usually combined in the fe- 
male with menstrual irregularities, and called hysterical. The proper 
treatment is a course of purgatives and tonics, especially the chaly- 
beates, with attention to all the secretions, and exercise in the open 
air. 
Thus much for functional affections of the nerve-centres. We 
now proceed to 
LOCAL DERANGEMENTS OF SENSIBILITY. 
These, like those of the nerve-centres, may consist in excess, de- 
ficiency, or perversion. Particular portions of the body may become 
extremely painful and tender; the slightest touch may, as in rheu- 384 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
matic inflammation of the joints, be agonizing. The natural sensi- 
bility of the surface may be at once increased and perverted, with 
intense itching, smarting, or burning. The special senses may, from 
local irritation, become unnaturally acute. The eye is intolerant of 
light and the ear of sound. In some cases, all objects appear flame- 
colored to the patient; in others, he sees sparks, fire-balls, etc. Hazi- 
ness, dark, wavy points or lines often occur, with derangement of the 
circulation, either sluggishness or local congestion. So humming, 
ringing, moaning sounds in the ear frequently occur in fevers, and 
also in anaemia. They are also heard in inflammation of the ear, or 
partial closure of the Eustachian tube. 
Severe pain in an organ not seeming to depend on any disease is 
considered neuralgic, and named accordingly. Thus, we have gastral- 
gia, nephralgia, cephalalgia, etc. The last accompanies almost every 
acute febrile disease, besides being produced by sympathy in various 
derangements of other organs and functions. It is a marked symp- 
tom in nearly all diseases of the brain or its membranes. It may also 
be induced by derangements of the stomach, constipation, prolonged 
study, etc. 
Many of the structures which in health seem devoid of sensibility, 
in disease become the seat of extreme pain. In a healthy state, the 
processes of digestion are performed unconsciously, but in dyspepsia 
become almost intolerable. The bones, which ordinarily seem to act 
a merely mechanical part in the body, may, in inflammation or secon- 
dary syphilis, become the seat of almost insupportable anguish. 
Diminished local sensibility may be owing to deficient circulation 
of the blood or to injuries either of the nerve distributed to the part, 
or to that portion of the brain with which that nerve was connected. 
A sudden cessation of pain in parts which have been the seat of acute 
inflammation, especially if attended by great prostration, is an unfa- 
vorable symptom, as it indicates that gangrene has already com- 
menced. 
The causes of pain are various : 1, congestion or determination of 
blood to a part; 2, a healthful sensation, too protracted or too acute, 
as hunger, thirst, etc.; also, too long-continued exertion, as of a mus- 
cle in lifting or straining; 3, a functional affection of the nerves of a 
part or of some part sympathetically connected with the first. From 
what has been said, it will be manifest that pain is no measure of the 
severity of a disease. Pneumonia, phthisis, typhus fever, are fre- 
quently attended with very slight pain, while colic or tic douloureux 
may be almost unendurable. 
Severe pain deranges the functions of the suffering organ. This 385 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
is a wise arrangement of nature to prevent the use of a part unfitted 
by disease for performing its ordinary duties, as in the case of an in- 
flamed joint. Where, however, as in affections of the respiratory or- 
gans, the function is essential to life, this circumstance greatly in- 
creases the danger of the case. 
A second effect of pain is, that it sometimes excites sympathetic 
disturbance in other organs, as vomiting may be excited by head- 
ache, convulsions by various pains. In its highest intensity pain, if 
unremitting, may exhaust the nervous energy and thus directly pro- 
duce death. Oftener its evil influence is felt in gradually reducing 
the powers of life, as in cancer and other chronic affections. 
The remedies for derangement of local sensibility must be adapt- 
ed to the pathological condition on which it depends. If this be con- 
gestion or active determination of blood to an organ or part, the 
treatment is obviously antiphlogistic with magnetism. After all arte- 
rial excitement has been subdued, we may resort to anodynes and 
anaesthetics both generally and locally. Neuralgic pains usually re- 
quire a tonic plan of treatment, with, perhaps, the use of alteratives, 
as iodine and bromine or salicine. If of an intermitting or periodi- 
cal character, they may generally be stopped at once by quinine. 
Local pains are often relieved by warmth and counter-irritation and 
magnetism. Gastrodynia generally yields to blistering over the pit 
of the stomach, colic to hot fomentations, bags of heated salt, or oil 
of turpentine applied externally. Where sensibility is unnaturally di- 
minished, we may resort to stimulant frictions and electricity. More 
benefit seems to have been derived from strychnia than from any 
other internal remedies. 
DERANGEMENTS OF VOLUNTARY MOTION. 
The second great function of the cerebrum is, as the organ of the 
will, to preside over voluntary motion. This function is closely asso- 
ciated with that of sensation, the corpora striata being, as physiolo- 
gists tell us, the centre of the former, as the thalami optici are of the 
latter. Voluntary motion, being directly under the control of the 
brain, is even more susceptible than sensation to the influence of dis- 
ease. Some of these affections have been spoken of under the head 
of muscular irritability; others belong more strictly to diseases of the 
nervous system. 
Increased muscular strength is generally due to cerebral or nervous 
excitement. Such increase may indicate inflammation of the brain 386 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
or its membranes; but more frequently, as in maniacal fury, depends 
on merely functional excitement. 
The power of motion is diminished in most acute diseases. Las- 
situde and muscular debility are among the early symptoms of idio- 
pathic fevers. In inflammations, motion is often attended with so 
much pain that though power to move remains, the patient is loth to 
exercise it. Later in these diseases, real debility may follow as a con- 
sequence of impaired nutrition, or of exhaustion of the vital powers. 
The power of voluntary motion may also be diminished by im- 
poverishment or deterioration of the blood. The effect of these 
causes in reducing muscular contractility has been already noticed. 
They also act directly upon the nerves and nerve-centres, by render- 
ing the blood unfit to supply its wonted nourishment and stimulus to 
the brain. This is exemplified in low fevers, in which the normal pro- 
portion of red globules is materially decreased ; also in retention and 
reabsorption of the urine and other excretions. In these cases, the 
effects of congestion and local stagnation of the blood are to be 
added to those resulting from deterioration in its quality. A higher 
degree of pressure upon the brain produces stupor and coma, with, of 
course, entire loss of voluntary motion. Similar effects may be 
caused by intense mental emotions, as terror, surprise, etc. In these 
cases, muscular power is not impaired, but the control of the mind 
over it suspended. 
Paralysis, literally relaxation, implies entire loss of the power of 
motion. It usually follows congestion or inflammation, and depends 
upon structural injury to the brain or its appendages. When the 
lesion causing it is within the spinal canal, it affects both sides of the 
body below the point of injury, and is called paraplegia. More fre- 
quently it affects one side only, in which case it is produced by injury 
to one side, usually the opposite side, of the brain, and is called hemi- 
plegia. Sometimes it is restricted to a single part, as to the extensors 
of the fore-arm in lead-palsy. Here it generally depends upon some 
injury, often functional, to the nerves of the part concerned. The 
lesion here referred to may be hemorrhage, effusion, the pressure of 
a tumor, or an altered condition of the blood-vessels. Loss of voice, 
retention of urine, paralysis of limbs, etc., are common phenomena 
in hysteria. They then come on without any apparent cause, and as 
suddenly cease. 
Perversions of voluntary motion occur in chorea, delirium tre- 
mens, and other nervous diseases. Here the patient attempts to exe- 
cute certain movements, but has lost the power of co-ordinating the 
muscles necessary for the purpose. MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
387 
In the treatment of diseases affecting the powers of voluntary mo- 
tion, we must carefully diagnose the causes on which they depend. 
Excessive action may generally be reduced by vegetable sedatives, 
carefully selected, and cold to the head. Where the excitement is 
purely nervous, narcotics, anaesthetics, and anti-spasmodics may be 
used, together with magnetism if possible. The fury of mania may 
be best reduced by applying the cold douche to the head and spine, 
and by the use of magnetic passes. 
When volition is suspended or impaired by pressure upon- the 
brain, we must take measures at once to remove that pressure; here 
depletion, purging, and counter-irritation are plainly indicated. If it 
be the lethargy of narcotism or asphyxia, we should endeavor to 
arouse sensation and reflex action by dashing cold water in the face, 
friction, the use of stimulants, and, if necessary, artificial respira- 
tion. 
Where impaired volition is owing to the presence of disease or to 
deterioration of the blood, it is merely a symptom of a more im- 
portant affection, which demands all our attention. Here we may 
endeavor to support the strength, restore the suspended secretions, 
and follow out other indications which the case may present. Where 
paralysis is due to the presence of some poison, as lead, in the sys- 
tem, we aim first to eliminate this poison from the economy, and then, 
by electricity, frictions, stimulating liniments, etc., to arouse the natu- 
ral action of the parts. 
Where defective volition is owing to faintness or exhaustion, we 
endeavor, by means of position and stimulants, to restore a free cir- 
culation of blood to the nerve-centres. Rest, nourishment, an abun- 
dant supply of fresh air, may be sufficient to restore the failing pow- 
ers of life. Sudden and powerful excitement will sometimes restore 
the use of parts which had long been lost. In this way, and by the 
influence of faith, we account for the success of metallic tractors ; 
also of various juggleries of empirics, as well as the miraculous cures 
performed by the images of saints, etc. 
Perverted volition, as in chorea, hysteria, etc., is to be treated by 
restoring the secretions, regulating the various functions, and remov- 
ing, as far as may be, all sources of irritation and morbid excitement. 
Moral influences may also be employed to contribute to the same end. 
Amusement, pleasant company, exercise in the open air, a regular 
mode of life, are often of more service in nervous affections than any 
amount of dosing. To these may be joined a tonic course of treat- 
ment ; especially the use of iron, oxide of zinc, nitrate of silver, and 
the ammoniated tincture of valerian. 388 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ABT. 
DERANGEMENT OF THE INTELLECT. 
The cerebrum is the organ and seat of the mind. Its highest 
functions are mental and moral manifestation. These may be 
deranged by influences which do not act upon the physical system. 
They may also suffer from almost every disorder which affects the 
body. The intellectual powers may be stimulated to an unnatural 
degree of excitement, and thus exhibit brilliant manifestations of 
genius ; but lassitude, depression, dyspepsia, and a long train of 
nervous derangements are sure to follow. We often see painful 
examples of its evil influence in precocious children who have been 
urged forward in study, by the vanity of ill-judging parents. Such 
a course is pretty sure to end in breaking down the powers of mind 
or body, or of both. 
The intellectual powers are more frequently perverted or en- 
feebled by disease. The blood, changed from its natural constitution 
and quality, no longer affords a healthy stimulus to the brain. The 
patient is unable to think connectedly, or to fix his attention upon 
the object before him. His thoughts run on their course almost 
beyond control of the will. 
Perversion of the intellect or insanity may arise from purely 
moral causes ; in such cases, it does not fall within the limits of our 
subject. But delirium often occurs as a symptom or consequence of 
disease, and as such demands a notice at our hands. 
Delirium may be symptomatic of disease of the brain, or it may 
be sympathetic, from disturbance of some other organ. It appears 
to follow inflammation of the membranes and surface of the brain 
rather than affections of its interior substance, with which disorders of 
the functions of sensation and motion seem to be associated. Physi- 
ologists represent the peripheral or vesicular portion of the brain as 
the source of nerve-power, especially of intellectual activity. With 
this portion the pia mater is most intimately connected, which may 
account for disorders affecting it so much deranging the mind. 
Delirium often arises from irritation of organs sympathetically con- 
nected with the brain, as in hysterical and puerperal mania ; also 
from deterioration of the blood, as in low fevers. It may also 
originate in anaemia, or be induced by retained secretions, as the bile, 
urine, etc. Hypochondria or morbid depression of spirits is usually 
associated with derangements of the liver and apparatus of diges- 
tion. 
Diminished mental activity and vigor occurs as already remarked, 
in most acute diseases. When habitual, it is termed dementia or MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
389 
idiocy. This state is often congenital. It may also be induced by 
epilepsy, congestion of the brain, etc. 
The medical treatment of insanity is directed to remove the 
cause on which it depends. This is often a nice point to determine. 
Many a case of commencing insanity has doubtless been aggravated 
by depletion, merely on account of the mental disorder, when a care- 
ful consideration of all the circumstances would have shown an 
opposite plan of treatment to be necessary. 
Delirium depending on congestion of the brain must be met by 
depletion and revulsives. But where congestion is associated, as it 
sometimes is, with diminished vitality, as in low fevers and anaemia, 
we must rely on counter-irritation, with rest, nourishment, and 
nervous stimulants, as camphor, Hoffman's anodyne, etc. Where 
delirium is caused by sympathy with disease in some other organ, as 
the liver or uterus, our main efforts are directed to subdue the 
primitive disorder. Delirium tremens, which is usually brought on 
by suddenly depriving the brain of its wonted stimulus, to which it 
has become so accustomed as to be unable to perform its functions 
without it, must be treated by opiates, rest, and the least possible 
amount of the usual stimulant. 
DERANGEMENTS OF THE REFLEX SYSTEM. 
The function of the spinal cord is to preside over involuntary 
motion. Under its control are placed the various sphincters which 
guard the outlets of the body, as also the iris and the muscles of 
respiration. It seems capable also, where the influence of the will is 
suspended, of acting upon the voluntary muscles. Thus in para- 
plegia, where all connection is cut off between the lower limbs and 
the brain, reflex motions may still be excited by application of 
appropriate stimulus to the nerves of the extremities. So, too, in 
convulsions, the reflex system seems aroused to take into its own 
hands muscles ordinarily under control of volition. The same ex- 
planation seems to apply to vomiting, retching, cramps of the 
abdominal and other muscles. Sneezing, hiccough, the spasmodic 
cough induced by intense local irritation, or the presence of a foreign 
body in the larynx, are farther examples of involuntary motor action. 
Tetanus is a remarkable form of general spasm. It is generally 
owing to inflammation of the meninges of the spinal cord, or to 
irritation from a wound of some tendon, fascia, or nerve. Some- 
times it is limited to the muscles which close the lower jaw, and is 
then called trismus. Catalepsy is a disease in which both flexor and 390 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
extensor muscles are put upon the stretch. The limbs are readily 
moved, but retain the position in which they were left. It has been 
questioned by some whether spasm can extend to muscles wholly in- 
voluntary, as those of the stomach, bowels, heart, etc. Some facts, 
however, such as the emission of semen, urine, and feces during an 
epileptic fit, the contraction of the muscular fibres of the urethra in 
stricture, and the impossibility of swallowing in hydrophobia, would 
seem to settle this matter beyond dispute. Every physician has had 
occasion to observe palpitation brought on by indigestible food, as 
well as general convulsions from the same cause. Spasmodic croup 
may be induced by irritations of the bowels, lungs, or gums in 
dentition, reflected from the medulla spinalis upon the glottis. 
Clonic convulsions, or those in which muscular contraction and 
relaxation alternate, are much more frequent than continuous spasm. 
It is a singular fact that they are less dangerous in proportion as 
they involve a greater number of muscles. When one muscle, or 
set of muscles, is always affected, there is reason to fear injury to 
the nerve-centres. On the contrary, the diseases in which the whole 
muscular apparatus is concerned are curable, like chorea and hvsteria, 
or of long standing, as epilepsy. 
Convulsions are more dangerous in males than in females or 
children, more serious when they occur in the progress of acute 
diseases, than at its commencement. They are peculiarly alarming 
when they follow injuries of the head or profuse discharges of any 
kind. Convulsions not occurring in the course of disease are usually 
paroxysmal, and dangerous in proportion to their length, and the 
shortness of the interval between them. 
The cause of these phenomena is to be found in irritation of the 
true spinal system. This irritation may be centric, from disease of 
the brain or spinal cord, as in epilepsy, or when they occur from loss 
of blood or wasting discharges ; or, on the contrary, it may be 
eccentric, the irritation being transmitted by efferent nerves from 
the stomach, bowels, uterus, etc., to the medulla spinalis, and thence 
reflected upon the muscles. 
The functions of the spinal cord, like those of all the other 
organs, are excited by an increased supply of blood. But apart from 
this, certain substances seem to have the power of directly stimula- 
ting its action. The most remarkable of these is strychnia, which 
appears to exert an immediate influence upon the vesicular portion of 
the cord. Traumatic tetanus has never been observed to be attended 
with congestion of the medulla spinalis or its membranes. The irri- 
tation is here propagated from some distant branch oi' nervous fila- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
391 
meat, till at last the whole reflex system is brought under its in- 
fluence. 
Failure of the powers of the excito-motor system is a symptom 
of grave import, usually indicating the approach of dissolution. In 
this event, the functions which depend on the medulla spinalis are 
necessarily diminished or suspended. The sphincters relax, allowing 
the urine and feces to escape involuntarily. Deglutition becomes 
difficult, the respiration is diminished in fullness or frequency, and 
becomes irregular and gasping. At length, the muscles of inspira- 
tion get too weak to clear away the mucus which obstructs the air- 
passages, and soon we hear the rattling in the throat which imme- 
diately precedes dissolution. It is thus that death is produced by 
coma, anaesthetics, and narcotic poisons. 
Remedies.-The first object in the treatment of convulsions is to 
determine the cause on which they depend. If it be, as is often the 
case, an overloaded stomach, an emetic should be at once adminis- 
tered. If they arise from pressure of a tooth upon the gums, these 
should be lanced. A purgative or injection may be used to act as a 
revulsive, and, at the same time, to remove any irritating matter 
which may be present. A warm bath will also be useful by relaxing 
muscular spasm, equalizing the circulation, and diverting the blood 
from the deeper organs. Cold to the head, friction to the spine, 
and the use of sedatives and anti-spasmodics may also be resorted 
to. Hysterical convulsions in persons of full habit may be treated 
with nauseating doses of lobelia, and, where there is spinal tender- 
ness, with cups and counter-irritants to the spine. Certain agents, 
as hydrocyanic acid, conium, and the cannabis sativa or Indian hemp, 
act powerfully in depressing the action of the spinal system ; but in 
full doses, there is almost as much danger from them as from the 
diseases for which they might be used. They are often useful to 
allay obstinate vomiting, nervous palpitation of the heart, and some 
other complaints. Marshall Hall, whose authority is high on all 
nervous affections, believing all medicines to be useless in the treat- 
ment of hydrophobia and traumatic tetanus, and observing that the 
slightest excitement, as that of a breath of air or of a person enter- 
ing the room, seems to bring on fresh convulsions, advises that no 
medicine be given, that the patient be kept perfectly quiet and alone. 
In this way, he thinks the disease might wear itself out before the 
patient's strength becomes wholly exhausted, and that thus his life 
might be preserved. 
Certain substances, generally reckoned as stimulants, seem to 
possess a calming influence upon the reflex system. Such are ether, 392 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
camphor, musk, galbanum, and creosote. These often relieve hic- 
cough and nervous excitability and slight convulsive affections. The 
mineral tonics, especially oxide of zinc and nitrate of silver, are 
capable of exerting considerable effect upon the nerve-centres. 
Perhaps this is partly owing to their invigorating and giving tone 
to the stomach and system generally. Be this as it may, they are 
often efficacious in relieving chorea, epilepsy, and similar affections. 
Exercise, diet, and a regular mode of life contribute to the same 
end. 
Slight cases of deficient reflex action, as incontinence of urine in 
children, may be treated by the cautious administration of strych- 
nia and by mineral tonics. Graver forms of the affection usually 
depend on serious injury to the constitution of the blood or to the 
nerve-centres. 
Observation has shown that irritation or disease, in one part of 
the body, may induce pain in other parts sympathetically connected 
withit. Disease of the hip-joint,, from the sensations produced, is 
constantly referred by the patient to the knee. Congestion of the 
liver is often attended with pain in the right shoulder. In diseases 
of the heart, the pain frequently extends down the left arm. Some 
have attempted to explain these and similar phenomena, by suppos- 
ing that the irritation propagated from the parts affected to the 
spinal cord is thence reflected to the parts secondarily involved. 
We have considered functional derangements of the cerebrum 
and spinal cord. The third great division of the nervous system, the 
sympathetic nerve, is so obscure in its mode of action, and so closely 
involved in all disorders of the organs of secretion and processes of 
nutrition, that its diseases may be best studied in connection with 
those of the various organs and structures to which it is distributed. 
We shall therefore at once proceed to consider 
DERANGEMENT OF THE PROCESSES OF SECRETION. 
The secretions may be divided into two classes, first, the exhala- 
tions, which depend npon the physical properties of animal mem- 
branes, as that of transmitting through themselves fluids of different 
densities according to the laws of endosmose and exosmose ; second, 
secretions proper, which are produced by a truly vital cell agency. 
Derangement of the exhalations may be produced by changes in the 
constitution of the blood or other fluid, in contact with the animal 
membranes, or in affections of the membranes themselves. 
The action of saline purgatives and diuretics is explained by the MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
393 
action of fluids of different densities in the intestinal canal on one 
side, upon the blood of the portal veins on the other. In certain 
diseases, the condition of the membranes seems to be altered so as to 
allow of the escape of fluids which should be retained. In albumi- 
nuria, the coats of the minute uriniferous tubes allow exosmosis of 
the albumen instead of the mere watery portion of the blood 
When excessively congested, those membranes frequently permit the 
exudation of the blood itself upon their free surfaces. Examples of 
this are constantly occurring in bleeding from the nose, throat, lungs, 
and bowels, rarely also from the skin and serous membranes. 
The principal natural exhalations are those from the skin, from 
the mucous, serous, and synovial membranes, and, in females, the 
menstrual flow from the uterus. By means of the cutaneous transpi- 
ration, the body in health is preserved at a nearly uniform tempera- 
ture, and certain excrementitious substances removed from the blood. 
Sudden suppression of the perspiration is believed to be a frequent 
cause of disease. An additional burden is thus thrown upon the 
mucous membranes, especially those of the lungs and bowels, often 
inducing catarrh or bronchitis and diarrhea. The various secretions 
appear to be remarkably correlated in this respect. When one is 
arrested, the others seem to take upon themselves to discharge its 
function. Thus, in jaundice, the yellow coloring matter of the bile 
is seen upon the skin and in the urine. When the action of the 
kidneys or bowels has been suspended, the odor of the urine and 
feces has been detected in the perspiration. 
Increased perspiration occurs in rheumatism and certain fevers. 
More generally, however, in acute diseases the action of the skin is 
diminished or even suspended. 
The proper office of the mucous exhalation seems to be to prevent 
the adhesion of the membranes, to render their surfaces moist, and 
facilitate the passage of substances taken into their cavities. In 
health, mucus consists of a watery fluid, containing epithelial cor- 
puscles. It varies, however, in appearance and consistency in different 
parts of the body. That which comes from the neck of the uterus is 
clear and albuminous, that from the vagina thick and creamy. At 
the commencement of catarrh, and in the progress of severe febrile 
affections, the secretion of mucus is notably diminished. The dry 
tongue, as well as a hot and dry skin, are well-known symptoms of 
grave fevers. 
Irritation of the mucous membranes is at first attended by a sus- 
pension of their natural secretion, but soon the production of mucus 
is increased and changed in quality. It may become thin and acrid, 394 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
as in coryza; or limpid, as in bronchorrhoea; watery, as in serous 
diarrhea; or thick, white, and opaque, so as to resemble pus. It may 
also vary in color, so as to become green, yellow, or reddish, or mixed 
with streaks of blood and pus. 
In health, the serous fluid is produced in just sufficient quantity to 
keep the membranes and areolar structures on which it is formed 
moist and lubricated, so as to glide easily over each other. The first 
effect of irritation or congestion is to diminish their production. 
Hence the friction sound from the grating of dry surfaces upon each 
other in the first stages of pleurisy and pericarditis. But if the irri- 
tation be continued, the overloaded vessels speedily relieve themselves 
by effusion of their serous contents, indicated by dullness on percus- 
sion, or where it can be felt by fluctuation. Serous effusions may also 
be produced by obstructions to the circulation of blood through the 
heart, or pressure upon the veins. 
The synovial fluid resembles the serous in its properties, and the 
manner in which it is affected by disease. The menstrual secretion is, 
like the rest, subject to various derangements ; but these, from their 
variety and importance, come more properly under the head of 
special diseases. 
The most important of the secretions proper are those of the liver, 
intestinal canal, and kidneys. These also are at first checked, then 
increased and perverted, by the influence of irritation. The liver in 
particular is apt to become torpid. The intestines, being thus de- 
prived of their natural stimulant, are liable to be constipated, 'while 
the discharges, destitute of the coloring matter of the bile, appear 
white or grayish. Meanwhile the skin, conjunctiva, and urine acquire 
a saffron hue, as if taking upon themselves to remove the excrementi- 
tious matter left by the liver. On the other hand, increased and per- 
verted secretion of bile unduly stimulates the bowels, producing a 
bilious diarrhea, with perhaps vomiting, cramps, and colic. 
Torpor of the bowels is common in persons who live upon rich, 
stimulating food, and take but little exercise. Here the excretions 
are either much diminished, or, not being removed from the body, a 
portion of them is liable to be reabsorbed. Innumerable derange- 
ments of the digestive and nervous systems may be thus induced. 
The blood becomes impure, and various organs, as the skin, stomach, 
kidneys, and uterus, functionally or sympathetically connected with 
the intestines, become deranged. Numerous cases of dyspepsia and 
neuralgic pains may be traced to this fruitful cause. 
Excessive secretion may have a two-fold effect: first, weakening, 
relaxing the organs from which it takes place, as a protracted diar- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
395 
rhea reduces the tone of the bowels, rendering them weak and irrita- 
ble, and incapacitating them for performing their proper part in di- 
gestion; second, excessive discharges may diminish the quantity of the 
blood or affect its composition. Thus, in cholera, the serous element 
of the blood seems to be almost wholly drained from the body. On 
the same principle, the saline cathartics which produce watery dis- 
charges are the especial remedy foi* serous plethora. The peculiar 
office of the liver is to remove carbonaceous matter, as that of the 
kidneys is to remove nitrogenized materials, from the system. If 
either of these secretions be much increased, it is obvious that the 
constitution of the blood would be considerably affected. It is by 
their stimulant action upon the liver and intestinal canal that purga- 
tives become efficient agents in cleansing the blood of various impuri- 
ties ; and, also, by directly reducing its quantity, perform an im- 
portant part in general antiphlogistic treatment. 
The secretion of urine, like the rest, is suspended or much di- 
minished during the course of severe disease. It is greatly increased 
in diabetes and after hysterical attacks. When highly acrid, the urine 
may produce irritation in the ureters and bladder, and occasion a 
severe form of nephralgic colic. 
The act of secretion seems to be performed by the ultimate cells, 
and is one of the vital powers with which they are endowed. The 
essentials to its proper performance are, a healthy condition of the 
organs themselves and a due supply of blood, charged with the ele- 
ments of which the various secretions are composed. If an organ be 
sluggish and torpid, or if it has undergone structural change, it is 
evidently incapacitated to discharge the function for which it was de- 
signed. A deficient or excessive supply of blood we have shown to 
be a frequent cause of functional disorder. It is peculiarly so with 
all the secretions. Here the blood furnishes both the materials to act 
upon and the stimulus to act. A deficient supply is, for both reasons, 
attended with torpor. Congestion, on the contrary, by overloading 
the capillaries, produces much the same effect. 
It does not appear that a connection with the nerve-centres is 
essential to the processes of secretion, although the state of the ner- 
vous system exerts an important influence over them. Surprise or 
alarm will in some persons bring on speedy action of the bowels; 
tears are excited by grief or strong mental emotion; the urine becomes 
loaded with the phosphates after severe intellectual labor. These and 
many similar phenomena go to prove that secretion, though strictly 
a process of organic life, is very much under the influence of the 
nervous system. 396 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
The remedies for deranged secretions vary, as in other affections, 
with the causes upon which they may depend. Where this is simple 
torpor, certain agents which act as stimulants or local irritants are 
plainly indicated. In costive habits, we prescribe a diet which shall 
leave sufficient residue to act upon the bowels by the stimulus of 
quantity; and we may add to this the use of certain agents which 
have the power of directly increasing the secretions, or of promoting 
the peristaltic contractions of the muscular coat of the intestines. 
There can be no doubt that rhubarb, jalap, castor and croton oil have 
a specific power of acting upon the bowels ; for they produce that 
effect, whether introduced to the system through the mouth or the skin 
or injected into the bloodvessels. In the same manner, colchicum, 
squills, and digitalis act upon the kidneys, and ipecac upon the skin. 
Calomel, whose first effect is to increase the secretion of the bile, be- 
comes secondarily, by the stimulating influence of this bile upon the 
intestines, a purgative. 
When defective secretion is due. to an insufficient supply of blood, 
we resort to means suited to restore a free circulation. If the skin 
be dry and harsh, we apply stimulating frictions, with warmth. 
Stimulants to the general circulation, where this is enfeebled, may be 
employed for the same end. In low typhoid fevers, attended with 
diminution of nearly all the secretions, our attention is specially di- 
rected to keeping up the heart's action, and through this a due supply 
of blood to every part. 
But defective secretion may be owing to too great, as well as too 
small, a supply of blood. The first effect of cold upon the mucous 
membrane of the throat and bronchial tubes is to produce a state of 
congestion, suspending the secretions which lubricate the parts, leav- 
ing them dry and irritable. Hence the tickling sensation and the 
hard, dry cough that mark this stage of sore-throat or catarrh. The 
action of the liver and kidneys is peculiarly apt to be arrested by con- 
gestion. In the commencement of inflammation of the bowels, the 
most active cathartics will often fail to produce evacuation until the 
capillaries have first been unloaded by general depletion. Certain 
remedies which diminish the heart's action and relax the system gen- 
erally are often useful in restoring the secretions when suspended. 
Examples of this are antimony as a diaphoretic and expectorant, and 
digitalis as a diuretic. In cases of plethora and inflammation, the 
whole antiphlogistic treatment, indeed, becomes our most powerful 
agent in reproducing a healthy state of this function. 
It has been already remarked that where excretions were dimin- 
ished oi' retained, other organs seemed at times to take upon them- 397 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
selves the office of removing these deleterious matters from the sys- 
tem. In this process we may attempt to imitate nature. Where 
dropsical effusions occui- from disease of the kidneys, and it is not 
safe directly to stimulate that organ, we may endeavor to excite the 
skin and the bowels to perform its duty. Ascites may be thus re- 
lieved by elaterium, and the dropsy of albuminuria by the hot-air bath. 
We may sometimes make use of certain artificial means as substi- 
tutes for secretions when arrested. Thus, harshness and dryness of the 
skin or hair may be remedied by the use of sweet-oil; sore-throat and 
cough may be mitigated by employing mucilaginous solutions; and 
some physicians have thought the same a sheathing and protection to 
the inflamed stomach. Inspissated ox-gall has been recommended as 
a stimulant to the bowels, where the action of the liver has been sus- 
pended. 
Excessive secretion may be produced by a too great supply of 
blood to a part, or by a weak and relaxed condition of the secreting 
organ or of the system generally. The first effect of irritation and 
congestion consequent upon it is, as has been explained, a suspension 
of the process of secretion. But soon the overloaded capillaries re- 
lieve themselves by effusion, first of the watery elements of the blood, 
and then of the various other constituents held by it in a state of so- 
lution. Thus, persons with diseased liver may suffer from alternate 
suspension and excessive flow of bile. So constipation and diarrhea 
by turns succeed each other in persons whose bowels are not properly 
regulated. 
In cases of this character, the remedies for congestion are obvi- 
ously called for. These are depletion and counter-irritation. When 
diarrhea is caused by a congested state of the portal veins, it is often 
relieved by saline cathartics, which diminish that congestion. If the 
febrile action be of a higher grade, approaching inflammation to 
the abdomen or anus, a relaxed state of the bowels will contribute to 
the same result. Until arterial excitement and determination of blood 
has been entirely subdued, it is not safe to check profuse evacuation, 
since by this very means nature is striving to relieve a state either of 
general plethora or local disease. In such a case, we may, however, 
act upon the other secretions. Thus, in bowel complaints, we endea- 
vor to excite the functions of the skin ; in renal irritation, cholagogue 
alteratives, which stimulate the production of bile, are frequently bene- 
cial; in bronchorrhcea, to relieve the excessive production of mucus, 
we give medicines to act upon the bowels and kidneys. 
Counter-irritation is also a powerful means of diminishing conges- 
tion, especially when chronic. After subduing arterial excitement, 398 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
blisters, sinapisms, friction, with stimulating liniments, are powerful 
agents in breaking up any remaining traces of inflammation or stag- 
nation of blood in the capillaries. 
A second cause of increased secretion is a weak, relaxed, and 
irritable condition of the parts involved. A good example of this is 
furnished by chronic diarrhea, in which the mucous and muscular 
coats of the bowels seem to lose their natural tone, digestion is im- 
perfectly and hurriedly performed, the slightest error in diet sets up 
a local irritation, with profuse discharge, while the evacuations are 
thin and serous, as if the watery elements of the blood were passive- 
ly leaking through the vessels in which it should be retained. Astrin- 
gents are here required ; agents which produce constriction of the 
muscular fibre. With these may be combined tonics to impart 
strength and vigor both to the parts concerned an,d to the system in 
general. The sulphates, zinc and copper, with some of the salts of 
iron, seem to exert a peculiar influence in correcting diseased action 
of the mucous membranes. Opium in some form may be added to 
any of these preparations, where required, to soothe irritability. This 
agent appears also to have a direct power of diminishing all the se- 
cretions except that of the skin. 
Excessive secretion seems sometimes to be an effect, as it is often 
the cause, of an exhausted and enfeebled state of the vital powers. 
Such are the night-sweats and colliquative diarrhea of phthisis. The 
same effect may be produced by other chronic diseases, attended by 
irritation and profuse discharge. The remedy here is first, if possi- 
ble, to remove the cause, which, where the disease is confined to a 
single limb, may sometimes be done by surgical interference. Where 
this is impossible, we must use tonics and astringents, and support 
the vital powers as long as we can. 
The secretions often become perverted in quality as well as changed 
in quantity. The sour, acid perspiration of acute rheumatism; copi- 
ous discharges of fat, which sometimes occur from the intestines ; the 
lithic and phosphatic deposits, which take place in the urine, are ex- 
amples of this character. The appearance of sugar in the urine of 
diabetes, and albumen in that of Bright's disease, are instances of 
the same character. 
We attempt to remedy depraved secretion partly by agents calcu- 
lated to increase secretion, and thus remove the congestion or irri- 
tating cause upon which this derangement may depend. Thus, dis- 
ordered bowels are frequently rectified by purgatives ; cloudiness 
and acridity of the urine by diuretics. 
In other cases, we aim, by regulating the diet and administering MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
399 
remedies which act upon the blood, to bring about a state of the 
system which will not furnish material for these depraved secretions. 
In diabetes, we prohibit the use of starchy and saccharine articles of 
food. Where the urine is too acid, we administer alkalies, and where 
it is alkaline, acids. Tonics, remedies which improve nutrition, 
increase the tone and vigor of the entire system are useful. Certain 
medicines supposed to have the power of correcting depraved secre- 
tion, but whose modus operandi was obscure, have been denominated 
alteratives. At the head of these stands mercury, which has been 
often employed empirically in cases which puzzled the practitioner 
and baffled the ordinary remedies. It is very doubtful, however, 
whether these agents deserve the reputation they have obtained. 
More is to be hoped in such cases from the persevering use of tonics, 
diet, regimen, change of air, etc. Where these fail, we may some- 
times obviate the ill effects of these complaints, by stimulating the 
other secretions, as in removing the dropsy of albuminuria ; or afford 
relief by mechanical means, as by removing hardened feces from the 
rectum ; or by a surgical operation, crushing or cutting for stone in 
the bladder. 
We have now finished our review of functional diseases of the 
muscular, nervous, and secretory apparatus. Before proceeding to 
consider the proximate elements of disease, there still remains the 
subject of the blood, and the various changes produced in it by 
disease. 
During the prevalence of the humoral pathology, the causes of 
all disorders were sought in vitiation of the fluids, and among these, 
impurities of the blood of course occupied a prominent position. 
And still among the vulgar, crude notions prevail concerning bad 
humors, and numberless are the quackish impositions which find 
popular favor by promising to purify the blood. It is only, however, 
within a few years that organic chemistry has been sufficiently 
advanced to give any clear and accurate knowledge of the subject. 
We have now careful analyses of the blood, and know both the 
proximate and the ultimate elements of which it is composed, and 
the changes wrought in them by disease. 
Physiologists, unfortunately, are not yet well agreed as to the 
functions of some of these constituents, some contending, for 
instance, that albumen, and some that fibrine, is the principal element 
of nutrition. In respect to these, I shall endeavor to give the facts 
as far as known, the results of observation and experiment, leaving 
to others the part of theorizing thereupon. 
The blood is a vital fluid containing certain corpuscles which float 400 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
upon its current. Most of these are red, and have the form of 
flattened disks. By careful observation, a few white corpuscles may 
also be detected. These are larger than the red, and are greatly 
increased in certain diseases. The proportions of the various ele- 
ments of the blood are stated to be in health as follows : 
Corpuscles127 or varying from ' .110 to .152 
Fibrine003 or varying from .002 to .004 
Albumen080 or varying from .072 to .088 
Salts008 
Fat and extractive.. .006 
Water•.776 or varying from .750 to .810 
When drawn from a vein, the fibrine spontaneously coagulates, 
and entangles within its meshes the red corpuscles forming the clot 
or coagulum. The other constituents which remain in solution are 
termed " liquor sanguinis." 
Each of these elements may become deranged, either in conse- 
quence of disease or itself producing disease. It is manifest that, 
distributed as the blood is to every part of the system, it must 
speedily become affected in every disorder affecting any part, and 
may again become the means of spreading that disorder to organs 
previously unaffected. 
DISORDERS AFFECTING THE RED CORPUSCLES. 
The especial office of the red corpuscles is supposed to be the 
conveyance of oxygen from the lungs to the various tissues ; accord- 
ingly, they are observed to be diminished in phthisis and other 
chronic diseases of the respiratory organs. It has been found that 
"animals almost bled to death could be restored by injecting into their 
veins a mixture of red corpuscles and serum, although serum alone 
failed to do it. According to the observations of Andral and 
Gavarret, " the vigor and beauty of animals was proportioned to the 
amount of this element contained in their blood." From careful 
analysis, it appears that the corpuscles contain more phosphoric acid 
and more potassium than the liquor sanguinis. In this respect they 
correspond to the composition of the muscles and nerve substance. 
Hence, after performing their duty as carriers of oxygen, they are 
supposed to become materials for the immediate nutrition of those 
/tissues. A minute portion of iron also enters into their composition. 
T|k supposed changes in the oxidation of this iron by exposure to the 
air was at one time attributed the difference in color between arterial MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
401 
anti venous blood. A more probable explanation of this change is 
that which attributes it to a change in the form of the disks, which 
is bi-convex in venous and bi-concave in arterial blood. 
Performing such important functions in the economy, we should 
naturally expect that these corpuscles would be subject to many and 
serious derangements. These may consist in excess, deficiency, or 
perversion. Excess of the red corpuscles might be expected to 
accompany an excited state of all the vital powers. It is a curious 
fact, that they exist in considerably higher proportion in males 
than in females, in the former being, according to Becquerel, one 
hundred and forty-one parts in the thousand; in the latter, one 
hundred and twenty-seven. This deficiency is made up in the female 
by an increased amount of water, while the other elements of the 
blood remain nearly the same in the two sexes. Persons of a 
sanguineous temperament, according to Lehmann, have an increased 
share of these corpuscles. Audral and Gavarret found them in 
excess at the commencement of inflammations and eruptive fevers. 
Plethora has been attributed to the same cause ; but Becquerel and 
Rodier found, as the result of a careful analysis of six well-marked 
cases, that the proportion of red globules was a little less than the 
standard of health. We must therefore explain the phenomena of 
this state by supposing it to depend rather upon an increase in the 
entire mass of blood. Indeed, plethora is not inconsistent with a 
marked decrease in the proportion of red particles. 
The indications of an excess of this element are a florid appear- 
ance of the cheeks, lips, and other vascular parts, and by the deep- 
crimson hue of the blood when drawn from a vein or artery. All 
the animal functions are exalted and in a state of excitability. The- 
constitution is predisposed to apoplexy and the inflammations. 
The red corpuscles are deficient in anaemia, and in persons reduced 
by protracted disease, or by hemorrhage or exhausting discharges. 
Albuminuria, tuberculous and scrofulous affections, diabetes, cancer 
and other cachectic diseases are accompanied by the same result. 
Persons habitually breathing an impure air, subsisting on unwhole- 
some food, or living in districts infested with malaria, generally 
exhibit that pale sallow complexion characteristic of this condition. 
MM. Becquerel and Rodier found by analyses of the blood of 
thirty-five chlorotic persons, that the average of red corpuscles was 
reduced to .0947, while the watery element was proportionally 
increased. In extreme cases, the amount of red particles has been; 
reduced to twenty-eight and even twenty-one parts in one thousand! 
Assuming as we did that these corpuscles are the conveyers of 402 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
oxygen to the tissues, we should naturally expect that such a 
decrease in their number would be attended by marked derangement 
of the functions of nutrition and calorification. The animal tempe- 
rature in such persons is low, the extremities cold, and the circula- 
tion languid. Muscular power is diminished, the system generally 
enfeebled and rendered liable to chronic diseases, especially dyspep- 
sia, phthisis, and the neuroses. 
A marked decrease in the red corpuscles usually follows exposure 
to malarious influences. This phenomenon is accompanied by an 
increase of the white or colorless corpuscles, and enlargement of the 
spleen. Some have hence supposed it to be the function of this 
latter organ to produce the white particles, and that these after- 
ward become developed into the red. Others have regarded it 
rather as a disintegrating organ, and the white corpuscles as the red 
in a state of degradation. The entire subject of the function of the 
white corpuscles, as well as that of the origin and production of the 
red, is still enveloped in obscurity. 
The color of the red corpuscles is often changed by disease. In 
scurvy and malignant fevers, it becomes almost black, as shown by 
the appearance of petechia). The black-vomit is now admitted to 
be altered blood, and the black matter of melanosis seems to be 
formed from the coloring matter of this fluid. The life of the blood 
is spoken of in the Bible and by Hippocrates. This vital property 
is inherent in the red corpuscles, which are living cells having pro- 
bably the power of secretion and reproduction. It is this life of 
the blood which seems to be destroyed in certain malignant fevers in 
which the patient sinks at once and without attempt at reaction 
under the depressing influence of the morbific poison. In such cases, 
the corpuscles have been actually seen dissolved in the serum. It is 
probable that in most contagious diseases the primary lesion falls 
upon this element of the blood. 
We are as yet ignorant of the immediate cause of changes in the 
red corpuscles. There is some reason to suppose that they may be 
affected very much by nervous influence. It has already been shown 
that the secretions may be altered by perverted nervous action, and 
it would seem not improbable that the blood itself may undergo 
changes from the same cause. In the capillaries, moreover, the 
particles of the blood come into exceedingly close relations to the 
tissues, depositing a portion of their own elements for the nourish- 
ment of the structures, while others are separated from the solids, to 
mingle with the circulating fluid, and it is very probable that in this 
play of vital affinities, important changes may take place in the con- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
403 
stitution and qualities of the blood itself. There is, in this field, 
wide scope for speculation and for further research. With the 
progress of organic chemistry, we may anticipate a rich harvest of 
discovery in this department. 
Remedies.-Depletion is a sure and speedy method of reducing 
any excess in the red corpuscles. It is found that this element is 
diminished by bloodletting more rapidly than the rest. Low diet, 
abstinence from meat and highly-seasoned food, and the entire anti- 
phlogistic treatment produce the same result, but more gradually. 
Mercury and other remedies which increase the secretions, also reduce 
the proportion of red globules, and of necessity all such causes 
should scrupulously be avoided. 
To increase their number when deficient, we resort to nourishing 
and especially animal food with exercise and abundance of fresh air. 
The preparations of iron seem to exert a kind of specific influence in 
bringing about the same result. The red corpuscles contain, as is 
well-known, a minute portion of iron, and some have supposed that 
it was a deficiency in this element which gave rise to all the phe- 
nomena of anaemia. The proportion of iron normally contained in 
the blood is, however, so small, that in absence of any positive proof 
of its deficiency, there seems to be hardly reason to attribute all its 
remedial virtues to this cause. 
The diseases in which the blood seems to be contaminated usually 
require a stimulant and tonic plan of treatment, at the same time 
keeping open all the secretions, thus allowing nature an opportunity 
to react and cleanse the system from the morbific poison under whose 
influence it lies depressed. 
THE FIBRINE IN DISEASE. 
The differences which exist among physiologists respecting the 
part which this element sustains in nutrition, would necessarily occa- 
sion different views as to its agency in the phenomena of disease. 
It is at all events the constituent of the blood most frequently 
altered in disease, and the one whose changes have been most care- 
fully analyzed. In inflammations and affections of a sthenic charac- 
ter, it is always found in excess, ranging from four to ten and one 
half parts in one thousand. Pneumonia and acute rheumatism 
present examples of its greatest increase. The pustules of small-pox, 
the exanthemes of measles and scarlatina, and the intestinal ulcera- 
tions of typhoid fever are not followed by any such augmentation. 
This is doubtless owing to those diseases being essentially constitu- 404 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
tional, and their local manifestations upon the skin or mucous mem- 
branes being only secondary. Fibrine begins to be augmented as 
soon as inflammation and the degree of its increase is closely propor- 
tioned to the violence of the attack and of the constitutional re- 
action. This is well exemplified in cases where pneumonia occurs in 
the course of typhoid fever. Before the intercurrent inflammation 
sets in, the proportion of fibrine is diminished; but as soon as this 
appears, the blood, which was previously but imperfectly coagulable, 
exhibits the buffy coat, and upon analysis shows an excess of this 
element. It has been observed that bleeding does not diminish the 
proportion of fibrine. Now, this remedy does often afford effectual 
relief in the phlegmasise, hence this class of diseases can hardly be 
caused by excess of fibrine. The experiments of Andral in the case 
of burns, also show that the affection of the solids precedes that of 
the fluids. He thinks, however, that it is owing to the latter that 
the affection becomes constitutional; in short, that the sympathetic 
fever of inflammation is produced by the increase in the blood of 
the fibrinous element. 
The proportion of fibrine is reduced below the normal standard 
in all diseases of a typhoid character, also in the eruptive fevers, and 
in that condition of the blood induced by the absorption of an ani- 
mal poison, as from a dissecting wound. In these cases, the blood 
when drawn from a vein does not readily coagulate, and in the worst 
forms of them shows no disposition to do so. The coagulum, if 
formed at all, is small and soft, while the buffy coat is entirely want- 
ing. This state of the blood predisposes to hemorrhages, petechiae, 
and stagnation of the circulating fluid in the internal organs, as often 
occurs in congestive fevers. 
Venous blood contains less fibrine than arterial. Hence all causes 
which interfere with its due aeration in the lungs tend to diminish 
the proportion of this element. In cases of death from impeded 
respiration and from narcotic poisons, the blood is found in a state of 
fluidity. 
In connection with this subject, we are naturally led to speak of 
the phenomena of coagulation and of the buffy coat. When blood 
is drawn from a vein, especially if received into a deep and narrow 
vessel, the fibrine consolidates, entangling the red corpuscles in its 
meshes, and forming a disk-shaped mass, which floats upon the serum. 
If both the constituents of which it is composed arc present in abun- 
dance, the coagulum is large and firm. If the fibrine exceeds the red 
particles, the clot is small, firm, and contracted, most of the serum 
being thus pressed out. The upper portion of the clot, being first ex- 405 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
posed to the air, is formed quickly ; but the middle portion of it, be- 
ing drawn down by the slow contraction of that below, presents a 
concave or, as it is called, cupped appearance. Where the fibrine is 
in excess, the surface of this clot is yellow, constituting the buffy coat, 
while the red corpuscles settle to the bottom, giving it a reddish hue. 
The phenomena of coagulation and of the buffy coat evidently 
depend upon the existence of an abundance of fibrine in the blood, 
and, as they always appeared in inflammations, they were formerly 
supposed to be characteristic of that class of diseases, and were taken 
as a sure indication for the need of farther depletion. It is found, 
however, that they also occur in anaemia, chlorosis, and pregnancy, 
conditions of the system in which the red globules are diminished, 
and bloodletting of course contraindicated. 
Coagulation, where the fibrine and corpuscles are both abundant, 
takes place slowly. It is hastened by being drawn slowly, and thus 
much exposed to the air. Certain salts retard or entirely prevent the 
formation of the clot. In diseases characterized by diminution of the 
fibrine, the coagulum, if formed at all, is loose and soft, resembling 
jelly, and breaking up at the slightest touch. Sometimes there is no 
true clot, but only a few flocculent coagula. 
Much importance has of late been attached to the firm white co- 
agula frequently found in the heart after death, before which event 
their toughness and freedom from globules shows that they must 
have been formed. Certain deposits resembling vegetations are often 
found after articular rheumatism and some other inflammations upon 
the valves of the heart. These doubtless consist of condensed fibrine, 
and much speculation has taken place as to their possible effects if 
loosened from their attachment and mingled in the current of the cir- 
culation. It has been surmised that they might close up the mouths 
of some of the smaller' arteries, and thus interfere with the supply of 
blood to certain portions of the body. 
Various opinions have prevailed as to the part played by fibrine in 
the economy. This is not the place to discuss this question, which is 
strictly a physiological one. It is admitted by all to be concerned in 
the repair of the gelatinous tissues, and in the formation of the false 
membranes and other adventitious structures, sometimes produced by 
inflammation. 
Excess of fibrine, as already remarked, is not to be remediedA In- 
deed, the disease in which it most appears, acute rheumatism, is sel- 
dom much benefited by venesection. Probably cathartics, the neutral 
salts and alkalies act more effectually in this respect. On this princi- 
ple, the alkaline carbonates are added to cough mixtures to diminish 406 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
the viscidity of the sputa. Antimony, iodide of potassium, and espe- 
cially mercury, have also the property of reducing the excess of this 
element. 
Fibrine is a nitrogenized substance, and can only be formed from 
those articles of food which contain nitrogen. Hence, a saccharine 
or amylaceous diet must soon diminish the proportion of this ele- 
ment, and also of the albumen. And such a diet experience has long 
since shown to be best suited to all inflammatory affections. The 
narcotics, and other agents which lower the function of respiration, 
may thus reduce any excess of fibrine; and it may be partly upon this 
property that their acknowledged antiphlogistic powers may depend. 
Where, as in chlorosis, excess of fibrine is united with deficiency 
of the red globules, we have a double indication to fulfill. We re- 
sort to iron and nourishing diet to increase the corpuscles; at the 
same time we regulate the secretions, to prevent increase of fibrine. 
Diminution in the natural proportion of fibrine, whether we regard 
it as a cause or an effect, indicates an asthenic state of the system, 
requiring support and a tonic, or plan of treatment. 
As we have seen, it is almost characteristic of low fevers. Here we 
are often. obliged to give nourishment in its most concentrated and 
most easily assimilated forms, as animal broths, beef-tea, etc. The 
functions of digestion, respiration, and secretion also require to be 
watched and regulated. The vegetable bitters and mineral acids 
are useful in increasing the appetite and giving tone and vigor to the 
stomach and bowels. As a deficiency of fibrine produces laxity of the 
tissues and a tendency to passive hemorrhages, those tonics which 
also act as astringents are especially indicated. As fatigue tends to 
reduce the due proportion of this element, rest should be carefully 
prescribed. The lungs should be closely watched, and measures at 
once taken to relieve any disease which might insidiously steal upon 
them. In cases where the deficiency of fibrine depends upon the pres- 
ence of some septic or putrescent poison in the blood, we aim to 
support the system, watching against local complications, and keep- 
ing open the various secretions, thus aiding nature to relieve itself of 
the materies inorbi. Provided that we can obviate the tendency to 
dying for a certain time, the system will seldom fail to work itself 
free from the depressing influence under which it has labored. 
DERANGEMENTS AFFECTING THE SEROUS ELEMENTS. 
The most important of these is the albumen. The essential part 
which this element sustains in the economy is shown by the fact that MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
407 
from the albumen of the egg all the tissues are constructed in ovo-vi- 
viparous animals. Whether we regard it, according to the old theory, 
as the material for the formation of fibrine, or, with later writers, as 
the immediate element for nutrition, its derangements demand care- 
ful investigation. 
It is the albumen which imparts viscidity to the serum, the spe- 
cific gravity of which it raises in health to about 1.030. The analy- 
ses of MM. Becquerel and Rodier prove that this element is dimin- 
ished in inflammations, and indeed in most diseases, whether acute or 
chronic. Relatively it is increased in cholera by the rapid draining 
off of the watery portion of the blood. 
It is most rapidly reduced in albuminuria, being here directly re- 
moved by the action of the kidneys. The fluid of dropsy also fre- 
quently contains albumen. The specific gravity of the serum is a 
pretty accurate measure of the proportion of this element contained. 
In Bright's disease this has been reduced as low as 1.015, or even 
1.013. (v. Christison, in Libr. Pract. Med.) 
The oily or fatty constituent of the blood is sometimes increased 
so as to cause the serum to appear milky. This, Simon assures us, is 
connected with organic change of the chylopoietic system, especially 
with scirrhus of the liver. 
The variations of the saline elements of the blood do not seem to 
have been very carefully examined. Their proportions must vary, 
partly with the amount of salts taken with the food or drink, and 
partly with the activity with which they are removed by the kidney. 
The saline elements are deficient in yellow-fever and other malignant 
febrile affections, causing the dark, grumous appearance in such cases 
presented by the In Asiatic cholera, also, the salts are rapidly 
removed, together with the watery portions of the blood, producing 
the lividity and obstructed circulation which marks the latter stages 
of the disease. This deficiency of serum is doubtless owing to the 
profuse evacuations. Its effects are the more striking, since the injec- 
tion of saline fluids into the veins produces all the appearances of re- 
turning animation. 
A deficiency of phosphate of lime has been supposed to be the 
cause of rachitis and mollities ossium, and this salt has been advised 
as a remedy in such complaints, I am not aware with what success. 
The presence of a certain amount of saline matters is evidently ne- 
cessary to the fluidity of the blood and the nutrition of the tissues. 
A due proportion of these among themselves is also essential to their 
solution in the urine, the channel by which they are principally re- 408 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
moved from the system. Further than to produce this effect, we sel- 
dom attempt to modify this element of the blood. 
In all cases where the animal constituents of the circulating • fluid 
are diminished, the watery portions are at once increased. After 
hemorrhages, and in ansemical states of the system, the blood be- 
comes thin and watery. In the latter stages of chronic and wasting 
diseases, the organic constituents are greatly reduced. This dimin- 
ished spissitude of the blood causes it to soak readily through the 
tissues, thus predisposing to dropsy and profuse secretions. 
It is found that the watery elements are materially increased in 
pregnancy. The mean proportion of the red globules in this state is 
reduced to 113 parts in 1000. Nor does it appear that the albumen 
or fibrine is increased. The excess is in the watery portion, and this 
excess seems to be increased as pregnancy is more advanced. At the 
same time, the entire mass of blood is increased, producing over-dis- 
tention of the bloodvessels and tissues, with the headache, vertigo, 
etc., which occur at this period. Thus, pregnancy is allied at once to 
plethora and aiuemia, the whole mass of the blood being in excess, 
while there is a deficiency of red globules and of the animal constitu- 
ents generally. This thin, watery condition of the blood may account 
for the edema and effusions which often attend the later stages of 
gestation. The deficiency of red particles may also explain the pe- 
culiar fatality of puerperal anaemia. The blood having already lost 
much of its vitalizing powers, it is not strange that even a slight ad- 
ditional hemorrhage, with the excitement of parturition, and the effect, 
perhaps, of some depressing influence upon the nervous system, should 
cause anaemia at this time to be unusually dangerous. 
Liquids taken into the stomach are speedily absorbed by the veins, 
and thus thrown into the mass of the circulation. Any excess of 
fluids introduced in this way will be speedily removed by the action 
of skin or kidneys. Indeed, this may sometimes be a useful mode of 
stimulating the secretions of those organs. In irritation of the uri- 
nary organs, mild demulcent drinks are frequently serviceable, by di- 
luting that fluid, and thus diminishing its acridity. It has been sug- 
gested that the " water-cure" owes much of any efficacy it may pos- 
sess to its thus washing out the system. On the other hand, fluxes 
and profuse secretions may sometimes be reduced by abstinence from 
the use of drinks. 
The functions of the blood are to furnish nourishment to the 
tissues, to convey oxygen to all parts of the body, and to remove 
waste materials from the economy. In the discharge of each of these 
functions, it undergoes itself certain changes, which, when properly MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
409 
performed, preserve it in a healthy and normal condition. But when 
these changes are not properly effected, whether in consequence of 
disease or from some other cause, the blood itself becomes impure, 
and unfitted to perform its usual work. Consequently, it becomes a 
part of our task to examine the variations which the state of the blood 
may undergo in consequence of diseases affecting these functions. 
A prime office, as we have said, of the red particles is to convey 
oxygen to the tissues. In return for this, the blood absorbs carbonic 
acid gas, which is carried in venous blood to the lungs, there to be 
discharged from the system. Both these processes are absolutely ne- 
cessary to the preservation of life. If the supply of oxygen be cut 
off, even though the carbonic acid be properly removed, the functions 
of nutrition and innervation are at once stopped. On the other hand, 
the carbon, if retained in the system, seems to act as a slow poison, and 
if its removal be entirely cut off, the circulation through the lungs is im- 
mediately brought to a stand and life is speedily extinct. This element 
is removed, partly by the liver as a fluid excretion, but principally by 
the lungs in the form of gas. In health, the rapidity and fullness of 
respiration vary with the waste of the tissues. If the circulation be 
hurried, as by exercise,-the frequency of inspiration is immediately 
increased. Aeration of the blood in the lungs is probably never ex- 
cessive, but often enough deficient. All diseases of the respiratory 
organs interfere more or less with this process. Mechanical impedi- 
ments to respiration, and the presence of deleterious gases in the at- 
mosphere, produce a similar effect. 
It is a singular fact that, where the access of air to the lungs is 
gradually diminished, the system may be brought to subsist on a 
very small supply of oxygen. Thus, persons suffering from lingering 
phthisis continue to live after a large portion of the lungs has 
been spoiled. The quantity of the blood in these cases has been re- 
duced, pari passu, with the diminished respiration. Muscular activi- 
ty is almost suspended, nutrition and the production of nerve-power 
decreased, and all the functions, both of animal and organic life, 
sluggishly performed. The system is thus gradually brought to a 
condition resembling slightly that of animals in a state of hyberna- 
tion. We know that these often exist for months, scarcely breathing 
at all, and all the vital processes nearly suspended. There is scarce 
any waste of the tissues, little carbonic acid gas produced, and the 
want of oxygen greatly reduced. But were the supply of this ele- 
ment suddenly cut off while all the functions were in full activity, 
carbon enough would speedily be accumulated to destroy life by 
asphyxia. This we see exemplified in acute diseases of the lungs. 410 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
It is found that, where the hepatization of pneumonia involves more 
than one third of these organs, death is pretty sure to follow. These 
considerations may throw light on the efficacy of the treatment usu- 
ally adopted in these cases. Expecting that a portion of the lungs 
will be for a while unfit for use, means to diminish the need of respi- 
ration. By depletion we reduce the mass of blood requiring aeration, 
as well as the activity of the circulation. By the use of sedatives, as 
antimony, digitalis, etc., we keep down the force and frequency of 
the heart's contractions, and thus decrease the amount of blood sent 
to the lungs. We enjoin perfect rest of mind and body to prevent 
unnecessary consumption of oxygen and waste of the tissues. Abun- 
dance of pure and fresh air is supplied to those portions of the lungs 
still unaffected. The secretions also are kept freely open, to remove 
by this channel carbonaceous matters from the economy, and it may 
be necessary to apply warmth to the surface to make up for the de- 
ficient calorification. 
But there is a somewhat different condition of the blood, which 
exists in emphysema and cyanosis. Here the blood continues to cir- 
culate without being properly arterialized. The lips and cheeks are 
constantly livid, the skin and extremities cold; muscular power great- 
ly enfeebled; the body and mind are alike incapable of any severe 
exertion. The processes of secretion and nutrition may be tolerably 
well performed, but all the vital powers are reduced to the lowest 
possible degree of activity. 
Where the action of the lungs is still more interfered with, we 
have developed the phenomena of asphyxia. The blood becoming 
more and more loaded with carbon, is at last arrested in its passage 
through the lungs. How this is done we can not explain; the fact 
seems to show that a change in its constitution is essential to its pas- 
sage through the pulmonary capillaries. At once the venous system 
becomes engorged, the lips and cheeks assume a livid hue, the jugulars 
swell and heave, the pulse becomes slow and feeble, and the heart, 
deprived of its natural stimulus, at length ceases to contract; life is 
speedily extinguished. If now, by artificial respiration or otherwise, 
air be again admitted to the lungs, the heart may sometimes be 
aroused to action, and phenomena of life be re-established. But 
death seldom occurs purely from the stoppage of the pulmonary cir- 
culation. The venous blood, partially oxygenated, often passes into 
the arteries, and, being unable to afford the necessary stimulus to the 
various organs, may produce congestions, delirium, and muscular 
spasm. So that the symptoms of asphyxia, gradually induced, may 
be those of weakness and debility, or of congestion and excited ner- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
411 
vous action. The convulsions which sometimes attend this state have 
led some physiologists to consider carbonic acid as a stimulant to the 
muscular system. 
We have already spoken of and explained the action of the reme- 
dies used to relieve acute diseases of the respiratory organs. In 
asthma, spasmodica, and pertussis, remedies which act by soothing 
nervous irritability are often useful. The most reliable of these are 
ether, belladonna, stramonium, lobelia, and tobacco. Where asphyxia 
is producing its depressing effect upon the circulation, stimulants may 
be necessary to restore this function. Friction and warmth to the 
surface answer the double purpose of sustaining animal heat and 
keeping up the flow of blood through the capillaries. 
It has been suggested to compensate for impairment of a portion 
of the lungs by causing the patient to inhale pure oxygen. This may 
sometimes answer for a palliative. But an increased supply of oxy- 
gen must cause an increased production of carbonic acid, and unless 
means are provided for its removal, we shall speedily see its poisonous 
influence upon the blood. Experiments upon animals confined in oxy- 
gen gas show that they die comatose within a few hours. This may 
be due to exhaustion from excessive nervous excitement, or to the 
cause just mentioned. An experiment of Rolando would seem to 
favor the last supposition (v. Carpenter's Physiology). He tied 
the air-tube of one lung in a tortoise without seriously injuring 
the animal; but if one lung were supplied with carbonic acid gas 
while air was admitted to the other, the animal soon died. 
In order to remove the congested state of various organs which 
attends sudden interruptions of the process of respiration, the secre- 
tions need active stimulation. The organs.which suffer most in this 
case are the brain, lungs, and liver. Cholagogues, which increase the 
secretion of the bile, and by this means remove the superfluous car- 
bon, seem best adapted to relieve this condition, and this may explain 
their well-known utility in acute pulmonary disease. 
The secretions which most affect the constitution of the blood are 
those of the liver, skin, and kidneys. The presence of biliary mat- 
ters in the blood is indicated by the yellow color imparted to the skin, 
conjunctiva, and urine. Various diseases have been imputed to the 
suspension of this secretion. Jaundice, which is its undoubted and 
immediate effect, is often unattended with any serious symptoms, 
while it occasionally induces coma, and finally death. Dr. Alison in- 
geniously attempts to account for this difference in cases apparently 
so similar by supposing that, in the milder cases, the bile has been 
duly secreted but reabsorbed, the deleterious elements being left be- 412 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
hind, while in the more dangerous form of the disease no part of it 
has ever been separated from the blood, which thus acts as a direct 
poison upon the nerve-centres. 
The most important element in the matters excreted by the skin 
is lactic acid, and as this has also been found increased in the blood 
during attacks of acute rheumatism, it has been supposed to play an 
important part in the phenomena of that disease. It is certain that 
this complaint occurs most in persons much exposed to cold and 
moisture, and hence liable to suppressed perspiration. The advocates 
for this theory say that lactic acid, being retained in the blood, acts 
upon it like a ferment, causing also the production of lithic acid, and 
exciting in vigorous frames rheumatic fever, and in more torpid con- 
stitutions various gouty and rheumatic affections. 
In all chronic affections, especially those of the bowels and kid- 
neys, the functions of the skin should receive careful attention. 
Many of these originate in suppressed perspiration, and in most of 
them the skin is dry and harsh, and the capillary circulation defective. 
Sometimes, however, an opposite condition of the cutaneous surface 
is induced. The patient is plagued with profuse sweating, particu- 
larly at night. This sometimes, as in the later stages of phthisis, 
seems to be indicative of a general breaking up of the system. In 
all cases, it is greatly reducing, seeming rapidly to exhaust the animal 
as well as the watery elements of the blood. It must be met by the 
use of tonics and astringents. The sulphate, sesqui-nitrate, and mu- 
riated tincture of iron are well adapted to cases of this character. 
But the most serious effects upon the character of the blood are 
produced by retention or suppression of the urine. The urea seems 
to act as a direct poison upon the nerve-centres, speedily giving rise 
to coma or convulsions. In lesser degrees, it causes typhoid symp- 
toms, with low, muttering delirium ; it also acts as an irritant upon 
the serous membranes, tending to produce in them a low grade of in- 
flammation, with profuse effusion. There is also a rapid diminution 
of the animal constituents of the blood, as is evidenced by the pale, 
cachectic appearance of persons suffering from chronic diseases of the 
kidneys. Diabetes is, perhaps, the only affection in which excessive 
secretion of urine appears to influence the constitution of the blood. 
The sugar here formed in the blood seems to act as a powerful diu- 
retic, stimulating the action of the kidneys to the highest degree. 
The increase in the urine secreted is made up principally of water 
and saccharine matter, but doubtless the animal tissues, especially 
those containing nitrogen, suffer somewhat. The watery portion of MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
413 
the blood is maintained by the incessant thirst of the patient, which 
leads him to drink continually. 
Where the blood is deteriorated by retained excretions, the true 
indication is manifestly to remove the morbific matter by stimulating 
the organs whose proper function it is to eliminate such materials ; 
unless, indeed, those organs be already in a state of excitement. In 
this case, we may endeavor to get rid of the offending matters by 
acting upon the other secretions, or to take measures to render them, 
as far as possible, innocuous. Where the kidneys are diseased, we 
may remove dropsical effusions by purgatives, diaphoretics, and tap- 
ping. When we find ourselves unable to drive lithic acid and pro- 
ducts allied to it from the system, we may sometimes diminish their 
ill effects by exhibiting the alkalies. 
We have spoken of the mode in which the constitution of the 
blood is influenced by the various excretions. But a more thorough 
analysis of the subject may lead us to attach a wider significancy to 
that term than we have yet assigned it. In the words of Treviranus, 
who first broached this great principle, " Each single part of the body 
in respect of its nutrition stands to the whole body in the relation of 
an excreted substance." According to this principle, then, each por- 
tion of the body, in separating from the blood that part essential to 
its own nutrition, renders that fluid better adapted for the nourish- 
ment of every other portion. As an illustration of this doctrine, we 
may mention the hair of the foetus and the mammary gland in the 
male. These of themselves answer ho practical end. The only use 
we can attribute to them is that of separating from the blood mate- 
rials which might otherwise be noxious to it. The thymus and thy- 
roid gland and renal capsules may perform a similar part. We may 
even carry this principle still further, and assert that the existence of 
certain materials in the blood may determine the formation of cer- 
tain organs for their elimination. Thus, where one kidney has been 
destroyed, the urea in the blood stimulates the other until it grows to 
double its natural size, in order to accomplish double its natural work. 
So, when the hydro-carbonaceous matters abound in the system, 
they cause an increase of the adipose tissues. In the same way, vari- 
ous diets exercise an important influence upon the growth of certain 
structures, as the bones, muscles, etc. This is still more strikingly 
exemplified in the case of plants and animals. It is well known that 
the soil, in one instance, and food and training, may go far to modify 
the constitution and essential nature of the original germ. These, 
and many similar examples which might be given, show that the nu- 414 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
trition of the various tissues, and the composition and qualities of 
the blood, have a most important reciprocal relation. 
The application of this principle may go far to explain the sym- 
pathies known to exist between certain organs. We have only to 
suppose them to sustain such a complemental relation to each other 
"that neither of them can be duly formed or maintained in healthy 
structure unless the right condition of the blood be induced and pre- 
served by the formation of the other." In proof of this, we may 
adduce the fact that certain organs are closely connected in their 
nutrition, although there is no relation discoverable in their external 
functions. Thus, the growth of the beard in man appears simulta- 
neously with the development of the organs of generation. In birds, 
the plumage becomes brighter and more deeply colored during the 
period of breeding. In the same way may be explained a connection 
in the production and development of ot]ier organs which are in 
no other ways related. 
The same principle has an important relation to pathology. It is 
manifest that if one of two organs thus correlated becomes affected 
by disease, the other must also suffer, and that not merely from a 
vague sympathy, but from positive and definite change in the consti- 
tution of the blood. So also when the nutrition of one organ suffers? 
the elements which in a healthy state are removed from the blood by 
it remain to exert their irritating and noxious influence upon the rest 
of the body. Perhaps the secondary fever or sympathetic constitu- 
tional excitement which attends any severe local inflammation may 
be due very much to this cause. 
The materials of which the blood is composed are constantly be- 
ing deposited for the nutrition of the tissues or removed by the 
organs of excretion, and their place supplied by the assimilation of 
chyle. Upon the character of the materials thus added to the circu- 
lating fluid must in a great degree depend its own constitution and 
qualities. Many changes thus effected in the living laboratory are 
too obscure to be traced by our present means of research. We may 
instance, however, one or two causes of disease which seem to spring 
from this source. It is well known that gout and the lithic acid dis- 
eases occur most frequently in persons of luxurious and sedentary 
habits. The excess of nitrogenized food taken by such persons not 
being required for the nourishment of the tissues, either remains in 
the blood, a continual source of irritation, or deranges the kidneys in 
their attempts to remove it from the economy, causing nephritis or 
nephralgia. Even where the lithic acid or lithates have been re- 
moved by those organs, they are often insoluble in the urine, and MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
415 
form deposits of sand, gravel, or calculi in the kidneys or bladder. 
In case the excess of nitrogenized elements remains in the system, it 
is converted into lithic acid, and disorders the organs of digestion 
and the system generally, until at length some local cause fixes it 
upon a limb or joint and a fit of gout ensues. The materies is then 
often deposited in the form of chalk-stones, which consist of the lithate 
of soda ; an abundant deposit of lithates perhaps occurs in the urine, 
and the patient is for a while relieved. The indication of treatment 
in such a case is evidently to prescribe a less azotized diet, the use of 
alkalies to dissolve the acid and render it less irritating, and finally 
by the use of colchicum expel it from the system. Another disease, 
supposed to arise partly from mal-assimilation of the chyle, is dia- 
betes. Chemical analysis has established the fact of the existence of 
sugar in the blood before it has been eliminated by the kidneys, and 
it seems probable that it arises in part from imperfect digestion of 
the saccharine portions of the food. The investigations of M. 
Bernard have recently shown that the liver has the power of convert- 
ing even the nitrogenized elements into sugar. This may account for 
that substance being still found in the urine, even when the patient 
is confined to nitrogenized food ; but since its quantity is much di- 
minished when the supply of saccharine material is- cut off, mal- 
assimilation of the chyle must still be reckoned an important part 
of the affection. 
In our study of the blood, we are to regard it 'not merely as a 
passive agent, but as living and endowed with vital properties. This 
life of the blood is especially shown in maintaining itself constantly 
in a state adapted to the nutrition of all the various tissues. Not- 
withstanding the diversity of materials of which it is composed, and 
the changes effected in it by the processes of secretion and nutrition, 
it still preserves the same condition and qualities, assimilating 
to itself all the elements furnished the organs of digestion, and 
excreting all the effete particles which it absorbs in its circuit 
through the system. But sometimes the blood, by exposure to the 
specific causes of disease (previously treated of under etiology), 
becomes poisoned, and its vital powers are for a while suspended or 
totally destroyed. Such seems to be the case in the worst forms of 
scarlatina and typhus. The powers of life seem to be at once pros- 
trated by the violence of the morbific influence, and sink without 
any attempt toward reaction. There can be no doubt that in all 
severe fevers the vitality of the blood is seriously poisoned. Chemi- 
cal analysis has not yet been able to detect the presence of any 416 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
foreign substance, nor is it likely that it ever will. But the phe- 
nomena produced by it prove its existence just as surely. 
The manner in which the constitution is affected by the virus of 
small-pox and syphilis may throw light upon this class of cases. 
Certain French pathologists have found that they could readily pro- 
duce disease in some of the lower animals, by injecting into their 
veins the blood of a man who had died of putrid fever. 
There are some diseases originating locally which may so alter 
the blood as to cause disturbance of the entire system or disorder in 
some distant organ. Thus, pus in phlebitis, mingling in the current 
of the circulation, may induce a low form of fever, and also abscesses 
in various parts of the body. The germ-cells of cancer also appear 
to be conveyed to various parts of the body by means of the circu- 
lation. Hence, when the disease has been extirpated, in one place, it 
is liable to break out elsewhere, and perhaps in several points at 
once. In poisoning from the slow influence of certain metals, as 
lead and mercury, there can be no doubt that minute particles of 
them are carried by the blood to the points where they produce 
symptoms of local disease. 
The indications in the treatment of this class of diseases are 
obviously to counteract the immediately morbific effects of these 
foreign substances, and as soon as possible to expel them from the 
system. The poison of infectious diseases is generally directly 
depressing upon the powers of life. In these, our business is to sup- 
port the system, while nature gets rid of the disease, which she never 
fails to do, provided life can be sustained while she is doing it. For 
this end, we may use stimulants, anodynes, etc. At the same time, 
the secretions must be kept open so as to remove offending matters 
from the economy. The skin, the bowels, and the kidneys are the 
organs to which our attention should for this purpose be directed. 
Lead has actually been found by analysis in the urine of persons 
recovering from lead disease. The commencement of convalescence 
is often marked by certain critical discharges, by means of which we 
may perhaps suppose the materies morbi to be eliminated from the 
economy. The ancient physicians paid especial regard to these 
crises, and directed their efforts to produce them. In modern times, 
they have not, perhaps, received a due share of attention. 
Having considered functional affections of the nerves, muscles, 
and apparatus of secretion, and also the various changes in the 
composition and qualities of the blood, we are now prepared to 
study these two classes of derangements when occurring in combina- 
tion, thus constituting proximate elements of disease. Under this 417 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
head we shall investigate, first, anaemia, and the results of deficient 
nutrition, namely, atrophy and degeneration ; secondly, hyperaemia 
and hypertrophy ; thirdly, inflammation and its products ; fourthly, 
peculiar morbid products, the results of perverted nutrition. 
ANJEMIA. 
This term, according to its derivation (a, without, and alp,a, blood), 
should signify bloodless. By common consent, however, it is used 
Fig. 110.-Represents the Leaden Hue of the Complexion in Anaemia. 
to denote a deficiency in the quantity or quality of the circulating 
fluid, or in its distribution to certain portions of the body. In this 
affection, all parts of the system suffer more or less, being deprived 
of a due supply of that vivifying fluid so essential to healthy nutrition 
and functional activity. The red particles being too few to convey 
a proper quantity of oxygen to the muscles and nerves, a general 
sensation of weakness and faintness is the necessary consequence. 
The muscles of organic as well as of animal life suffer under the 
depression. The heart's action is ordinarily feeble and fluttering, but 418 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
under excitement may become frequent and palpitating. The 
tonicity of the arterial system is also diminished, rendering the pulse 
weak and thready, the extremities cold and sometimes numb. Dys- 
pepsia is another consequence of this condition. The muscular 
structure of the stomach and bowels shares in the general weakness. 
Hence, digestion is imperfectly performed, the food lying like a dead 
weight in the stomach, and causing a distressing sense of oppression. 
The bowels are also torpid, allowing the feces to accumulate, and by 
partial reabsorption, produce various derangements of the economy. 
Gas also collects in the intestines, distending them sometimes 
enormously, and causing intense pain. The mucous membrane of 
the intestines, being also insufficiently supplied with blood, is unable 
to perform its proper functions, in elaborating the gastric juice and 
other fluids required for digestion. Thus, the chyme is imperfectly 
prepared, and nutrition generally interfered with. The process of 
sanguification being thus impaired, produces a tendency for the 
remaining blood to become diseased, and all the effects of the 
disease intensified. 
In part sympathetic with this derangement of the stomach, in 
part from deficient supply of its natural stimulus, the heart is apt to 
become deranged in the course of this affection. Its muscular 
structure becomes flabby, and it no longer contracts with its wonted 
force. Weakness induces irritability. Hence, the least cause of 
excitement brings on irregular action, palpitation, followed perhaps, 
by faintness and fluttering. The pulse is weak but quick and jerk- 
ing, rising upon any little excitement, but constantly more frequent 
than natural. Any unusual exertion, as climbing a hill or a flight 
of stairs, is followed by tumultuous beating of the heart and faint- 
ness. 
But the most remarkable effects of anaemia are manifested in the 
nervous system. The red globules, as we have already remarked, 
seem from their chemical constitution ultimately destined for the nu- 
trition of the nerve-substance. Hence, when these are diminished in 
quantity, the nervous system is not properly nourished, and, in conse- 
quence, becomes weak and irritable. Again, these same red particles 
convey oxygen, the action of which upon the nerve-centres is neces- 
sary to the production of nerve and life-power. Hence, all the 
functions of the brain and spinal cord are liable to be disordered. 
Sensation is usually more or less deranged. Irregular pains are felt 
in various parts of the body ; the eyes are weak and intolerant of 
light ; noises are heard in the ears, which are inordinately sensitive to 
sound ; there is also headache and frequently dizziness. The taste MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
419 
is often perverted, craving, especially in chlorotic females, chalk, 
slate, and other indigestible substances. Sometimes the mental and 
moral faculties are disordered, producing a species of insanity. 
More frequently the excito-motor functions are deranged, producing 
hysterical convulsions, catalepsy, etc. 
We not unfrequently meet with a singular combination of gene- 
ral anaemia with local congestion of the brain and spinal cord, as 
evinced by headache, noises in the ears, spinal tenderness, with 
throbbing of the carotid and temporal arteries. This apparent 
anomaly may be partly explained by considering the character of 
the cerebral circulation. The walls of the bloodvessels in general 
are muscular, and by their tonicity keep up a constant pressure upon 
their contents. But this is not the case with the arteries of the 
brain ; hence, though the entire mass of blood may be decreased, 
congestion may still be kept up within the cerebrum. Again feeble- 
ness of the heart's action may allow the blood to stagnate in the 
head. Thus, the veins and sinuses become congested, and symptoms 
of drowsiness, dull headache with impaired mental activity, ensue. 
Explain it as we may, it is a well-known fact that persons who die 
of want or starvation present all the appearances of congestion of 
the brain. 
Besides these effects of anaemia on the nerve-centres, we find it 
producing various anomalous symptoms upon the peripheral nerves. 
Thus we find pains occurring without any apparent cause in the side, 
back, and limbs. Usually there is also tenderness over some portion 
of the spine. Sometimes patients complain of numbness, sometimes 
of pricking, smarting, burning, and various indescribable sensations. 
The power of voluntary motion is occasionally deranged, as in 
chorea and hysteria. Indeed, there is scarcely one of the innumera- 
ble derangements which may be referred to the nervous system, but 
is frequently connected with this state of the blood. 
Ancemia, when long continued, is exceedingly apt to induce 
organic disease. This is especially liable to fall upon the lungs. 
Three, at least, of the four essentials of nutrition (p. 232 Kirke's and 
Paget's Physiology) are wanting ; for we have here neither " a right 
state and composition of the blood" nor a regular supply of it. 
Nor is the nervous influence so necessary to the proper performance 
of this function in a healthy state. It is not strange, then, that the 
plasma of the blood should become degenerate, and form aplastic or 
caco-plastic deposits. Hence, we have the various indurations of 
scrofula and the formation of tubercle. The powers of life are too 
feeble properly to vitalize the new products of nutrition ; hence they 420 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND .AN ART. 
remain unorganized, and by their gradual decomposition destroy the 
textures in connection with which they are placed. 
The lungs being themselves of a low degree of organization, 
seem especially to become the seat of such deposits. Moreover, the 
upper portion of the lungs being less perfectly expanded than the 
lower in the movements of the chest, retains a lesser degree of vitality, 
and is thus more liable to degenerate and become atrophied. These 
considerations may perhaps throw some light on the fact that tubercu- 
lar deposit is so peculiarly liable to occur in the upper lobes of the lung; 
while inflammation, which is more disposed to attack parts of higher 
organization and functional activity, falls oftener upon the lower and 
posterior portions of the chest. 
This tendency of anaemia to induce degeneration and tubercular 
deposit has an important bearing upon our prognosis and treatment. 
If organic disease has not already set in, the healthy condition of 
the blood can usually be restored by a faithful use of the appropriate 
remedies. But if tubercular deposit has actually commenced, the 
prospect of a cure is of course faint. Hence, in such cases, a careful 
examination of the lungs should be made before rendering an opinion 
positively favorable. 
The causes of anaemia are various. Hemorrhagic discharges, by 
directly reducing the quantity of the blood, frequently produce it. 
Often it is owing to insufficient or improper food, or to breathing an 
impure atmosphere. 
The inhabitants of malarious districts, even though they escape 
the fever, usually exhibit a pale, cachectic appearance. There seems 
to be something in the influence of the miasma which tends to 
diminish the red particles, at the same time that it increases the pro- 
portion of the white. Chronic diseases attended with wasting 
discharges impoverish the blood. Indigestion, by cutting off the 
supply of nutriment, may have a similar effect. Diseases of the 
kidneys and cancerous cachexia? cause or are accompanied by the 
same affection. 
It may be difficult to explain why uterine irregularity should 
cause this state of the blood, but frequent observation proves it to 
be true. Suppressed menstruation is pretty sure to be followed by 
all the symptoms of anaemia or chlorosis. We can readily under- 
stand why too frequent or too profuse discharges from the uterus 
should have such an effect. Pregnancy and the puerperal state are, 
as we have already remarked, often accompanied by excess of the 
watery and deficiency in the animal elements of the blood. Anaemia 
occurring at this time is peculiarly obstinate, frequently fatal. The MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
421 
excitement and loss of blood attendant upon parturition reduce the 
poor patient to the verge of exhaustion, and the remedies usually 
efficient in such cases lose their effect. The blood, watery and 
deprived of its fibrine, leaks from the vessels, and accumulates in the 
serous cavities. Thus, the breathing is oppressed and the heart's 
action impeded, till from asthenia death closes the scene. Frequently 
the kidneys will be found softened or studded with the deposit so 
characteristic of Bright's disease. 
The treatment proper to anaemia has already been indicated in 
considering affections of the various constituents of the blood. 
For deficiency of the red globules, iron is the appropriate remedy, 
and where there is a relaxed state of fibre with wasting dis- 
charges, the more astringent preparations of this metal, as the sul- 
phate, sesqui-nitrate, and muriated tincture, fulfill a double purpose. 
With iron may be combined the vegetable tonics, as bark, quassia, 
Colombo, etc. Rest, proper exercise, nourishing diet, will contribute 
to the cure. Where affections of particular organs have been super- 
induced, they must be met by their appropriate remedies. Thus, in ner- 
vous complications, the salts of valeriana and salicine are often useful. 
When we find constipation with perverted appetite, purgatives sub- 
serve an important purpose. Attention should always be directed 
to the accompanying affection, whatever it be, and means at once 
taken to relieve it. 
Anaemia may be local as well as general. A good example of 
this is furnished where the main artery of a limb is ligated, as for 
aneurism. The immediate effects are pain, weakness, loss of sensi- 
bility, and diminished temperature. As the collateral circulation 
restores the normal supply of blood, the limb gradually resumes its 
normal state. But if the vitality of the part is too low to wait for 
this, mortification takes place and the limb dies. Similar effects may 
follow from obstruction to the circulation by ossification of the 
arteries. 
Another cause of local anaemia may be congestion of a neighbor- 
ing organ. Thus, in peritonitis, it is common to find the mucous 
membrane pale and bloodless. So active, muscular exertion, or men- 
tal excitement, immediately after a meal, is sure to impede digestion 
by withdrawing its appropriate supply of blood from the stomach. 
In the rigor of fever, or under the influence of extreme cold, the 
surface of the body is left chilly and blanched, while the internal 
organs are in a state of high congestion. The nervous influence has 
also much to do with the distribution of blood to a part. How 
quickly a sudden alarm will pale the ruddiest face ! And why may 422 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
not the same influence have a similar effect upon the internal organs, 
and if the state of mind conducive to such a condition of the organ 
be habitual, why may it not be the means of producing a permanent 
local anaemia ? Perhaps we may, in this way, account for the weak 
stomach, disordered secretions, and torpid bowels, so common in 
literary and studious persons. The pale faces of men of nervous 
temperament and strong passions may be another example of the 
same kind. 
Disuse of a part is another frequent cause of local anaemia. The 
structures of a part, being no longer brought into functional exercise, 
cease to call for their normal supply of blood, which is in conse- 
quence diverted from them to other organs. A limb which has been 
palsied or in any way made useless becomes cold and flabby, nutri- 
tion is gradually diminished, and the part becomes shriveled and 
atrophied. Organs which outlast the period of functional activity, as 
the ovaries, mammcej and testes, pass through a similar process of 
decay. 
Where local anaemia occurs upon the surface of the body, its 
presence is readily detected by the paleness, diminished volume and 
temperature of the part. But when it occurs in organs removed 
from sight and touch, we can only conjecture its existence from dis- 
ordered function and sympathetic derangement. These, however, 
may arise from the opposite condition of congestion, and require to 
be interpreted by a careful consideration of the general state of the 
system. If the pulse be weak, the vital powers generally below par, 
and should there be particular cause for congestion in the parts affected, 
we may fairly assume the existence of local anaemia. In such a case, 
the cautious use of tonics would soon settle any remaining doubts. 
There is no question that dyspepsia is frequently due to this cause. 
At the same time, the symptoms may closely resemble those of 
chronic gastritis, or even scirrhous disease. If aromatics, stimulat- 
ing food, and tonics afford relief, we may fairly refer the difficulty 
to local anaemia. There are numerous othei' symptoms which may 
be due to this cause. The feeble capillary circulation, especially in 
the extremities, the cold hands and cold feet, as also the innumerable 
local pains to which many persons are subject, are generally due to 
an insufficient supply of blood. Accordingly we find sinapisms, 
friction, and the use of stimulating liniments are often attended 
with decided advantage. Warm baths, fomentations, with due care 
to support and improve the general tone of the system, will contri- 
bute to a cure. MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
423 
We have next to consider Atrophy and Degeneration, 
CONDITIONS WHICH FREQUENTLY SUPERVENE UPON AN INSUFFICIENT 
supply of blood. Diminished, nutrition is the natural consequence 
of diminished activity. Thus, in extremely ansemical persons, the 
heart has been found, greatly reduced in size. In a man of fifty 
years, who died of cancer, it was found to weigh but five and a 
half ounces ; in a woman of twenty-two years, who died of diabetes, 
it weighed but five ounces. Yet in both these persons the heart was 
competent to keep in circulation all the little blood that was left to 
them. So, in persons long bed-ridden, we find the limbs wasted and 
shrunken. The taper fingers, and slender muscles in the arm of the 
clerk or student, as compared with the brawny arm of the laboring 
man, are examples of atrophy from want of use. 
A similar result is produced when the normal supply of blood in 
a part is diminished. In cases of fracture, that portion of bone 
which was thus cut off from the medullary artery does not die, 
because the circulation is kept up by anastomosis between the ves- 
sels of the periosteum and those of the interior of the bone, but it 
frequently does become considerably atrophied. It sometimes hap- 
pens that an artery is obstructed by ossification or otherwise. In 
this case, the parts supplied by it lose their due share of nourishment 
and gradually waste or degenerate. Instances of this may be found 
in local softening of the, and in degeneration of portions of the 
heart and kidney. 
Another cause of atrophy is inflammation or other structural 
disease of a neighboring part. In cirrhosis of the liver, the areolar 
structure contracts upon the vascular portion of the organ, thus in- 
terfering with its nutrition. The false membranes formed in an 
acute attack of pleuro-pneumonia may bind down a portion of the 
lung, causing its texture to grow thin and emphysematous. Some- 
times in pneumonia and phthisis, certain bloodvessels are obliterated, 
and then the parts to which they are distributed speedily decay. 
A deficiency of certain constituents of the blood will cause a de- 
ficiency in the corresponding tissues of the body. Where there is a 
diminished proportion of fatty materials in the food, the adipose 
tissue is rapidly reduced to furnish materials for respiration. In the 
same manner, the bones become soft when the blood is wanting in 
phosphate of lime, and the entire body may waste away from 
anaemia. 
But besides a right condition and due supply of blood, there must 
be a certain influence derived from the nervous system, in order to a 
healthy state of nutrition. It is true that this process goes on per- 424 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
fectly well in plants, and in some of the lower animals which have 
no nervons system. But we are not authorized hence to infer that 
animals which do have it may not, even in the strictly organic func- 
tions, be greatly under its influence. We have already shown that 
the secretions are very much affected by impressions transmitted 
from the brain, and numerous facts go to prove that nutrition is also 
much under nervous influence. We all know how quickly mental 
anxiety and depression will take off the flesh from the most robust 
person, and how much a tranquil frame of mind will contribute to 
the performance of all the various functions. On the other hand, 
extreme fear of a disease, as cancer, not unfrequently results in pro- 
ducing it. Cases have been reported where fatty tumors had been re- 
moved, which returned when the patient thought the disease malignant, 
but was scattered upon his being convinced that it was not. Cer- 
tain inflammations, as herpes zoster, seem to follow in the course 
of the nerves. Paroxysms of neuralgia arc sometimes followed by 
vascular congestion and effusion of serum. Irritation to the nerve 
of a tooth will often cause an inflammation of the neighboring gums. 
From these, and innumerable other examples which might be 
cited, it is evident that a healthy nervous influence is essential to the 
proper performance of nutrition. Hence, we might naturally and 
correctly infer that any deficiency in this influence would be followed 
by atrophy and degeneration. Such, in point of fact, we find to be 
the case. A limb is attacked with numbness, obscure pains, and 
gradual loss of motion. These phenomena may have originated in a 
severe cold settling in the affected part, or may have arisen without 
apparent cause. The limb by degrees becomes withered, shrunken, 
and useless. Such cases are vaguely referred to neuralgia. Their 
real pathology is not a little obscure, but doubtless lies in some per- 
version of nerve-force. The precise condition of the nervous system 
which produces these derangements of nutrition is entirely unknown. 
The remedies found most useful are the various tonics, with iodine or 
bromine, and attention to the general health. 
Closely allied to the subject of Atrophy is that of Degene- 
ration. A deficiency in the quantity or quality of the blood insufficient 
to produce one may give rise to the other. The failure of the vital 
powers incident to old age causes some to become lean and spare, 
while it makes others corpulent. There is not only a general obesity, 
but fatty matter is increased in all the tissues, and especially in the 
bones. The most common seat, however, in which this form of de- 
generation is observed is in the muscles. In these cases, fat may form 
both outside of the fibres and within their proper substance. The 425 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
most frequent cause of this change is inaction. Paralyzed muscles 
become rapidly altered in structure, and it often happens that, when 
the brain recovers its healthy condition, the muscular apparatus has 
so much degenerated as to be incapable of responding 1 o the impulse 
of the will. Hence, we have an obvious practical indication not to 
allow paralyzed muscles to remain inactive. They should be fre- 
quently stimulated, by passing through them currents of electricity. 
In this way, they may be prevented from degenerating, and when the 
brain recovers its power of action, they are again ready for use. 
Fatty degeneration usually begins in the contents of the cells or 
tubercles, the nuclei of which gradually shrivel up and disappear. 
This is the course usually observed in degeneration of the renal and 
hepatic cells, and of muscular fibre. In some instances, however, it 
seems to begin in the nuclei themselves. The whole history of this 
change seems to show that the fatty matter is not a mere deposit 
from without, but a gradual retrogression in the scale of organiza- 
tion dependent on a suspended activity of the nutritive process. 
The nuclei and muscular fibrils retain their natural form and position; 
but their natural constituents are slowly replaced by oil particles, 
which are, indeed, the products of chemical transformation when the 
controlling influence of vital power is for a while diminished or sus- 
pended. This supposition derives plausibility from the well-known 
fact that nitrogenous substances, under certain circumstances, un- 
dergo a spontaneous decomposition, and are transformed into adi- 
pocere. Dr. Quain has shown that in these instances the muscular 
fibres, bloodvessels, and nerves are replaced by fatty matter, which 
assumes the form, size, and arrangement of the natural structures. 
That fatty degeneration occurs in consequence of deficiency, and 
not of disease in the function of nutrition, is manifest, since it is one 
of the normal changes in the progress of old age. It also occurs 
locally when the function of a part is suspended. The use of malt 
liquors, and of the hydro-carbonous articles of food, tends to pro- 
duce the same result. The gin-liver of habitual topers is familiar to 
every one. 
Another form in which degeneration occurs is the atheromatous 
deposit in the coats of arteries. The muscular coat is usually the 
first to be affected. A single row of oil-particles is first seen below 
the outer coat ; these increase until the natural structures are com- 
pletely wasted or absorbed. Sometimes the transformation is into 
a calcareous instead of a fatty substance. In either case, the strength 
of the artery is decreased, the liability to gradual dilatation, as in 
aneurism, or sudden rupture, as in apoplexy, greatly increased. This 426 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
change is especially frequent in the arteries of the brain, and greatly 
enhances the risk of cerebral hemorrhage. 
The bones also are subject to both the calcareous and the fatty 
degeneration. In the aged, the osseous system contains a diminished 
proportion of animal matter, while that of the inorganic elements is 
increased. A similar change takes place in cases of cancerous 
cachexia. Persons thus affected are peculiarly liable to fractures, 
which, when they occur, are not easily repaired. But in some cases, 
the gelatinous portion of the bone becomes more or less changed into 
fat. This is one, and probably the most frequent, form of mollifies 
ossium. The bone retains its natural form and size, but all the in- 
terstices are filled with fat. Its general appearance is dark and 
greasy, and so soft does it become that it may sometimes be crushed 
between the fingers. 
The treatment of atrophy and degeneration resolves itself into a 
treatment of the condition of system on which it depends. If this 
be old age, we can do little more than endeavor to prevent, by ex- 
treme care, any evil consequences, as fracture of bones or rupture of 
arteries, of a condition past remedying. Where the system generally 
is in a depraved or enfeebled state, we may rectify it by tonics, alter- 
atives, and nourishing food. Local atrophy may sometimes be pre- 
vented or relieved by exercise, stimulating friction, and electricity. 
A good indication of the probable existence of these degenerations 
in the internal organs is often afforded by the presence of the arcus 
senilis or dim gray arches or ellipse, seen around the borders of the 
cornea in many old persons. This appears to consist in the accumu- 
lation of oil-drops between the layers of the cornea. Where it ex- 
ists, unless plainly referrible to local causes, it may reasonably lead 
to the suspicion that a similar change may have been going on in 
other parts of the economy. 
Degeneration may also affect the nerves, and even the brain it- 
self. Nerves through which, from any cause, impressions are no 
longer transmitted, soon become changed in structure and composi- 
tion. The distal extremities of nerves which have been divided, 
unless allowed to reunite, speedily degenerate. It has even been 
shown by Dr. Ttirck that those portions of the spinal cord along 
which impressions are transmitted from the various portions of the 
brain are altered in structure when, by apoplexy or otherwise, the in- 
fluence of the brain over them is for any length of time suspended. 
This fact of the atrophy and softening of nerve-substance whose 
functional activity is suspended, associated with the corresponding 
degeneration of muscle in a paralyzed part, shows the importance in MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
427 
all such cases of replacing the natural stimulus of the nerve-force by 
the artificial one of electricity. 
Another cause of softening of the nerve-substance is an insuf- 
ficient supply of blood. It has long been known that, where the 
carotids have been tied, the portions of the brain to which they 
were distributed were liable to decomposition. A similar conse- 
quence may follow any inflammation of the brain or its membranes 
by which the smaller arteries may have been obstructed. But a re- 
cent discovery of Dr. Kirke's, that the fibrous deposits upon the 
valves of the left side of the heart may be dislodged and mingle with 
the current of the circulation until they get wedged into some of the 
smaller arteries, thus stopping the passage of the blood through 
them, has given a new interest to this subject. It is now supposed 
that this is a frequent cause of softening of the brain, and perhaps 
of degeneration in other organs. 
For a full and accurate review of the subject of degeneration see 
Paget's Surg. Pathology, cit. 
From anfemia and degeneration we turn to consider the opposite 
condition, namely, plethora, and its results, both general and local. 
The most common cause of plethora is the use of highly stimulating 
food, the materials furnished by which are taken into the system by 
an active digestion and absorption, but not expended in muscular or 
mental activity. Hence, they go on accumulating, rendering the 
blood excessive in quantity and stimulating in quality, until they are 
either removed by the secretions or excite active disease. The symp- 
toms of this state are obvious in the red, bloated face, full, strong 
pulse, and swollen veins. There is also an inclination to sleep, an 
aversion to exercise, mental inactivity, dull headaches, with general 
torpor of the secretions. Frequently this state of the body relieves 
itself by bleeding from the nose, or from piles, or by profuse evacu- 
ations from the bowels or kidneys. Another cause of plethora is the 
suspension of some habitual discharge, or the drying up of some old 
sore. In either of these, the quantity of blood is increased, and mor- 
bid matters liable to be thrown upon the circulation. 
Plethora may be united with either an exalted or depressed condi- 
tion of the vital powers. In the former case, the pulse is full and 
strong, the animal functions vigorous, and the individual has every 
way the appearance of high health. Nutrition is carried on vigor- 
ously, and the heart, under the stimulus of a rich and abundant sup- 
ply, is especially apt to become hypertrophied. This condition ren- 
ders its possessor peculiarly liable to inflammatory diseases. Any 
disturbing force throws the entire system into commotion. The ex- 
treme activity of all the functions very easily runs into excess, and 428 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
speedily we have inflammation, with high, feverish reaction. Or, un- 
der the influence of excitement, the pressure of the blood may be too 
much for the vessels to contain, and we have profuse hemorrhage or 
apoplexy. 
But plethora is frequently asthenic ; that is, combined with a de- 
praved or even an enfeebled state of the general system. This spe- 
cies of plethora occurs in persons of phlegmatic temperament, or 
whose constitutions have been broken by excesses. Frequently, 
also, it comes on in consequence of suppressed discharges. Here the 
pulse is full but slow, and perhaps irregular. The heart is oppressed 
rather than stimulated by the quantity of blood thrown upon it; 
hence, there is often palpitation, with faintness. The venous system 
is distended with blood, which does not appear to be properly aerated 
in its passage through the lungs. The lips have a livid hue, and the 
face is purple rather than red. Often the extremities are cold, the 
bowels extremely torpid, and the urine high-colored. The limbs are 
numb, the special senses blunted, and the mind lethargic. 
The consequences of asthenic plethora are congestion, passive 
hemorrhage, dropsies, and a tendency to apoplexy and structural 
changes; especially the degenerations already spoken of. The blood 
is apt to stagnate in the internal organs, as the lungs, liver, and 
brain. Nutrition is apt to be not so much deficient as imperfectly 
performed. If disease occurs, it is apt to be of a congestive rather 
than of an active inflammatory type, and to be accompanied with 
feeble constitutional reaction. 
The treatment for active plethora is obviously antiphlogistic. 
The speediest mode of reducing the excess of the circulating fluid 
and of the red globules is by bloodletting. With this should be 
conjoined purgatives, exercise, and a spare diet. Asthenic plethora 
requires to be treated in a somewhat different manner. Depletion 
here would afford only temporary relief, while it might cause perma- 
nent mischief by increasing the serous elements and watery cha- 
racter of the blood. The object here is rather to excite the secretions, 
especially those of the skin, bowels, and kidneys. The saline purga- 
tives with mild diuretics, cold bathing, and friction to the skin, are 
especially indicated, and should be for sometime persevered in. The 
patient should take abundance of exercise, and in the open air ; his 
diet should be nutritious but plain and easily digestible. Tonics, as 
the vegetable bitters and preparations of iron, may be used with 
alteratives and diuretics as taraxacum, the mineral acids, iodine, etc. 
The consideration of plethora leads us to the study of congestion. 
The former is an excess of blood in the entire body ; the latter MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
429 
implies an undue accumulation of it in certain organs. Congestion, 
like plethora, may be active or passive. The cause of the first is 
usually some local irritation ; that of the second, mechanical obstruc- 
tion to the return of blood in the veins, or atony of the capillaries. 
The former is sometimes called determination of blood ; the latter 
more strictly is congestion. The first affects more immediately the 
arteries, and accompanies an excited state of the system. The seat 
of the second is in the venous radicles, and oftener attends upon 
debility. We shall first consider active congestion with its conse- 
quences, hypertrophy, hemorrhage, flux, and dropsy. 
An unusual flow of blood to a part is a common occurrence of 
both health and disease. It may be readily produced either by 
nervous excitement or local irritation. The phenomena of blushing 
are a good example of the first ; the redness caused by severe friction, 
of the second. Disease furnishes us with many examples of deter- 
mination of blood to a particular organ or part. Every one has 
noticed the throbbing of the carotid and temporal arteries, with the 
heat of the head and flushing of the face, so often seen in what is 
familiarly called a rush of blood to the head. These symptoms are 
attended with pain, which may be dull, with a sensation of drowsi- 
ness and stupor, or acute, tending to delirium and convulsions. The 
pressure of blood upon the delicate texture of the organ deranges all 
its functions. Such phenomena may be observed before an attack of 
mania, epilepsy, or brain-fever. 
Similar determinations of blood frequently take place in other 
organs, as the lungs, liver, and kidneys. Its effects are everywhere 
much the same, namely, distention of the vessels, increased heat and 
redness, with a feeling of weight and oppression. With these there 
is always functional derangement. At first, there may be a mode- 
rately increased activity, an example of which we may see in bilious 
diarrhea, by means of which congestion of the portal vessels often 
relieves itself. A higher degree of determination arrests functional 
activity, and if the organ be an important one, excites much consti- 
tutional disturbance. 
The cause of active congestion may be some peculiarity in the 
quantity or quality of the blood, a derangement of the nervous 
influence, or some cause of irritation in the part affected. A state 
of active plethora must necessarily predispose to local congestion. 
The stimulant qdality of blood, rich in red particles, might easily 
occasion excessive activity and irritability in the brain, lungs, and 
viscera. Irritating matters in the circulation increase the flow of 
blood toward the organs by which they are eliminated. It is thus 430 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
that diuretics act upon the kidneys, cathartics upon the bowels, and 
diaphoretics upon the skin. Nervous influence has undoubtedly 
much to do with the distribution of blood to a part. We might 
instance the phenomena of blushing, the effects of mental ex- 
citement in increasing the flow to the head, the effect of cold 
applied to the surface in causing contraction of vessels seated 
deep within. In this way only can we account for the relief 
afforded by leeches and cupping, in the congestion of internal 
organs. Nowhere are the beneficial effects of these remedies 
more marked than in affections of the lungs. Yet the blood thus 
taken does not come at all from the vessels of the part diseased. 
The advantage of local over general depletion in those cases must 
consist wholly in the impression made upon the nerves of the part, 
and transmitted to those of the congested organ, causing its capilla- 
ries to contract. Now, antecedent to the general phenomena of 
congestion, there is usually disturbance of the nervous system, of 
what precise nature it may be difficult to say, but palpable in its 
effects. May not this nervous derangement have an important 
influence in diminishing the tonicity of the capillaries, and allowing 
that dilatation of the minute vessels which constitutes one of the most 
remarkable phenomena of congestion ? A confirmation of this theory 
may be found in the fact that some forms of congestion, as those of 
the liver and spleen occurring in intermittent, are so much under the 
control of quinine, a remedy acknowledged to act mainly on the 
nervous system. 
The last cause, and a very common one, of congestion, is a local 
source of irritation. The effect of this may be seen by watching 
the web of a frog or a bat's wing under the microscope, when some 
stimulant, as a drop of acetic acid or oil of turpentine, is applied to 
them. Speedily we see the bloodvessels enlarging and the blood 
flowing rapidly through them. A lesser degree of stimulus, as the 
touch of a pin, causes the vessels first to contract, but afterward 
they dilate again and remain open for some time. Similar to this, 
we may suppose the effect of a particle of dust upon the vessels of 
the conjunctiva, or of a mustard-poultice in reddening the skin. If 
the stimulus be continued, the circulation, at first rapid, becomes 
slow, and at length stagnates in some of the vessels. This retarda- 
tion of the blood is perhaps the best dividing-line betw'een mere 
congestion and inflammation, and will be more fully considered here- 
after. 
An effect like that produced in the bat's wing doubtless occurs 
when mechanical or chemical irritants are applied to any part of the MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
431 
human body. Probably some derangement in the proper tissues of 
a structure or organ is the most common cause of local congestion, 
although it may be difficult to determine its precise nature. 
The increased supply of blood to a part, if moderate in degree 
and continued for some time, may produce hypertrophy. By this 
term we understand " enlargement of a part by the increase of its 
natural tissue, with retention of the natural form" and with in- 
crease of power. Its immediate cause is an increased activity of 
nutrition, which may be owing to the increased functional exercise 
of a part, to an increase in the blood of the materials suited to the 
nutrition of certain parts, or merely to an increased afflux of healthy 
blood. Most generally it is produced by increased activity to a part. 
Thus, the arm in blacksmiths, stone-cutters, etc., becomes enormously 
enlarged. But the most frequent examples of hypertrophied muscles 
occur in those not under control of the will, and the reason of this 
is obviously that assigned by Hunter, that " in the involuntary 
muscles the power is always performing some natural and necessary- 
action ; for whenever a disease produces an uncommon resistance in 
the involuntary parts, if the power be not proportionally increased, 
the disease becomes very formidable." (Hunter's Works, vol. ii. 
p. 299.) 
Examples of this kind of hypertrophy are furnished in the 
increased muscular structure of the bladder in stricture of the 
urethra ; in the esophagus, stomach, and intestines, when any portion 
of the canal below them becomes the seat of stricture. Valvular 
disease of the heart, causing an obstruction to the onward flow of 
the blood, is usually followed by muscular hypertrophy, to compen- 
sate for the ipcreased resistance. 
A good illustration of hypertrophy from the second cause, name- 
ly, the existence of certain nutrient materials in the blood, may be 
taken from the peculiar thickening and deposits often found -upon 
the skull, especially in elderly persons. These occur around the 
original centres of ossification, and seem to follow upon the shrink- 
ing of the brain so commonly observed in the aged. 
There is another form of hypertrophy in bones, which illustrates 
the effects of an increased supply of blood. Thus, where necrosis 
has taken place, the adjacent become more vascular and sometimes 
enlarge. Even where an ulcer has existed on the surface, the neigh- 
boring bone may share in the afflux of blood and enlarge. 
Corns are an example of hypertrophy, being an effort of nature 
by thickening and hardening the epidermis to protect the parts 432 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
beneath. Their painful character depends on the formation of a 
little sac or bursa between the hardened cuticle and the joint. 
There are other forms of hypertrophy, as that of the cellular 
tissue of the lower extremities in elephantiasis, and of the capsule of 
Glisson in cirrhosis, which are not yet well understood. Sometimes 
they seem to arise from protracted congestion of the parts involved, 
sometimes their origin seems to be unaccountable, unless we attri- 
bute it to a superabundance of the materials for the formation of 
those tissues in the blood. 
The second of the consequences of active congestion is hemor- 
rhage. This is in some instances nature's mode of relieving the 
disordered balance of circulation. 
Thus, plethora, with engorgement of the vessels, is removed by a 
copious epistaxis. The congested state of the uterus, with the 
sensation of weight and fullness which it occasions, at once disap- 
pears upon the commencement of the menstrual discharge. The 
application of direct irritants to the mucous membranes may cause 
profuse hemorrhage. Drastic purgatives may, in this way, induce 
dysentery, and the use of turpentine or cantharides cause bloody 
urine. The dilated vessels at length give way, and allow a free 
escape of their contents. Sometimes, however, as in the catamenial 
discharge, there does not seem to be any rupture of the vessels, only 
an oozing out from them of their contents. 
An additional cause of hemorrhage in many cases is a weakness 
or disease of the bloodvessels themselves. These are often softened 
by inflammation or degeneration, and readily yield to the force with 
which the heart is forcing the blood into them. Occasionally they 
are laid open by actual ulceration. 
It is obvious that active hemorrhage tends to relieve itself. It is 
nature's mode of bloodletting, and needs to be interfered with only 
when excessive, or when it occurs in organs as the brain or lungs, 
where it is likely to be directly injurious. The proper remedies for 
it in such cases are depletion, derivants, and cold. Besides these, 
we may use agents which diminish the force and frequency of the 
heart's action, as lobelia inflata in nauseating doses, digitalis, joined 
with perfect rest, a position unfavorable to the flow of blood toward 
the affected part, and the use of astringents. A too early or too 
sudden check to active hemorrhage may bring on inflammation. 
There is a peculiar jerking thrill to the pulse while the blood is 
escaping, which is quite characteristic. It is probably caused by 
irregular contraction of the arteries, and perhaps abruptness in the 
action of the heart. If the flow of blood continues, the pulse may MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
433 
at length become weak and irregular till it ends in syncope. The 
effused blood may also cause derangement of function in the organ 
into which it has escaped. The clot in apoplexy may press upon the 
brain, causing coma or paralysis. In the lungs, it may interfere with 
respiration, and thus immediately destroy life, or, by breaking up 
their texture, bring on gradual disorganization. 
The third effect of active congestion is flux or dropsy. Here, 
instead of the escape of the blood in substance, there is an effusion 
of its watery portion only. When this takes place upon a free sur- 
face, it is termed flux, as when it occurs upon the mucous membranes. 
But when the effusion is into the cellular tissue, or into the closed 
sacs of the serous membranes, it constitutes dropsy. Exposure to 
cold is a frequent cause of flux. The cutaneous perspiration being 
suddenly checked, the blood is suddenly thrown upon the internal 
organs, and if from any cause the kidneys are unable to discharge, 
in addition to their own function, that of the skin, the extra labor 
falls on the bowels. With some persons, wet feet will, at any time, 
produce an attack of diarrhea. 
Sometimes, however, the effusion falls upon the serous instead of 
the mucous membranes, producing dropsy, and sometimes it takes 
place into the cellular tissue generally, constituting anasarca. It is 
possible that a superabundance of fluids in the circulation may cause 
general dropsy, but probably in such cases there is usually a deficient 
action of some of the great emunctories. 
Serous effusions may be owing to congestion of some other 
organ. Often the distended vessels of the liver, in disease of that 
viscus, do not allow of the free return of blood from the portal 
veins, and ascites is the consequence. Relief of the diseased liver is 
followed by a speedy subsidence of the abdominal swelling. Disor- 
ders interfering with respiration, as laryngitis, asthma, etc., may 
induce congestion of the lung, which sometimes results in bronchor- 
rhcea or hydrothorax. 
Another cause of both these affections is disease of the heart, 
which may either throw the blood too forcibly and rapidly upon 
the lungs, or retard its circulation through them, in either case pro- 
ducing intense congestion. 
The effect of local irritation in causing an increased afflux of 
blood, ending in effusion of its watery portion, is seen in the opera- 
tion of various stimulants on the surfaces of mucous membranes. 
A grain of sand lodged in the conjunctiva will speedily cause injec- 
tion of its vessels, and a profuse secretion of tears, by which the 
offending material will frequently be washed away. Irritating vapors 434 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
cause accumulation of mucus in the air-tubes. Purgatives produce 
watery discharges from the intestines, and diuretics an increased flow 
of urine. 
Permanent sources of irritation, by producing frequent or con- 
stant congestion, may give rise to chronic dropsy or flux. Tubercles 
in the arachnoid membrane lead to hydrocephalus, in the peritoneum 
to ascites. Ulceration, whether inflammatory or tuberculous, keeps 
up a chronic diarrhea. 
The matters which constitute the effusion of these cases are the 
natural secretions or exhalations of the part, increased and combined 
with the water, salts, or albumen of the blood. Sometimes they are 
extremely acrid, as in coryza, leucorrhea, and some forms of diarrhea.* 
Dropsy and flux, like hemorrhage, are nature's mode of relieving 
congestion. In seeking to remedy them, we must first aim to remove 
the cause. The treatment for active determination of blood consists 
in depletion, by which we at once reduce the entire quantity of 
blood in the system, so that less can be sent to each part and 
diminish at the same time the vigor of the heart's action, so that the 
blood may be sent with less force to the part diseased. 
Local depletion also reduces the amount of blood, but its great 
advantage, as previously explained, is that it causes the congested 
capillaries to contract and thus relieves their excessive distention. 
Purgatives are powerful depletives. In affections of the chylo- 
poietic viscera, they are also useful by directly diminishing conges- 
tion of the portal system, and by removing irritating matters from 
the bowels. The milder cathartics should be resorted to in such a 
case, lest we cause more irritation than we relieve. In congestion of 
the brain, severe purging may act partly on the principle of counter- 
irritation. 
Where there is excited action of the heart, even after free deple- 
tion, our best agents for subduing this are nauseating doses of 
lobelia inflata, and the sedative influence of digitalis. At the same 
time, all the secretions should be kept open. Rest and spare diet 
complete the constitutional remedies. As local agents, we may use 
with benefit the sedative influence of cold and counter-irritation. 
Flux, from active congestion, frequently works its own cure by 
relieving the over-distended bloodvessels. In the lungs, it may 
interfere with respiration, and so require emetics or stimulant expec- 
torants to remove it. At the same time, we may use remedies suited 
to remove the congestion on which it depends. In the bowels, it may 
generally be relieved by laxatives,which empty the distended vessels 
and carry off any cause of local irritation. Flux may depend on 435 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
excess of fluids in the system. Its sources are then easily cut off by 
abstaining from the use of liquids for a while. In all cases, astrin- 
gents should be used with caution. 
In chronic flux, we must rely much on the regulation of the diet, 
on counter-irritation, and the use of the mineral and vegetable astrin- 
gents, especially the nitrate of silver, sulphates of copper and zinc, 
or tannin or gallic acid. These act principally by substituting 
their own action for that of the diseased parts, and are applicable 
where the vegetable astringents are not. Here, also, we may use 
remedies to act upon the blood, as iron and the mineral acids. 
Opium may be employed to allay irritation, and derivants to draw 
the blood to some other organ. 
The treatment of inflammatory dropsy is of much the same 
character. We aim, first, to subdue general arterial excitement and 
then to diminish local congestion. The most frequent cause of this 
form of dropsy, when general, is congestion of the kidneys, when 
confined to the abdomen or the liver. The obvious indications are to 
relieve the local affection by cups or leeches and counter-irritation, 
at the same time that we carry off the effused fluid by hydragogue 
cathartics and diaphoretics. Elaterium and the hot-air bath are 
remedies of great power in cases like these. 
ASTHENIC CONGESTION. 
We have spoken of the accumulation of blood in a part from 
active determination. But this is not the sole or perhaps the most 
frequent form of congestion. It is manifest that any thing which 
obstructs the circulation of the blood through the heart, or its 
return from any part of the body, must cause it to accumulate in 
the veins behind. An example of this is furnished in the arm liga- 
tured for venesection. The veins swell, the fingers turn purple, and 
the fore-arm becomes tense and swollen. 
Another and a very common cause of congestion lies in atony of 
the capillaries themselves. This occurs particularly in exhausted and 
debilitated states of the system. We have spoken of several forms 
of congestion in anaemia. Asthenic plethora is yet more commonly 
associated with this condition. The thin and watery blood has but a 
slight affinity for the living tissues, while the relaxed vessels fail to 
urge it onward with the usual vis a tergo. Hence it tends to settle 
in the veins and vascular organs. 
This form of congestion is very apt to come on insidiously in 
typhoid fevers, and other diseases attended with debility. The blood 436 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
seems to stagnate in the brain or lungs, sometimes as it were from 
the mere effects of gravity, where the patient has long been kept 
upon his back. Toward the close of chronic diseases, vessels of the 
lower extremities so far lose their tone as to yield to the pressure of 
blood above and allow its watery portions to escape into the cellular 
tissue. The diarrhea and wasting night-sweats which appear under 
similar circumstances are due to the same cause. 
But this atonic state of the capillaries may arise from a sudden 
depression as well as from chronic debility. Thus, a blow upon the 
head or any severe shock to the brain may paralyze the heart, and 
thus cause the blood to accumulate in the lungs and the great venous 
trunks. The chill of fevers and violent internal pain may cause a 
similar state of the circulation. 
When the capillaries of a part have been distended by inflamma- 
tion, they require some time to regain their usual tonicity and degree 
of contraction. The conjunctiva may retain its injected appearance 
long after all active disease has subsided. The slightest cause of 
irritation is here sufficient to renew the old difficulty. This we 
believe to afford the readiest explanation of the sore eyes and sore 
throats with which so many are troubled. A similar condition of 
stomach doubtless exists in those who indulge habitually in the use 
of stimulant food or drinks. 
We have previously explained how an active congestion of the 
liver or kidneys might cause passive congestion of the portal system 
or of the vessels generally. Cirrhosis and some other hepatic 
diseases may also interpose obstacles to the return of the blood, not 
only from the venae portarum.but also from the vena cava ascendens. 
An aneurismal or other tumor pressing upon any of the great veins 
may retard the circulation through them. A tight cravat may in the 
same way bring on apoplexy. 
Valvular disease of the heart is a serious cause of passive conges- 
tions. By obstructing the flow of blood through that organ, it 
compels it to accumulate in the veins and capillaries. When the 
difficulty begins, as it usually does, on the left side of the heart, the 
lungs are the first to suffer, then the right side of the heart and the 
venje cavae become gorged with blood, the liver and brain are next 
affected, and finally it may extend to the whole venous and capillary 
systems. 
The symptoms of this form of congestion are a sense of fullness, 
weight, and oppression in the part involved, with more or less 
functional derangement. Sometimes the distention of an organ with 
blood induces in it an excited action, but oftener torpor or perverted 
activity. Occasionally there is pain, spasm, or increased sensibility. MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
437 
There is less of heat, pain, and throbbing, than in active determina- 
tion. Functional disturbance partakes less of excitement, bordering 
rather on depression or torpor. The redness from injection of the 
bloodvessels is of a dark or even purplish hue. The pulse may be 
full and soft, or even feeble. The skin is dry, but its temperature 
but little elevated. 
This state of congestion, if it continue, is likely to result in 
effusion. This, if it takes place upon a serous surface or into the 
cellular tissue, constitutes dropsy ; if upon a mucous membrane, it is 
termed flux, and as passive congestion is more likely to be protracted 
than active, its resulting affections are more apt to be chronic. A 
slight degree of passive congestion may result in increased nutrition 
of the part; but the additional structure will be of a lower grade of 
organization, if indeed the whole organ or part do not degenerate. 
Cirrhosis of the liver and granular degeneration of the kidney have 
been referred to this cause. The enlargements of the spleen and 
liver, which so often accompany malarious disease, are further exam- 
ples of the effects of this species of congestion. 
In the treatment of asthenic congestion, we aim, if possible, to re- 
move its cause ; and, where this is beyond our power, we try to palli- 
ate its ill effects. Where it is owing to weakness of the capillaries, 
there is a plain indication, by the use of tonics and local stimulants, 
to strengthen them. Means which tend to invigorate the entire sys- 
tem tend to restore their lost tone to the distended vessels. The 
beneficial effects of this course are seen in the relief afforded by per- 
severance in the use of iron and quinine to the abdominal conges- 
tions following exposure to miasm. The mineral astringents, which 
at once contract and give tone to the relaxed fibre, are often of great 
service. Even local irritants may occasionally be useful, as capsi- 
cum infusion in chronic sore-throat and brandy in flux from the 
bowels. But when the congestion is extensive or severe, we may be 
obliged to resort to depletives or evacuants. Scarification of the dis- 
eased parts at once unloads the distended vessels, and enables them to 
recover their natural contractility. Where, as in diseases of the inter- 
nal organs, blood can not be taken directly from the parts diseased, we 
may apply cups or leeches to the adjacent surface, as to the chest for 
congested lungs, to the anus in dysentery, etc. Or, if the patient be 
too weak to bear the loss of blood, dry cupping, mustard-poultices, 
friction, with stimulating liniments, may still be used to draw it to 
the surface. Congestions of the portal system may be directly re- 
lieved by the use of evacuants, congestion of the lungs by expecto- 
rants, of the kidneys by diuretics. 438 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
The choice of these various remedies, and the manner of apply- 
ing them, will require judgment and discrimination on the part of the 
practitioner. Frequently we are obliged to employ depletives and 
tonics, laxatives and astringents, alternately, to meet the varying in- 
dication, at once to reduce the local congestion and sustain or renew 
the tone and vigor of the muscular fibre. 
Where congestion is due to obstructed circulation, the indication 
is evidently to remove, if possible, that obstacle. This may be done, 
where it is merely to remove a ligature or to reduce an active con- 
gestion in some other organ. But it often becomes impossible, as 
where the obstruction arises from valvular disease, or from the pres- 
sure of intra-thoracic tumors upon the great venous trunks, or from 
cirrhosis. In such cases, we can only palliate the consequences of a 
condition which it is beyond our power to cure. Counter-irritation 
and the removal of all superfluous portions of the blood are about all 
that we can do. 
Passive congestion may result in passive hemorrhage. This usu- 
ally occurs in cases where the blood is thin and deficient in fibrine. 
It is often observed in typhoid and malignant fevers, which are at- 
tended with a dissolved state of the blood. We may, perhaps, sup- 
pose that this fluid is so altered in consistence or composition as to 
pass through channels where it ordinarily could not escape. It may 
be, also, that in debilitated states of the system the capillary vessels 
are relaxed, and unable to resist the pressure from behind. Thus, 
the blood in substance may be forced through the pores designed for 
the natural exhalants. 
Passive hemorrhage, if moderate in amount, may be beneficial, 
or, at least, attended with no bad consequences. It sometimes occurs 
from the mucous membranes of the nostrils or bowels at the crisis of 
fever. Petechia?, in fact, are nothing more than examples of in- 
terstitial hemorrhage. But when it proceeds, as it is apt to do, to 
any considerable extent, marked debility is the inevitable conse- 
quence. The pulse becomes weak, though excitable, the skin pale 
and waxy, and all the vital powers much enfeebled. 
Our efforts to remedy this condition are directed to relieve con- 
gestion, by counter-irritation and position, and directly to check the 
escape of blood by astringents. The sedative influence of cold, 
where it can be applied, answers the double purpose of diminishing 
the flow of blood to the part and of constringing the capillary ves- 
sels. Opium is often useful in subduing any irritability in arterial 
action or any nervous excitement, such as is often present. Perfect 
rest, with such a posture of body as shall favor the return of blood 439 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
from the congested organs, should also be employed. A firm and 
constant pressure upon the bleeding vessels, where they can be 
reached, will usually arrest the flow. Plugging the nose in epistaxis, 
and the tampon in uterine hemorrhage, are examples in point. 
Where the blood is deficient in fibrine or red particles, the means 
adapted for the increase of these must be resorted to, especially the 
astringent preparations of iron. 
Flux and dropsy are, as might be anticipated, frequent effects of 
passive congestion. Indeed, there is no more common cause of diar- 
rhea, or of the excessive expectoration that attends the decline of 
some bronchial affections. But effusions into the serous sacs or into 
the cellular tissue are yet more common results of obstructed circu- 
lation. In valvular disease, we find cedema of the extremities, with 
water in the pleura, and sometimes in the tissue of the lungs them- 
selves. Where aneurismal or other tumors press upon the great 
veins, all the parts from which they are derived speedily become 
swollen and cedematous. Organic diseases of the liver, by pressure 
upon the portal vein, may cause ascites, and, where it falls upon the 
vena cava ascendens, may produce dropsy in the entire lower portion 
of the body. At the close of chronic and wasting disease, the ex- 
tremities frequently become swollen, apparently owing to the vessels 
being too weak to carry up the current of blood against the force of 
gravity. Accordingly, we find that raising the limbs to a horizontal 
position for a while affords relief. Colliquative diarrhea and profuse 
night-sweats often occur under similar circumstances, from the re- 
laxed condition of the capillaries and dissolved state of the blood. 
It at first might seem a singular fact that diminution in the quan- 
tity of the blood should predispose it to escape from its vessels, but 
such is undoubtedly the case. Persons who have been greatly re- 
duced by hemorrhage are extremely liable to effusions into the pleura, 
pericardium, and cellular tissue of the extremities. Repeatedly have 
we seen these results in that so dangerous form of anaemia which at- 
tacks puerperal females. The effused fluid presses upon the heart and 
lungs, and interferes with the all-important functions of respiration 
and circulation. Yet how can we remove this fluid without still 
farther reducing the patient ? The blood which has been lost by 
hemorrhage is in these cases replaced by serum absorbed from the 
tissues, and readily transudes through the coats of the vessels. 
We have already shown how anaemia tends to produce irregular 
action of the heart, together with an unbalanced state of the circu- 
lation. The same holds true in serous plethora. The motive power 
of the circulation being diminished, there is naturally a tendency of 440 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
the blood to stagnate in the parts where the tonicity of the blood- 
vessels is most relaxed, and being itself thin and watery, it very soon 
escapes from the channels in which it should remain confined. 
Congestion may operate in still another way in causing dropsical 
accumulations. The serous membranes and cellular tissues are natu- 
rally kept moist by a thin fluid or exhalation, the purpose of which 
is doubtless to prevent friction in the various motions of the body. 
Now, this fluid, like all other vital products, must be constantly un- 
dergoing absorption and renewal. But when the membrane from 
which it is formed is gorged with blood, absorption ceases, while pro- 
duction is greatly increased, and considerable accumulation must 
speedily ensue. 
General dropsy is very commonly connected with granular degen- 
eration of the kidneys. Indeed, its presence should always lead to 
an examination of the urine for albumen. It is evident that any 
thing which should interfere with the elimination of the watery ele- 
ments must lead to their accumulation in the blood. At the same 
time, the albumen, which ordinarily gives spissitude to that fluid, is 
materially diminished, rendering it still more easy to escape into the 
tissues and serous sacs. 
The pathology of this granular deposit is not yet entirely cleared 
up. It seems to be fatty in its character, and is doubtless allied to 
those other fatty deposits .and degenerations which take place in 
other organs, and of which we have already treated at length. In 
confirmation of this is the fact that it most frequently occurs in per- 
sons whose vital powers are below par, and in those who are in the 
habit of using spirituous drinks or the hydro-carbonous articles of 
food. This condition of the kidney is usually accompanied by fatty 
degeneration of the liver and other organs. From all these circum- 
stances, it seems probable that it is caused by prolonged congestion 
of the kidneys in persons whose blood abounds in fatty material, and 
in whom the constitutional powers are in a state of decay or depres- 
sion. In consequence of this serious injury to the secreting struc- 
ture, urea is imperfectly eliminated, while the albumen escapes with 
the watery portion of the urine. 
Treatment of flux and dropsy from asthenic congestion is 
founded on the same general principles as the treatment of the con- 
dition on which it depends. A moderate degree of flux may be use- 
ful by removing congestion ; but if it continues, it rapidly wastes the 
blood and reduces the powers of life. When interference becomes 
necessary, a mild laxative, to diminish congestion, with a moderate 
dose of Dover's powder to quiet irritability, may be all that is 441 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
required. But, in many cases, this will not be sufficient. We may 
then resort to the astringents, vegetable and mineral, beginning 
with the mildest. The diet should be carefully regulated, so that; 
the food may be mainly absorbed in the stomach, leaving as little 
residue as possible to go on and act as an irritant upon the bowels. 
In severe cases, the patient should be kept perfectly quiet, since 
every motion or jar communicated to the intestines tends to disturb 
and excite them. Attempts should be made to diminish internal 
congestion by applying warmth and even counter-irritants to the 
surface. The abdomen may be swathed in flannel, and the skin 
blistered or rubbed with stimulating liniments. The cutaneous func- 
tions are also to be regarded. The skin, in chronic flux, is apt to 
become dry and harsh. Warm bathing, with ipecac as a diaphoretic, 
is here of signal service. There are also certain remedies which are 
claimed as having an almost specific effect in excessive discharges from 
all the mucous membranes. The most efficient of these are copaiba 
and oil of turpentine, and they are perhaps worth a trial. 
The treatment of dropsy resulting from asthenic congestion is 
directed, first, to remove that condition, if possible, and if not, to 
palliate its ill effects. Where the prime cause is sudden congestion 
of the heart, liver, or kidneys, we may often afford relief by deri- 
vants to the surface, and agents which tend to restore the suspended 
secretions. By cathartics and diuretics, we attempt to replace the 
dropsy by a flux ; the effusion into the serous membranes or cellular 
tissue, by an effusion upon a free surface. CEdema of the lower 
extremities may be relieved by an elevated position, which enables 
the blood to return without encountering the force of gravity. 
Firm bandaging gives support to the enfeebled vessels, and prevents, 
in some degree, the escape of their contents. Where there is an 
obstruction to the circulation, permanent and irremediable, we can do 
little more than carry off the effused serum. The reliable agents for 
doing this are the hydragogue cathartics, especially bitartrate of 
potash and elaterium. The hot-air bath is a valuable auxiliary. 
In most instances, the thin and impoverished condition of the blood 
demands attention. Sometimes this may be the root of the whole 
mischief, as when dropsy follows profuse hemorrhages. Even when 
it is an affair wholly secondary, it should not be neglected. The 
means of remedying this condition of the blood have already been 
pointed out, namely, tonics, iron, a nourishing diet, and attention to 
all the functions whose proper performance is necessary to health. 
When all other means fail, and the effused fluid seriously inter- 
feres with the respiration, circulation, or secretion, surgery must be 442 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
called in and the fluid removed by tapping, with slender hope, 
however, of any permanent cure. 
INFLAMMATION. 
Inflammation, considered, in its relations and its results, is the 
most important subject in medicine or surgery. It conies in more or 
less as a cause or a complication of nearly all the ills that flesh is 
heir to. Postponing for the present all speculation as to its nature, 
let us attentively study its phenomena. 
The distinctive marks by which this diseased condition is 
recognized are still those employed by Celsus, namely, heat, pain, 
swelling, and redness. In parts exposed to the eye, redness is the 
first peculiarity observable. This is also observed in active determi- 
nation, but in a less marked degree. The cause in either case is the 
same, namely, the passage of a greater number of red corpuscles 
through dilated capillaries. The intensity of the redness will vary 
with the part affected and the degree and character of the inflamma- 
tion. In the more active and superficial forms, the color is a bright 
rose, as in phlegmon and scarlatina, while it inclines to a dark or 
purple where the action is feeble, the vital powers depressed, and 
there is a marked tendency to gangrene. The two forms correspond 
to active and passive congestion respectively. 
The increased flow of blood brings with it an increased tempera- 
ture, arising probably from increased vital action. It is found, how- 
ever, that the temperature of the part never exceeds that of the 
blood at the heart. Increased heat is less manifest in low asthenic 
forms of inflammation, and both heat and redness may disappear 
before all morbid action ceases. 
Pain is one of the earliest, sometimes the earliest, manifestation 
of inflammatory action. It has been attributed by some to the 
pressure of the distended vessels upon the nerves of a part. Un- 
doubtedly pain is much aggravated by this pressure, especially in 
parts which are from their structure unyielding. It is from this 
cause that inflammation of the bones and of the joints and theca of 
the fingers is so excruciating. But pain often occurs before in- 
creased arterial action, and, when swelling occurs, is even relieved by 
it. We must, therefore, regard it as an indication of derangement of 
the nervous influence which constitutes an important element in the 
complex phenomena of inflammation. 
Swelling is at first the effect of distention of the capillaries, and 
in the mucous membranes it seldom amounts to more than this. But MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
443 
in parts abounding in cellular tissue, the effusion which soon takes 
place may cause swelling even to an enormous extent. Induration 
also frequently occurs from plastic deposit that takes place around 
the point where inflammatory action runs highest. A good example 
of this is furnished in a common phlegmon. 
We have finished the sensible phenomena of inflammation ; but it 
is obvious that when the internal organs are affected, these alone are 
not a sufficient guide ; for all of them, except pain, which is some- 
times wanting, and may at any rate proceed from other causes-all 
the others, we say, may be beyond the reach of our perceptions. 
Here we have to rely upon another symptom, derangement of 
function. This, as has been previously shown, usually accompanies 
congestion, but exists in still higher degree in inflammation. In 
simple congestion, the processes of secretion are increased ; but when 
inflammation sets in, they are much diminished or even suspended. 
The throat and bronchial tubes become dry and husky, the secretions 
from the intestines scanty and passed with pain, the serous mem- 
branes become dry and grate as their surfaces glide over each other. 
But as inflammation goes on, effusion takes place, and the secretions 
are increased and also changed in quality. Together with the watery 
portion of the blood, some of its albumen and salts also escape, often 
forming a fluid quite acrid, and which excoriates the parts on which 
it comes. 
It is obvious that those portions of organs like the lungs, brain, 
liver, and kidneys, which become inflamed, must thereby be unfitted 
for their ordinary functions. The air-cells, compressed by the dis- 
tended vessels which envelop them, no longer allow the admission of 
air. The epithelial cells which line the radicles of the ducts of 
glands can no longer perform toeir office of secretion. This sus- 
pension of function is one of the great sources of danger in inflam- 
matory 'disease. If any considerable portion of the lungs be even 
temporarily unfitted for respiration, it is manifest that death must 
speedily ensue. When the function is less vitally important, no little 
constitutional disturbance may arise from its suspension. 
Let us now proceed to examine more minutely the changes going 
on in the inflamed part. If we place a bat's-wing under the field of 
the microscope, and irritate one of the arteries with the point of a 
pin, we shall see it first contracting, and after remaining a few mo- 
ments in this state, it slowly dilates till it acquires a size greater than 
before the stimulus was applied. It continues thus dilated for 
several hours, and will not again contract without the application of 
a stimulus much more powerful than that at first employed. As the 444 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
vessels contract, the movement of the blood through them becomes 
slow, and when they again dilate, it moves through them more 
rapidly than ever. It would seem as if the effect of the stimulant 
was not confined to the vessels, but extended to the fluid moving in 
them. If instead of a pin's point we use a drop of acetic acid or 
turpentine as a stimulant, the effects are somewhat different. The 
period of contraction, if it occurs at all, is so brief as to be hardly 
perceptible ; the vessels appear to dilate simultaneously, while an 
increased current of blood rushes rapidly through them. Thus 
far we have nothing more than the phenomena of active con- 
gestion. But if the excited capillary action continue, we find 
that, while all the vessels remain dilated, the circulation through 
some of the capillaries begins to stagnate. It is at this point of 
diminished motion of the blood that we may perhaps draw the 
dividing-line between congestion and inflammation proper. The phe- 
nomena here presented are these : at the focus of excitement, stag- 
nation of the blood ; in and closely around, fullness of the vessels 
with retarded motion, that is, congestion ; farther around, the vessels 
are full and enlarged, while the circulation sets rapidly through them, 
corresponding to active determination. The increased flow of blood, 
and, of course, of its red corpuscles, accounts for the bright redness 
of the inflamed part, while the lividness of its central portion is 
accounted for by the stagnation at that point. This obstruction to 
the fi •ee flow of blood may also explain the throbbing in the part, 
and the full, hard pulse felt in the arteries around. It is a curious 
fact that the stagnant blood does not coagulate, at least not until the 
part sloughs. Hence, when an inflamed part is cut into, the blood 
flows with great force. This is shown by Mr. Lawrence's well-known 
experiment of opening a vein in both arms of a patient who had an 
inflamed hand. In the same time, three times the quantity of blood 
flowed from the vein on the diseased side as from that upon the 
healthy arm. 
The vessels in inflammation are not only enlarged, but undergo 
changes of shape. They are elongated as well as dilated, and, in 
consequence, are thrown into wavy folds, as may be seen in the 
tortuous course of the arteries in an inflamed conjunctiva. The 
dilatation, moreover, affects some parts more than others, causing 
the capillary vessels to appear aneurismal or varicose. These en- 
largements are, some of them, gradual and fusiform, others oval or 
pouch-like. It seems probable that inflammation never occurs with- 
out dilatation of the bloodvessels. The signs of it may indeed be 
observed in parts which have no vessels, as in the cornea and the 445 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
articular cartilages ; yet here there is enlargement of the neighboring 
vessels from which these parts naturally derive supplies. 
We have shown that a change in the distribution of the blood 
was an invariable characteristic of inflammation. Equally essential 
is a change in its composition and qualities. The proportion of the 
fibrine in the blood is increased from 3.5 parts in 1000 to an average 
of 6 and a maximum of 10 parts, in the various phlegmasiae. 
Much stress has been laid, by some observers, upon a supposed 
increase of white corpuscles, and a disposition in them to adhere to 
the walls of the vessels. It has even been suggested that an accu- 
mulation of these corpuscles by blocking up the vessels, might give 
rise to the stagnation which occurs in the focus of inflammation. 
But it seems that the increase of the white corpuscules can not well 
be estimated separately from that of the fibrine. Again, it is a well- 
known fact that the conditions of the system in which these corpus- 
cles are most abundant, as the malarious cachexiae, are not pecu- 
liarly favorable to inflammation. 
There is a peculiar quality of the red corpuscles in blood taken du- 
ring inflammation. This is a disposition to arrange themselves in piles 
or rouleaux, like pieces of money, while these piles cluster into a kind 
of network with wide interspaces. The same peculiarity is observed 
in the blood of pregnant women. It is undoubtedly one of the prin- 
cipal causes of the formation of the huffy coat, since the clustered cor- 
puscles sink more readily below the surface before the fibrine has 
begun coagulating. 
It is obvious, when we reflect what a degree of constitutional 
disturbance a slight local inflammation is capable of exciting, that 
some important changes must have taken place in the circulating 
fluid. Precisely what these are, is perhaps as yet undiscovered ; for 
the increase of fibrine seems hardly sufficient to account for it. 
Probably it is some change in the vital properties of the blood, un- 
discoverable by the microscope or by chemical analysis. 
Pain in an inflamed part has been already treated of as a perver- 
sion of the ordinary and healthy nervous influence. The degree of 
pain, however, is no measure of the height of inflammatory action, 
and it often ceases long before the disease has come to an end. The 
exact nature of the change of nervous influence we do not know, 
because we are ignorant of the nature of that influence as exerted 
in healthy nutrition. Apart from pain, there is certainly some dis- 
turbance of nerve-force which plays an important part in the phe- 
nomena of inflammation. 
In proof of this, we may refer to the sympathetic relations of 446 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
parts which obviously depend solely on nervous influence. Thus, 
excessive stimulus of light applied to the retina may cause conjunc- 
tivitis. The transference of irritation here can not be ascribed to 
any altered state of the blood or bloodvessels. We can only explain 
such a case by supposing that the excited state of the optic nerve 
was somehow communicated to the filaments distributed to the con- 
junctiva, generating in this membrane a state incompatible with its 
healthy nutrition. Another example of the same kind is a case men- 
tioned by Mr. Paget (Surg. Path. p. 203), of inflammation of the 
testicle, caused by a calculus impacted in the urethra. Here disease 
in one part is produced by irritation in another with which the for- 
mer has no vascular connections. Here, too, disturbance of the 
nerve-force must be the prime cause of all the phenomena of in- 
flammation. Hence, we should regard this mode of diseased action 
as not confined to changes in the blood or bloodvessels, but as having 
a nervous as well as a vascular element. 
There can be no doubt that inflammation may be caused by a 
disturbance of any one of the conditions essential to healthy nutri- 
tion. As a matter of fact, more than one, and sometimes all, of 
those conditions arc more or less interfered with. To confine our 
attention to derangements of either blood or nerve, or of the vital 
properties of the part, would be taking but a narrow and partial view 
of the subject. 
We have spoken of disturbance of function as a valuable symp- 
tom where inflammation attacked any internal organ. Another im- 
portant symptom in such cases is the sympathetic constitutional 
excitement which usually accompanies them. We have seen that 
dilatation of the capillaries is attended with an increased and an 
accelerated flow of blood through them. This excitement of the 
circulation seems at first to be strictly local ; but if it continues long 
or runs high, it soon extends to the heart, and involves the entire 
arterial system. The pulse becomes quick and hard, the skin hot and 
dry, the tongue thickly furred, the stomach disordered, and the 
secretions generally suspended. In short, we have inflammatory 
fever. The degree of this constitutional excitement varies, partly 
with the structure involved, and partly with the height of the local 
disease. Inflammation of the mucous membranes causes less fever 
than that of the parenchyma of organs or of the serous membranes. 
Diffuse inflammation excites less fever than when it is more limited 
and acute. Making due allowance for these circumstances, the 
degree of fever may be taken as a pretty accurate measure of the 
intensity of the local disease. 447 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
But fevei' and local inflammation generally arise in a manner 
somewhat different. A person is exposed to cold or severe fatigue, 
the first effects of which are a depression of the entire system. There 
is a sensation of weakness and chilliness, the pulse is feeble, the 
countenance pale, and the extremities cold. Muscular strength is 
diminished and the spirits dejected. 
Then comes a reaction, ushered in, perhaps, by rigors and vomit- 
ing. The pulse becomes quick and hard, the skin dry and hot, and 
there is intense thirst, restlessness, and loss of appetite, with pains in 
the head, back, and limbs ; and now there may appear the symptoms 
of local inflammation. The lungs, the pleura, the liver, the peritoneum, 
or some other important viscus, is involved. During the cold stage, 
these organs have probably been undergoing intense congestion, 
which with the access of fever changes to active inflammation. 
Now, in cases like this does the inflammation cause the fever or 
the fever cause the inflammation ? or are they both effects of one 
general depressing influence, falling first upon the system at large, 
and then upon the organ or part least able to resist it ? 
The latter seems to us the most probable supposition. It is evi- 
dent, however, that the two modes of morbid action mutually aggra- 
vate each other. The local affection, by its irritating effect upon the 
blood and nerves, must enhance the general excitement, while the 
increased force and frequency of action in the heart and arteries 
must drive the blood with irresistible power upon the already distend- 
ed and enfeebled capillaries. 
In other instances, however, constitutional excitement seems to 
follow, and to be wholly dependent upon, local injury. The fever 
which follows a wound is of this character, also that which arises in 
peritonitis from perforation of the intestines and escape of their 
contents. Here there is no room for direct constitutional shock. The 
general arterial excitement can only be attributed to irritation, propa- 
gated from the inflamed part. 
On the other hand, in small-pox, measles, etc., the febrile excite- 
ment may precede by several days any symptoms of local inflamma- 
tion. Here, at least, we can not doubt the constitutional origin of 
the disease. 
The precise nature of the connection between the disordered 
capillary action and general constitutional excitement is not clearly 
understood. Some have attributed it to the irritation which an in- 
creased amount of fibrine may exert upon the heart and arteries. A 
difficulty in the way of this supposition is, that the fibrine is greatly 
increased in some states of the system which are not attended with 448 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
fever, namely, in pregnancy and sub-acute rheumatism. Again, the 
fever often runs high before the appearance of the buffy coat, and 
subsides while that coat still continues. We may properly enough 
suppose that the increase of fibrine may have something to do with 
the accompanying fever. But we shall have to go beyond this to 
those mysterious sympathies which connect the well-being of each 
part with that of the whole for a full explanation of the matter. 
Why sympathetic irritation should cause excitement of the circu- 
lation, while it depresses the function of secretion, is as yet unex- 
plained. We can only receive these facts as they occur in the 
phenomena of fever. Where the exciting cause is something power- 
fully depressing, reaction, if it takes place at all, may be very imper- 
fect. Thus, the fever which follows burns, certain poisons, and even 
cold if intense or long continued, may be of a typhoid or adynamic 
type. The inflammatory symptoms are sometimes superinduced upon 
a passive rather than an active congestion. In such cases, extensive 
local change may take place with little pain or constitutional excite- 
ment. Especially are the lungs liable to this form of inflammation, 
both primarily, but more frequently creeping on in the course of 
continued fever or some other debilitating disease. In such cases, 
the pulse, though frequent, is feeble, the skin cool, and there may be 
diarrhea instead of suspended secretion. So insidious is the disease, 
and so completely masked its general symptoms, that the patient may 
not be aware of his danger till actually dying. The physical signs 
furnished by auscultation and percussion alone inform us of the 
extent of the danger. I have known the lower lobes of both lungs 
extensively congested, even to such a degree as to be followed by 
death within a few hours, while the constitutional reaction was so 
imperfect that neither the patient nor his friends suspected any 
thing more than a severe cold. 
We have traced the progress of inflammation upto the stagnation 
of blood in the capillaries, and have treated of the symptoms which 
accompany it, both local and general. Now, at this point, all the 
excited action we have described may gradually subside, and the 
part return to its normal condition, without undergoing structural 
change. This may be done in two ways, by simple cessation of the 
inflammation, or by metastasis, where it disappears, indeed, in one 
part, but only to reappear in another. The change in the diseased 
part is probably the same in both cases. The blood, which had 
become stagnant, resumes its motion. Determination of blood in 
the surrounding vessels gradually ceases, and the distended capilla- 
ries regain their tonicity and recover their natural state of contrac- 449 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
tion. The latter may, however, be a work of time ; for a state of 
passive congestion sometimes remains after all active symptoms have 
ceased. Clusters of blood-corpuscles, and perhaps fragments of 
fibrine, occasionally seem to be washed from the part and mingled in 
the current of the circulation. There is reason to fear that serious 
mischief may be done in this way, the "materies morin" being 
carried from a diseased organ to one which was previously healthy. 
As inflammation subsides in one part, it sometimes suddenly ap- 
pears to be transferred to another. Thus, rheumatism, which affects 
fibrous structures, flies from joint to joint, and limb to limb. A 
singular instance of metastasis is that which sometimes occurs in 
inflammation of the parotid gland, where the disease is suddenly 
transferred to the breast or testicle. Some inflammations, especially 
those of an erysipelatous nature, slowly spread from the point where 
they begin, creeping on to involve the adjoining parts. 
The subsidence of inflammation without structural change in the 
affected part is termed resolution. But if this does not take place, 
if the diseased action continue, further changes are speedily mani- 
fested. These may perhaps be best exhibited by contrasting them 
with those which take place in the ordinary process of nutrition. 
These variations consist, in the words of Mr. Paget, (1) "in a change 
of the material that is separated from the blood, into or upon the 
affected tissue; and (2) in changes of the tissue itself." Both of these 
changes usually occur, that is, there is an effusion from the bloodvessels 
and a deterioration of the structure of the part inflamed. The first 
of these changes differs from the ordinary repair and reconstruction 
of tissue in its tendency to the production of new formations, which 
are, however, of a lower organization than the original structure. 
The second is the consequence either of defective nutrition or of an 
increase in the ordinary process of waste and disintegration. 
Let us proceed first to consider the history of the various effu- 
sions from the bloodvessels and the changes of development or 
degeneration which they undergo. The materials exuded from in- 
flamed bloodvessels at first resemble those which escape in conges- 
tion, namely, serum and blood. Thus the serous cavities become 
distended and the secretions altered in character. But fibrine soon 
follows, giving to the swelling where it occurs in cellular struc- 
tures a peculiar hardness and density, as is observed in phlegmon 
and hepatization of the lung. But the peculiar characteristic of in- 
flammatory effusion is its containing exudation-corpuscles. These, 
in their development and degeneration, constitute the most important 
products of inflammation. 450 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
Pure serum is probably seldom effused, at least by itself. What 
is usually called such commonly contains more or less albumen and 
fibrine, and corresponds more properly to the liquor sanguinis. Thus 
the fluid contained in a blister will readily coagulate when taken 
from the body. So will the fluid which distends the skin and cellular 
tissue during inflammation of the deeper parts. The same is the case 
with the effusion of pleurisy or peritonitis. The fibrine contained in 
these may remain liquid for weeks, and it is a fortunate circumstance 
that it does so, as, while it continues in this state, it admits of being 
reabsorbed after the inflammation has subsided. 
Thus we often see large quantities of fluid which doubtless con- 
tained fibrine, removed from the pleura and peritoneum and from the 
joints after acute rheumatism. If this fibrine had coagulated, as 
there is always danger that it may do, the difficulty of removal and 
the risk of permanent structural injury would have been greatly 
enhanced. Why coagulation should under these circumstances be so 
long delayed is difficult in the present state of our knowledge to ex- 
plain. 
The presence of fibrine in inflammatory exudations distinguishes 
them from the effusions of passive congestion. The fluid which 
escapes in the latter is mere serum. The liquid which is poured out 
in ascites or anasarca from obstructed circulation will not coagulate. 
At most, a few flakes of fibrine only, may be found floating in it in 
extreme cases. 
A second of the inflammatory effusions is blood. This is sup- 
posed to arise from rupture of the minute vessels, which have been 
over-distended and had their parietes weakened by the defective nu- 
trition that accompanies inflammation. The extravasation of blood- 
corpuscles into the effused lymph and diseased tissues is common in 
pneumonia, and gives its rusty tinge to the sputa, which is so 
characteristic of that affection. It also occurs in red softening of 
the brain from cerebritis, but in inflammations of other parenchy- 
matous organs is extremely rare. It is common enough, however, from 
the mucous membranes, especially from the lower portion of the in- 
testinal canal, as in dysentery, of which it is pathognomonic. 
There is another form of hemorrhage which may arise from 
rupture of vessels newly formed in lymph which has been recently 
organized. These vessels are peculiarly tender, and when ruptured 
either by external force or by a fresh attack of inflammation, may 
bleed profusely. Every one knows that any slight injury to a 
granulating surface may cause considerable hemorrhage. The blood 
that is sometimes found in the pericardium, tunica vaginalis, testes, and MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
451 
more rarely in other serous membranes, probably escapes in this way. 
Lymph has been effused and become organized, but the newly-formed 
and delicate vessels have been broken by some violence or sudden 
shock. 
In some cachectic states of the system, the coloring matter of the 
blood becomes dissolved, and oozes out with the other effusions, to 
which it imparts its own tinge. The natural color of these exuda- 
tions is a grayish or yellowish white ; and when they are thus stained 
red by imbibition, it is an important indication of a depraved condition 
of the blood. It seldom occurs save in syphilis, scurvy, typhus and 
low, eruptive fevers. 
Another of the products of inflammation, but occurring upon mu- 
cous membranes only, is mucus. This, when pure, is a peculiar 
viscid fluid of alkaline reaction, and intended to lubricate the sur- 
faces on which it is formed. It usually contains floating upon it 
certain effete epithelial cells. Irritation increases the amount of pro- 
per mucus and often causes desquamation of the epithelium. When 
inflammation is established, materials resembling the lymph effused 
in other parts make their appearance. Rarely the exudation be- 
comes fibrinous and capable of organization, as in pseudo-membranous 
laryngitis. Corpuscles also are sometimes found which apparently 
differ from those usually found in lymph, only in consequence of 
floating in a different fluid. These are commonly called mucus-cor- 
puscles ; they readily degenerate into pus, but rarely are they or the 
effused fibrine developed into any higher forms of organization. 
But the most important and most characteristic of the products 
of inflammation is lymph, " coagulable lymph," as it is termed by the 
old writers. This is at first a clear liquid which exudes from the 
capillary vessels of the inflamed part, and possessing the peculiar 
property of self-organization, and of forming, by a process of develop- 
ment, structures resembling the natural tissues of the body. This 
lymph varies in its composition and tendencies according to the de- 
gree of inflammation, constitution of the patient, etc. etc. There 
are, however, two principal species, which may be termed, according 
to their microscopic characters, fibrinous and corpuscular, or, accord- 
ing to their ultimate tendencies, plastic and aplastic. Of course we 
seldom find either of these varieties perfectly pure. In particular 
cases, they will both be present, in all possible proportions ; but ac- 
cording as one or the other predominates will be the general charac- 
ter of the effusion, and the probability of its terminating in a.new 
organization or in degeneration. An abundance of fibrinous lymph 452 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
is characteristic of adhesive inflammation, while an excess of corpuscles 
is as sure a mark of suppurative or destructive inflammation. 
The fibrinous lymph is at first transparent, but as it coagulates 
becomes a yellowish or grayish-white substance, more or less opaque 
and elastic. Examples of this kind are found in the lymph exuded 
for the repair of injuries and in perfectly healthy subjects. For its 
proper development into new formations, the inflammation must 
be moderate in degree or have already subsided. Otherwise, fresh 
lymph will be continually effused, hindering the organization of the 
first and itself constantly deteriorating in quality, as the constitu- 
tional powers sulf er from the prolonged disease. So in open 
wounds, even after granulations have formed, a fresh accession of 
inflammation hinders their development, and changes the new lymph 
to pus. 
A state of passive congestion, even such as often remains after 
active symptoms have subsided, may be sufficient to hinder the pro- 
duction of new formations. We have a proof of this in the indolent 
ulcer which will not cicatrize. The blood, slowly moving through 
the distended and, as it were, paralyzed vessels, does not afford the 
proper material or stimulus for the progress of development. But 
if we remove the pressure of the blood by elevating the limb, sup- 
port the relaxed vessels by firm bandages, and stimulate the part by 
some local irritant, we may, perhaps, succeed in exciting a healthy 
action. 
But suppose all the essential conditions to be fulfilled ; the form 
which the new organization is to assume will then be determined 
principally by the character of the tissues around it. The natural 
tendency of lymph is to assume the fibro-cellular structure. This is 
the tissue which makes up the principal part of false membranes, of 
adhesions, of permanent thickenings and indurations. It is found as 
an effect of inflammation in parts where naturally it does not exist, 
as in the brain and the testicle, within the joints, and in the thicken- 
ing of mucous membranes. So in the healing of wounds, no matter 
in what tissue, all parts exhibit the fibro-cellular formation. The 
cicatrix, the new structure filling the gap which was left by the injury, 
consists usually of this materia. 
But the form which organized lymph is to assume is also much 
influenced by the structure of the part into which it is effused. Thus, 
ligamentous parts are commonly repaired by ligament, and bones by 
osseous material. This is doubtless owing to the original nature of 
the lymph exuded, each part in this respect exercising an elective 
affinity similar to that which it exerts in selecting from the blood MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
453 
materials suitable to maintain its own composition and structure in 
the ordinary process of nutrition. It is found also that, as time goes 
on, the new formation is assimilated more and more closely to the 
parts around. Thus, scars come to resemble the natural skin, and 
false membranes become very nearly approximated to the structures 
in which they are produced. In all this we see that the process of 
repair or reproduction of parts resembles that by which they were 
first developed. For the orginal state of all the organs was that of 
a nucleated blastema. The cartilage, muscles, etc., were at first 
formed from embryo cells. The osseous substance was first deposited 
upon cartilage, as, in organized lymph, it is upon fibrous tissue. 
The fibro-cellular tissue, as it becomes organized, may constitute 
adhesions, uniting together free surfaces, so as to prevent their play- 
ing to and fro upon each other. The opposite surfaces of serous 
membranes are often glued to each other in this manner. Layers of 
varying thickness, and consisting of entirely new formation, may 
frequently be stripped off. In other places, the visceral and parietal 
layers have been brought in contact, while each was covered with 
plastic lymph, and in consequence have become firmly united. 
Lymph is sometimes effused beneath the surfaces of membranes. 
In this situation, as it becomes organized, it causes induration and 
thickening. Where this occurs in the synovial membranes of joints, 
it produces stiffness with impeded motion. In a similar manner 
originate the indurations which sometimes appear beneath the inte- 
guments, in the capsule of joints, etc. A good example is furnished 
by the indurated chancre. 
Membranes and tissues formed from inflammatory lymph show a 
singular tendency to contract. The scars resulting from burns are 
especially prone to it, and horrible deformities are frequently the 
result. So powerful are these contractions occurring after pleurisy, 
as to flatten and depress the walls of the chest. To the same cause 
may be attributed the contractions of the liver after cirrhosis. 
Upon fibro-cellular tissue as a basis may be built up the various 
structures of the body, the product of inflammation gradually 
becoming assimilated to the normal characters of the part in which 
it is deposited. As the lymph becomes organized, bloodvessels and 
nerve-fibrils extend themselves from the adjoining parts into the new 
formation. For the production of these changes, it is necessary that 
all inflammatory action should be subdued, and that the conditions of 
ordinary healthy nutrition should be restored. 
But instead of developing itself into the formation of new struc- 
ture, lymph may degenerate and have to be cast out of the system as 454 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
waste material. It may be of the corpuscular or aplastic species 
which will not coagulate. Examples of this kind of lymph may be 
found in the vesicles of herpes and eczema, and in the fluid of a 
blister drawn upon feeble or cachectic persons. The cells found in 
exudations of this kind resemble the corpuscles of chyle or the white 
corpuscles of the blood. These cells may, under favorable circum- 
stances, develop themselves into granulation-cells. In this case, 
they elongate and become attenuated, until each by itself, or two or 
more uniting at the end, they form perfect filaments. More com- 
monly, however, they degenerate into pus-corpuscles, granule, cells 
and masses, forming much of that debris which imparts a turbid ap- 
pearance to such effusions. 
In ordinary inflammations, both forms of lymph are found 
blended together in varying proportions. Even in an ordinary blis- 
ter, the lymph effused is seldom wholly fibrinous. Indeed, a person 
used to the microscope could form a very correct opinion as to the 
health and constitutional vigor of a person from an inspection of 
this fluid, and observing the number and kind of corpuscles con- 
tained. 
It is an interesting question, and one of no slight practical im- 
portance, what are the conditions on which depend the production 
of these different forms of lymph-what, in short, causes inflamma- 
tion in one case to assume a constructive, in anothei* a destructive or 
suppurative form ? 
These conditions may be referred, according to Mr. Paget, princi- 
pally to three heads : 
]. The state of the blood. 
2. The degree of inflammation. 
3. The seat of that inflammation. 
First. The materials effused are derived from the blood, and 
must partake essentially of its properties. Blood, rich in albumen 
and fibrine, will furnish an exudation rich in animal principles and 
capable of a high grade of organization, while that which is thin 
and watery will furnish an effusion that is poor and fit only to 
degenerate and be expelled from the economy. It is probable, also, 
that the condition of the nervous influence, and of the vital powers 
generally, may have considerable effect on the products of inflamma- 
tion. Considerations of this kind will help to explain a thing which 
sometimes appears very strange, that is, the different results of the 
same injury upon different persons. Rokitansky has shown that the 
" characters of inflammatory deposits correspond very closely with 
those of the coagula found in the heart" So that from the coagula- MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
455 
tion of the contents of a blister, we may know what kind of a clot 
would be found in the body after death. 
An influence on the character of lymph is doubtless exerted by 
the part from which and that upon which it was effused. We have 
already seen that those parts have an important agency in determin- 
ing the form which lymph shall ultimately assume after it is organ- 
ized. It is but reasonable to suppose that they should have some 
share in determining its primitive composition and qualities. Ac- 
cordingly, we find that in spontaneous inflammations of the skin, the 
lymph is usually corpuscular, as in eczema, erysipelas, etc.; in serous 
membranes, the lymph is commonly fibrinous, and tends to the forma- 
tion of adhesions and false membranes ; in the mucus membranes, the 
tendency is to suppuration. We may observe a marked example of 
the influence of the surrounding tissues in pleuro-pneumonia. Here 
the lymph effused into the pleura may be organizing into false mem- 
branes at the very moment that the lymph which escaped into the 
lung is undergoing suppuration. The influence of the surrounding 
parts is not, however, all-powerful, else we should have, after an 
amputation, as many forms and issues of inflammation as there are 
tissues involved ; whereas the action is the same throughout; they 
all granulate or suppurate together. 
Finally, the quality and destiny of lymph depend much on the 
degree of inflammation producing it. Where this is but moderate, 
the exudation may be mixed with the secretions of the part, which in 
such case it often resembles, as the mucus of catarrh, which may vary 
but little from that which ordinarily lubricates the respiratory 
passages. So in the inflammation of any part, the lymph first formed 
is probably much the same as the materials separated from the blood 
in the process of normal nutrition ; and the higher the diseased action 
runs and the longer it continues, the more will the lymph deteriorate 
by departing from the character of the ordinary materials of nutri- 
tion. 
Reference has already been made to coagulable lymph or fibrine 
as one of the products of inflammation. 
This effusion of coagulable lymph is so important a process, both 
for good and for evil, that a few lines must be devoted to its special 
consideration. 
When coagulable lymph is effused between membranes that are 
normally in contact (or nearly so) with one another, it often causes 
them to cohere. 
In this way, we often have adhesions of the adjacent surfaces of 
serous membranes, such as the pleurae, the pericardium, and the peri- 456 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
toneum, which materially interfere with the natural free motion of 
the parts, and occasion various persistent morbid symptoms. In 
inflammation of the iris, the pupil may be rendered irregular or im- 
movable, or may even be closed up by the effusion of coagulable 
lymph. 
In endocarditis, or inflammation of the lining membrane of the 
heart, coagulable lymph may be deposited in wart-like masses on the 
valves, and may thus occasion some of the worst forms of cardiac 
disease. 
On the other hand, in many cases, the effusion of coagulable 
lymph has a reparative and conservative influence. 
It is by the organization of this fluid that the lips of recent 
wounds are glued together, and that parts recently severed from the 
body may be sometimes replaced and still live. 
The success of the Taliacotian operation, by which a new nose is 
engrafted in the position of that which had been lost-of the opera- 
tion of injecting a stimulating fluid into cystic tumors, etc., with the 
view of setting up adhesive inflammation-and of various other 
surgical operations, essentially depends upon the property of organi- 
zation possessed by this fluid. It is thus, too, that ulcers are 
gradually filled up till the breach of texture is repaired. 
The inflammatory diseases of the most important organs are de- 
scribed under their specific names, and as a general rule, the termina- 
tion itis is employed to indicate an inflammation. 
Thus, pleuritis signifies inflammation of the pleura ; peritonitis, 
inflammation of the peritoneum; iritis, inflammation of the iris, etc. 
Inflammation of the lungs, however, is usually known as pneumonia, 
instead of pneumonitis. 
TREATMENT. 
The treatment to be pursued in cases of acute inflammation is of 
two kinds, local and general. 
Local treatment consists of light rubbing, to excite a more rapid 
circulation in the bloodvessels immediately contiguous to affected 
parts; applications of hot fomentations, by which the cuticle is 
softened and the bloodvessels enlarged or expanded ; and applications 
of cold water, by which the first shock produces contraction of the 
pores as well as of the bloodvessels, and later effects cause a reaction 
and acceleration of the flow of the blood. 
Of these, rubbing is by far the safest and most effective, unless 
there be abrasion or other irritation of the surface by which contact 
is rendered painful or unpleasant. 457 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
In. that case, the magnetic hand should be held as closely as pos- 
sible to the most inflamed part without actually touching it ; or a 
very thin muslin or linen fabric should be wetted in warm alcohol and 
water, and placed upon the surface, and the hand laid lightly over 
this, or held so near it as to equalize the disordered circulation as 
rapidly as possible. This we consider the best local treatment. 
Next to this is the application of cool, fresh green leaves, that 
have been slightly softened by rolling or bruising them in the hands. 
The leaves of the cabbage, dock, or plantago (sometimes called plan- 
tain), being mild and soothing, are especially adapted for allaying in- 
flammation. 
If these can not be obtained, use, very cautiously, applications of 
cold water, or, more freely, hot fomentations, either of which tend to 
carry off the superfluous heat. Other simple methods of treatment 
may suggest themselves as circumstances vary the case to be treated. 
Counter-irritation is often resorted to, by means of blisters, sina- 
pisms, setons, and other tortures ; but these we decidedly object to, 
in whatever form. 
For general treatment, the old way was to reduce inflammation, 
first of all by bleeding. 
This of course reduces the strength of the patient by subtracting 
from the vital forces, and is in every way objectionable. 
The most important object to be accomplished is to remove the 
exciting cause of the trouble, whenever this is possible. 
The patient should be at once placed on a strictly antiphlogistic 
regimen (which implies a total abstinence from solid or animal food 
and stimulating drinks), and careful attention should be paid to 
ventilation, temperature, etc. 
The allopathic medicines or direct remedies chiefly employed are 
purgatives, preparations of mercury, tartar emetic, and opium, all of 
which should be thoroughly eschewed. 
The strength should be kept up by plenty of light, nutritious 
food, the blood cooled by an abundance of fruit, as well as by avoid- 
ing all violent exercise or overheating. 
General magnetic treatment should be resorted to, a thorough 
rubbing from head to feet, and a wet bandage applied about the 
loins covered by plenty of dry cloths to prevent a chill. In the 
chapter devoted to drink and its effects, we have given especial 
methods of treatment for inflammation of the kidneys, bladder, and 
all the organs of secretion, and in that devoted to the lungs and their 
uses, we have described pneumonia, and the best methods for alle- 
viating it. 458 
MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
Peritonitis is treated in its proper place, as are also many other 
purely inflammatory diseases which are liable to occur. 
Disease, as its literal construction implies, is a want of ease, or 
absence of the condition of health in which all the faculties and 
organs of the body and mind work together harmoniously, and with- 
out sensible disturbance. 
In a strictly scientific sense, there may be disease without pain, 
but hardly without functional disturbance or incapacity of some 
kind. 
It is therefore only necessary to include, in the definition of dis- 
ease, the diminution or loss of functional power, whether attended by 
suffering or not, and the scientific and practical ideas of the word 
will very nearly correspond. 
Every person interested in either the science or the art of medi- 
cine, in fact, every thinking person, who observes the varied and 
wonderful action of his own physical frame, must admit that slight 
structural and functional deviations from the state of health are often 
unnoticed ; but it is only because they are slight, and because the 
functions to which they extend are not habitually in use to their full 
power. 
A great deal of unnecessary obscurity is found among all writers 
in discussing the abstract ideas of health and disease. Disease hav- 
ing been placed in opposition to health, and connected with all the 
most intangible subtleties of the most abstruse metaphysical philoso- 
phy, by regarding it (disease) as dependent upon the idea of life and 
the vital force. 
Many authorities have thus generalized disease into a separate 
active principle (entity), opposed to, and everywhere seeking to de- 
stroy, the principle of health. 
Paracelsus (Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Ho- 
henheim, a famous alchemist, born in Switzerland, in 1493), in his 
picturesque and at the same time whimsical manner, endowed the 
vital principle with a kind of personality, and spoke of disease as due 
to the whims and caprices of a displeased and resentful spirit named 
Archaeus,* an idea which was still further developed by Van Ilel- 
mont. 
A common division of diseases makes them functional or organic ; 
but even this is a merely provisional and conventional arrangement, 
as the functions and the structure of all organs are so intimately in- 
terblended and so closely allied, in fact and in nature, that it is quite 
* A term used by ancient chemists to denote the active principle of the mate- 
rial world, or the power or spirit that presides over the animal economy. MEDICINE A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 
459 
impossible to distinguish one from the other. But nosology (from 
the Greek word vooog, meaning disease) is that branch of the science 
of medicine which treats of the distribution and arrangement of dis- 
eases into classes, orders, etc.; and upon the authority of Dr. William 
Farr, of England, F.R.S., we have four primary classes of disease. 
Class first includes zymotic diseases (from the Greek a fer- 
ment) ; that is, all diseases that are either epidemic, endemic, or con- 
tagious. Class second embraces constitutional diseases ; these are 
diathetic and tubercular. Class third consists of local diseases, and 
treats of all the separate organs and systems that go to make up the 
human form ; beginning with the brain, or diseases of the nervous 
system ; then the heart, or diseases of the circulatory system; next, 
the lungs, or diseases of the respiratory system, followed by the 
stomach, or diseases of the digestive system ; then the kidneys, or 
diseases of the secretive system ; next, diseases of the generative sys- 
tem ; then, bone and muscle diseases ; and in conclusion, skin dis- 
eases. Class fourth comprises developmental diseases, namely, of 
children, of women, of old people, and of nutrition. 
We have referred to many of these diseases earlier in the book; 
but it is with class third, or local diseases, that we have most to do, 
because these are most general, and can be often well and success- 
fully treated without a physician. 
We would therefore call your attention now to a brief special 
section or lecture devoted to the brain : its powers and functions, its 
tributaries and accessories ; how it should be used, and how saved 
from abuse, how preserved in a state of health, and how treated if 
disease attacks it. 
James Johnson, M.D., 
In earth-life Physician to the late King William IV. THIRTY-FIFTH SECTION. 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS; OR, DISEASES OF 
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
CONTRIBUTED AND INDORSED BY ROBERT BENTLEY TODD. 
Maladies of the brain and nervous system most complicated and difficult to treat 
-The great reservoir of nervous and magnetic fluid-Cranial and spinal 
nerves-Nerves of sensation and motion-The brain composed of three parts 
-The average weight-Foreboding indications-Fatal American habit- 
Kindly monitions-Stomach and brain, intimate sympathy-Catarrh-Perni- 
cious habit of blowing the nose-Magnetism pre-eminent-Apoplexy, danger 
of-Heed the warnings-Epilepsy, cure for-Magnetism the best cure yet 
discovered-Requisites of a good magnetic physician. 
HE most frequent and by far the most difficult to treat, 
of all the diseases that affect the human body, are 
those relating wholly or principally to the brain and 
its attendant organs. 
The brain is the great reservoir of nervous fluid, 
which by the nerves is distributed to all parts of the 
body, as blood is carried from the heart by the arte- 
ries. But the nervous system, unlike the circulatory 
system, has no set of organs corresponding to the 
veins to carryback for purification and redistribution 
the vital fluid which it has sent forth. Therefore the brain must act 
as a continual manufacturing agency, as well as a distributing power, 
by appropriating the blood with which it is supplied, and creating, as 
it were, its own fund of material for feeding the hungry nerves so 
steadily and constantly draining it. 
We will treat, first, of the physical organs of the nervous system, 462 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
and then of the mental troubles that occur from any abnormal action 
of the brain. 
First to be considered, therefore, is that the nervous system con- 
sists of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves. 
The nerves are divided for convenience of description into the 
cranial nerves, or nerves of the head, and spinal nerves, or nerves di- 
rectly connected with the spinal column. Functionally or physiolo- 
gically we make still another division, which gives us nerves of sensa- 
tion, nerves of motion, and compound nerves, which combine within 
a single covering minute fibres of both kinds, sensation and motion. 
Fig. 111.-Section of the Cerebellum and Base of the Cerebrum, 
It is not essential to our present purpose to give the Greek and 
Latin derivations of the multitudinous names by which all the differ- 
ent organs in the human body have been designated. It is sufficient 
to say that the brain, though usually considered a single body or sub- 
stance, is composed of three parts, known as the cerebrum, the cere- 
bellum, and the medulla, oblongata. 
These have each a membranous covering of their own, and are 
all enveloped and protected by the membranes of the brain, the THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
463 
whole together forming what is called the encephalon, meaning with- 
in the head. 
So strong is the sympathetic action and relation between different 
portions of the brain that it is often almost impossible to tell which 
portion is affected ; and so, as our description is very general, we 
must make our treatment general also. 
The average weight of the human brain is about four pounds, 
varying in the healthy male from forty-six to fifty-three ounces; and 
in the female ordinarily ranging from forty-one to forty-seven or for- 
ty-eight ounces, and there have been instances where they have been 
much heavier. 
Cuvier, the naturalist, whom the poet Whittier calls "the gentle 
Cuvier," had a brain so large that it attracted the attention of scien- 
tific men, and it was found after his death to weigh, in a perfectly 
healthy condition, sixty-four ounces. 
The surface of the brain, with its numerous elevations and de- 
pressions, measures, according to Baillarger, six hundred and seventy 
inches, in round numbers. 
But it is with diseases of the brain more than with its construc- 
tion that we have now to deal. 
And here we would remark that in at least ninety-nine cases out 
of every hundred, when the head aches, it is but the inarticulate 
voice of exhausted nature, crying out, " I am weary, I am abused, I 
am overworked, I am depleted. Give me rest." 
To rise early and lie down late seems to be one of the American 
ideas of prudence and usefulness. But it is prudence at the expense 
of brain and nerve, and usefulness for a few years, cutting short the 
many. 
The wants and needs of the brain should be duly considered, and 
the work of daily life apportioned as nearly as possible to what the 
brain is able and willing to perform. 
No person should work, read, write, study, or even think, earnest- 
ly and consecutively, when they have headache, unless they desire to 
commit suicide in the most painful and unsatisfactory manner. 
Pains above the eyes and through the temples are indications of 
mental exhaustion, of having been engaged too long in one direction, 
and can often be relieved by change of labor, without absolute rest 
or inaction. 
Such pains should always be regarded as kindly and timely warn- 
ings, to be heeded at once, and as faithfully as possible. 
The most universal and troublesome pains in the head are known 
by the general term of sick-headache, which is usually occasioned by 464 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
trouble in the stomach, and will be treated under the head of diges- 
tive organs ; and neuralgia, which, though the word means nerve- 
ache, is really occasioned by trouble in the blood, and will be treated 
under the head of circulatory organs. (See Blood and its Diseases, 
by Dr. Mott.) 
But there are many troubles incident to the physical organs of 
the head alone. 
All diseases of the eye are painful and delicate in the extreme. 
Cold water should never be applied to eyes that are in any way dis- 
eased, but tepid, warm, or hot water should be used freely, every 
hour, in cases of inflammation or acute disease, and as often as twice 
a day in all chronic difficulties. 
A good way of applying warm water is to take a large bowl or 
basin nearly filled with water at the proper temperature, close the 
eyes, immerse the face in the water, and then open and close the eyes 
Fig. 112.-The Eye. 
several times while in the water. This will thoroughly rinse the in- 
flamed secretions from the eyes, and will not be so painful or unplea- 
sant as would at first be imagined. 
The proper wray to apply local magnetic treatment to the eyes is 
for the magnetizer to stand behind the patient, whose head rests 
easily on the chair-back, and with the fingers touching lightly the 
outer corners of the eyes, they should be pushed forward softly 
toward the nose. 
After these passes have continued for a few minutes, the hands 
should be held over the eyes, touching them lightly but firmly, until 
perspiration is excited on the lids. 
Then a slight bathing in warm water and a long period of rest 
should follow before the eyes are used again. 
One frequent trouble in the head is inflammation of the mucous 
membrane, known by the name of catarrh. 465 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
This is superinduced, aggravated, we might almost say caused at 
times, by the too frequent and violent performance of the operation 
known as blowing the nose. Probably not one person in a hundred 
ever thought of this, but it is true no less. 
The slight unpleasant tickling sensation that occurs anywhere 
along the air-passage from the throat to the nose can be entirely re- 
moved by throwing the head far back, and holding it for a few se- 
conds, perhaps a minute, to change the currents which the secretions 
form, and stop the rush of blood to the head, which often causes a 
slight congestion of the smaller bloodvessels, and a sense of fullness, 
uneasiness, or irritation, when there is really nothing to remove in an 
external sense. 
But the treatment for catarrh is simple. Apply hot water, as hot as 
can possibly be borne, to the forehead and nose, for tenor fifteen min- 
utes in the morning, holding the head back several times, so that the 
throat will be fully cleared and cleansed. Drink hot or cold water 
freely, and if there be a magnetizer at hand, have the head, throat, 
neck, and chest thoroughly rubbed, the back slapped lightly and 
briskly, and circulation aided in every practical way every morning. 
Cool medicated inhalations would also be useful in healing and 
strengthening the mucous membranes ; but we shall devote further 
consideration to that subject in another chapter. (See Consumption.) 
As we shall have frequent occasion to speak of magnetism in the 
coming pages of this work, it may be well to state here that we con- 
sider magnetism the best cure yet discovered for all troubles and dis- 
eases of the brain. 
A good magnetic physician should have a large, well-developed 
brain ; strong constitution ; healthy, vigorous physique ; quick, ready 
perceptive faculties ; strong, firm muscles ; active, sensitive nerves ; 
large benevolence ; and above all, a generous desire to do good, even 
at the sacrifice of personal ease and comfort. 
In almost every family will be found one or more who, with a lit- 
tle practice, can develop the power of relieving pain, if not of actu- 
ally curing disease, by the application of their hands to that portion 
of the body where the pain or disease is located. 
Magnetism is in itself such a subtle and unexplainable agent, it 
moves in such silent, mysterious, intangible, and yet powerful currents, 
that it is hard to give general rules for its application ; a little expe- 
rience and a few trials being better than pages of theory or books of 
speculation. 
But to return to the brain and its treatment. 
The mental diseases that are now most prevalent, and that, sad to 466 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
relate, are every year becoming more prevalent, are apoplexy, paraly- 
sis, epilepsy, chorea, hysteria, mania, etc. 
Many of these are caused by over-action of the brain and lack of 
proper circulation. 
Apoplexy is caused by an aggravated form of what is known as 
a rush of blood to the head. It is a suffusion of blood, either upon 
the brain, which causes cerebral apoplexy, or upon the spinal cord 
and lungs, which produces pulmonary apoplexy. 
In either case, the symptoms are very similar. There is loss of all 
power, caused by paralysis of the nerves of sensation and motion ; 
the blood does not circulate, and something resembling a fainting-fit 
is the result. This is usually preceded by vertigo, headache, loss of 
vision, or sometimes double vision, and partial and entire loss of mem- 
ory. When these warnings occur, all books, business, and writing 
materials should be laid aside; exercise in the open air strictly attend- 
ed to ; good magnetic treatment sought immediately, and every thing 
done to equalize the circulation and strengthen the power of the will 
over the functions of body and brain. There is a common belief that 
a person never has more than three attacks of apoplexy ; but obser- 
vation and experience have taught that this is not true. There is a 
weakening of the arteries of the brain, in their distention, so that 
very frequently they are ruptured at a third shock, after having pass- 
ed safely through the first and second ; but people have been known 
to have temporary apoplexy in successive strokes or fits, for years, 
and apparently to recover entirely every time. 
But life grows more than ordinarily precarious with such people, 
and they should never forget that they are liable at any hour to 
be called upon, without warning, to lay aside the grosser material 
frame and enter upon a higher sphere of action. 
Apoplexy may be caused by dressing the neck too closely, thus 
impeding the return of blood through the large veins to the heart ; 
or pregnancy in women may induce the same or similar symptoms. 
But whatever be the predisposing cause, the treatment should be 
vigorous and patiently followed. Evacuation of the bowels and 
bladder, increased rapidity of circulation of the blood, brisk rub- 
bing, and bathing to open the pores of the skin, and entire rest of 
the mental faculties, are to be insisted upon immediately. 
Tumors within the skull produce symptoms of apoplexy, but usu- 
ally accompanied by severe and distressing pains. These can only be 
treated successfully by magnetism. 
Paralysis is caused by nervous depletion. A shock, a fall, a sud- THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
467 
den blow, bad news or very good news, may act as causes, or any 
kind of strain or over-exertion. 
Excessive exercise of the sexual organs is one prolific root of pa- 
ralysis ; but sexual starvation is nearly as bad. The fact is, nature 
calls for a temperate and careful exercise of all her functions, and 
she will not yield her best blessings of health and happiness for any 
less consideration. 
Over-eating often causes illnesses of various kinds ; yet one would 
scarcely feel justified in advising a person to abstain from all food on 
that account. A general care of the health, keeping the system as 
vigorous as possible, and plenty of sleep, will do more to prevent pa- 
ralysis than any kind of medical treatment. 
Epilepsy is a form of brain disease, often hereditary and usually 
incurable. But if a magnetic physician or manipulator once obtains 
control over a person subject to epilepsy, and establishes a bond of 
sympathy and confidence, a sure and permanent cure is the result; 
and magnetic treatment is the only safe and reliable agency that has 
ever reached a case of true epilepsy and effected a cure. 
Hysteria is a disease properly confined to the female sex, and pro- 
ceeding from a diseased or abnormal condition of the womb (or the 
ovaries), as its name indicates. 
The great panacea for this disease is absolute rest, and an entire 
change of the magnetic relations. 
There is a magnetic outgrowth, called love, which will some time 
be recognized as the great remedial agent for all nervous troubles ; 
but at present it is not formulated, the books do not recognize it, and 
men and women live and die and never know the possibilities, of their 
own natures in this respect. 
The Hygienic Institute that is at once a home and a hospital, 
an asylum in the truest sense of the word, providing rest, peace, and 
a harmonious even if an entirely isolated life, is at present the best 
remedy we can suggest for hysterical patients. 
Plenty of fresh air and exercise, abundant though not excessive 
bathing, pleasant occupation, and, if possible, interesting society, 
are the safest medicaments. Even magnetic treatment should be 
used with the utmost caution, as hysteria is almost always accompa- 
nied by morbid imagination and a simulation of diseases that do not 
really exist. 
The physician should take as little notice as possible of the symp- 
toms as described by the patient, should not try the effect either of 
reasoning or ridiculing, but merely take all means to improve the ge- 
neral health and tranquillize the nerves. 468 
THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
The throat is usually affected, and the eyes are, or are imagined 
to be, swollen and protruded. Every case of hysteria has separate 
and distinct peculiarities that make individual treatment necessary, 
and it is impossible to give general directions for all. 
Chorea, commonly known as St. Vitus's Dance, is a nervous af- 
fection more common among children than grown people, and usually 
more prevalent with female than male children, on account of great- 
er nervous delicacy and susceptibility. The treatment should be 
healthy magnetism, loose, comfortable clothing, abundant exercise, by 
which the muscles may be wearied before the vital force is exhausted, 
well-ventilated sleeping-rooms, and plenty of sleep, with abundant, 
plain food, no stimulants, and no drugs of any sort. 
Fig. 113.-Exercise for Health. 
Children affected in this way should not be allowed to study, as 
they will learn rapidly enough without special application ; and health 
should be the first consideration, as a foundation for education or 
usefulness of any sort. 
The worst and most aggravated form of mental or nervous dis- 
ease is yet to be considered. 
It is mania. This is often transmitted hereditarily, and frequent- 
ly produced by physical causes. 
Any disturbance of the sexual organs will cause some form of 
mania. 
The effect of sexual excesses and of sexual starvation are almost 
identical, and it is left for the culture and judgment of every human 
being carefully to avoid either extreme, and so keep a sound mind in 
a vigorous, healthy body. 
The excitement and violence of maniacal patients are frequently THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 
469 
due to brain-fever, and the physician or nurse can not be too careful 
in deciding upon the treatment to be pursued. 
But in all cases of irritation of the nervous system, however caus- 
ed, there is a constant demand for sympathetic assistance, calm and 
repose, alike moral and physical. These can only be cautiously and 
conscientiously supplied in a true hygienic home. For a fuller treat- 
ment of the subject of mania, we should want a description of the 
age, sex, and general condition of the patient afflicted. (See further 
conditions, pp. 127-8.) DEPARTMENT 
OF • 
PRIMITIVE OR ABORIGINAL 
MAGNETISM, 
EXPLANATORY OF ITS DEVELOPMENT AND PRACTICAL APPLICATION 
IN THE 
ef Ipiilino. « * * So when we came to be freed from the appetites and 
passions and prejudices of material life, we could see how much the 
white man and the red man could benefit each other. And that is 
why almost every medium has some Indian influence about him. We 
understood the fact that, if a healthy person came in contact with a 
weary or diseased one, a feeling of rest and health would come more 
or less rapidly and directly to the weaker party. We did not (then) 
understand the law by which this fact was governed. You are learn- 
ing the law /" (Pocahontas, in a communication made December, 
1870.) 
' Full well do I remember the day when we gathered about you in 
close and loving circles, your darling children and forming 
the first circle ; then the medical band, who, so rich in scientific re- 
search and worldly knowledge, were yet poor in their understanding 
of magnetic conditions and relations, and so were presided over by 
Powhatan-specimen of nature's noblest work is he-and his grace- 
ful, queenly daughter, whose soul is filled with love to all." (Job 
Cushing Stone.) THIRTY-SIXTH SECTION. 
CHIEF BIG-HEART'S EXPOSITION OF THE INDIAN 
METHOD OF CURING DISEASES BY MAGNETISM. 
RAVE Stone say will Big-Heart tell 'em tribes how 
the cure-'em Indians, who come from happy hunting- 
grounds, control the mediums to make the sick 
(meaning disease) all go out from the bodies of their 
patients. It would be like asking the lightning hoic 
it shiver the tree or kill the deer. Power is the de- 
sire and the pride of the red man. To be strong to 
kill his enemies, is the great thing he lives for, and 
that he trains hispappooses for. So that he does all 
that he does in the right way to help him be right for that. That 
makes him not much wise in the many fine things that make pale- 
face heart glad, but only much strong for to beat what he thinks his 
foe. 
He no be slave to gay wigwams, to strange garments of many 
fancies for his body, to strange mixtures of many kinds for his 
stomach. He live for juozcer, and, like all who live in the world, he 
gains just what he lives for. But he does not always be wise to 
know what be truly his foe. So he use his power to kill men and 
women and helpless pappoose. 
Then the Great Spirit say, " As you give so you shall receive." 
And our race go out from the hunting-grounds of our fathers by 
the hands of the slayers. But the power we have lived for, we still 
have for our own. And we learn to be wise to use it to cast out 
such foes as it be kind and right to kill. Such as creep in by you 
doing things which you should not do if you would be strong and 
well; by breathing bad air, by eating bad food, by drinking bad 
drinks, by wearing bad clothes. 474 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
We look oil from our wise place out of the body, and we see how 
the pale-face slay, not with the tomahawk and arrow, but with the 
poison he draw out from the mineral and the vegetable, calling it 
medicine. He see how all make a big fight against one big foe, 
which they call Disease, and yet fail to slay him ; then his big pride 
be aroused to use his big power to show he can do bigger things 
than all them, and slay the big foe Disease by a blow from his un- 
seen hand. 
His power be like the power of the lightning, it pass through and 
through solid substance, but you can not see it. There be much 
solid substance that you call non-conductor, through which the 
lightning can not pass. . So there be much through which the power 
Fig. 114.-The Healer or Medium percussing the Patient, to drive 
out Dyspepsia and Liver Complaint. 
can not pass, being non-conductors of healing electricity. So we 
have to use that which will conduct our healing power to so beat, 
and excite, and purify the other, that we can pass the vitality through 
it, and then we can cast out the big foe Disease. 
The human beings that are conductors of this power we call 
mediums or healers, whose minds can understand what we say to 
them, and whose bodies will be moved as we move upon them. • 
DYSPEPSIA AND DIVER COMPLAINT. 
So when we find a body that have the big foe Dyspepsia in it, we 
see if it be a non-conductor of our power. If it be not, and we can ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
475 
make the mind understand us, then every morning when the stomach 
be empty, we say to the man or the woman, " Be passive while we 
move your hands to mould gently, over and over, liver, and stomach, 
and intestines." 
Then we send our great magnetic power all through each pore, 
and fibre, and artery, and vein, and drive out all the poisonous, 
worn-out, decomposed, unwholesome things you have put in there, 
and fill all the spaces with our living vitality. Then we quicken all 
the instincts of the nature to ask for such food as shall strengthen 
and build up the body, and not feed the foe. 
If the sick one be a non-conductor, then we must move upon 
some medium to manipulate, and knead, and then throw out from 
the stomach what does not belong there, and supply through them 
the vitalized strength. And we must do this many, many times, 
Fig. 115.-Manipulating to cure Consumption. 
until the system outgrow its unnatural twist in the wrong way, and 
until we have made such good conductors of the body that we can 
go through and through it without any obstruction. 
Then we can drive the foe with swift feet before us until he be 
slain in the way. 
CURING DROPSY BY MAGNETISM. 
If we find the bad foe Dropsy, we strike little blows with the 
hands we can move, from the head all down to the feet-little, quick, 
pattering blows, over and over, and over again, till we give new 
life and activity to all the good particles of blood, and put out 
through the pores all the watery particles that no belong there, and 
supply from higher life that which the blood lacks to make it red 
and true. Day after day, and moon upon moon, striking the many, 
many blows down the spine first, out through the arms to the hands, 476 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
all over the chest and bowels-plenty blows over the kidneys, across 
the loins, down the legs, and out at the soles of the feet. 
If there be the fierce foe Consumption, we make strike big, strong 
blows across the shoulders and below the shoulder-blades, light blows 
all over the stomach ; then we make the brisk rubs all down to the 
feet ; then we hold the healing hand over the left side below the 
shoulder-blade, until much sweat come. Then we make the little 
blows until all the air-cells are made free ; then we fill them full of 
vitalized breath ; and so we do many and many times, until the foe 
be all dead, and until all things move rightly again. 
Fig. 116.-Curing Liver Complaint. 
CATARRH. 
If we have the unwelcome foe Catarrh to slay, which all the 
wise medicine-men shake the head at, and the unwise feed with 
much bad dirt called snuff, we throw big power upon the conducting 
hand, and with the flat hand slap the base-brain hard, just above the 
back of the neck, striking many quick, sharp blows. Then double 
up fist, strike hard above the nose many, many times. Then we put 
warm hands one on the forehead, one back of the neck, and hold 
tight till sweat comes there too, to bring out the impure particles 
through the pores, and send all the fluids through their proper chan- 
nels, and make the blood quick and active where it was most killed. 477 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
LIVER COMPLAINT. 
If it be the Liver Complaint, we double up fist, pound slow, 
heavy, long time under right shoulder-blade, and up and down the 
right side. If it hurt, we no stop, but pound more and more, until 
the soreness be all gone, then sweat all there, in the same way, and 
make swift rub all over the body, to throw off the disease that be 
drove out. 
If there be Constipation for us to kill dead, we place the warm 
palms just below the short ribs, and move them slowly, gently, with 
wave-like motion, all down the trunk of the body ; firnfly moulding 
and squeezing in the hand all round, and until the bowels be moist, 
and limp, and vitalized, so that all things be moved round and round, 
and quick action fully restored. 
SPINAL DISEASE. 
But if it be spinal foe, then we take the hand in the medium's 
right hand, and move the flat of the left hand firmly and slowly all 
down the backbone, over and over, many, many times, till sweat 
come out freely, and pain be gone. 
KIDNEY DISEASES. 
If it be disease of the Kidneys, then we strike smart light 
blows across the loins, from the small of the back just above the 
hips ; rubbing, crimping, and warming with the hands; following 
the pathway of the secretions down inside the hips, across the abdo- 
men, strengthening and vitalizing by the palms of the magnetic 
hands. 
If there be much trouble with the Heart, we not make great 
pounds, because we must not make it beat too quick hard ; but we 
bring the healer's two hands together to establish an electric circuit, 
and place both hands across the stomach over the heart, holding 
them often and long, till the electricity penetrates all the little 
blood-globules, and they push their way with new force out through 
the veins, and back through the arteries, so lightly and swiftly and 
cheerfully that the heavy beat, beat, and the faint, sickening, flut- 
ter, flutter, come no more, and that bad foe be slain. 478 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
SICK-HEAD ACHE. 
If there be that uncertain, most troublesome foe, sick-headache, 
first we give the liver a big wake-up, by much firm pounds with flat 
hands ; then we quiet nerves by rubs all down the spine ; then we equa- 
lize the forces by smart slaps on the feet-bottoms and hand-hollows ; 
then we make one of the healer's hands so cold, so cold by an electric, 
unexplained power, and we place that upon the brain to cool all 
the nerve-fires burning there ; then we make the other hand much 
warm, and place that upon the pit of the stomach, to resolve and 
scatter away the cold phlegm that accumulates there ; and when we 
hold them so, at last we makes the big sleep come, and that foe be 
conquered unawares. ' 
Fig, 117.-Percussing for Kidney Diseases. 
RHEUMATISM, NEURALGIA, AND GOUT. 
If there be the tormenting Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Gout, then 
we double up fist stout, begin at the top and pound quick and hard 
all along the muscles, to the feet, following each leading nerve and 
sinew, wherever it go, and beating it much till big drops of perspi- 
ration come all over, then gently and slowly draw the finger-tips 
over the same from the head to the foot, till all the bad that be 
pounded out be waved away and the fine chilly quivers of electric 
life follow the finger-ends all over the body. 479 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
EPILEPSY OR FALLING-FITS. 
If there be foe Fits coming, then when they lie down to sleep and 
when they wake to get up, we take the flat hand and strike the smart 
blow quick all over the surface everywhere, till the blood be bright 
red under all the skin, leaving no place white; then there can be 
not enough left stagnant still to cause the convulsive effort to move 
along that you call spasms, or convulsions, or fits, that sometimes 
pitch the spirit out from its clogged-up wigwam. 
Fig. 118.-Illustrating the true process of percussion of all the muscles from the back of the 
head down the entire body, to cure Headache, Neuralgia, Rheumatism, Fits, etc. 
PILES AND CONSTIPATION. 
When we want to slay foe Piles, we take fist and strike little 
quick percussive knocks all along the small of the back, to bring 
quick movement of the blood there, to scatter, scatter away all the 
old congested blood, to drive out into its proper channels all the 
heat and bad that be settled in the little lumps that be so hard to 
make stay killed. Then we give big much rub all down the hips to 
the feet till the blood move free and quick, and that foe be gone 
dead too. 480 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
SPASMODIC CROUP. 
If we have that hold-fast, kill-quick foe called Croup, then we 
gets up big power ; we slap quick, quick, with much force, all over 
the chest, all over the shoulders, rubbing quick, quick, to force out 
of the surface the mucus that be forming into hard substance in the 
air-passages ; never relaxing the effort one minute till the big drops 
of sweat come, till the breath come free and clear, till the sweet 
sleep show that that foe be slain. 
Fig. 119.-Percussing and Manipulating for Croup or Asthma. 
NERVOUS AND SPASMODIC ASTHMA. 
So with asthma, or what you call phthisic ; only we can not kill 
it all at once like that, but we many times give quick, smart slaps 
over chest and shoulders, to bring vigorous blood-action there, to 
force out all accumulating mucus ; then we place the mouth over 
the most troubled spots, and breathe long warm breaths, filling all 
the air-cells with a magnetic vitalized wind that shall penetrate all 
through and through weak clogged places, and set the machinery 
all running smoothly and easy again, and then that foe be beaten 
too. And this be why we do so much pounds, so much slaps, so 
much strike. When the blood be moving easy and free through all 
the veins, through all the arteries, and there be no dain-up to it ; when 481 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
the nerve-fluids by following their fine tube-roads all over the body, 
and there be no dam-up to them ; when the waste liquids and sub- 
stances move through their canals, and no dam-up to them, then there 
be no lurking foe to slay. So when we find the foes, we see there 
be dam-ups, and we pound, and pound, and rub, and rub, sending in 
much electricity, much magnetism, to push out all the dam-ups, to 
send all the forces through all the little stream-beds where they 
should glide easily, and get all the machinery of the wise-made body 
into smooth motion, and then there be not any but f riends in all the 
human body. 
And we know this true, from our wise look-place in the happy 
hunting-ground, that we must keep acting with this power till all 
the dam-ups be moved out, till much strength be given, till new 
growth of live flesh and blood, fibre and bone be grown, if we would 
make the long-time sick ones well, the long-time weak ones strong. 
And we know this be true from our wise look-out place, that in this 
way we can make the long-time sick ones well, the long-time weak 
ones strong. And we can keep them well, and glad, and full of 
power, through this great help which the Great Spirit sends the 
weak through the hands of the strong ; giving every one power to 
help many other ones, and no one power over all the other ones, 
that there may be little rivets of magnetic law fastening all the big 
family of the Great Spirit-Father and the kind Nature-Mother so 
tight together that each will reach out arms of kindness to all others, 
and so be made glad himself when he gets wise in these happy 
hunting-ground lands. Now all good friends call loud to us when 
the disease foe come, and we will slay them quick and good for you. 
Big-Heart have done ! 482 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
THE INDIAN METHOD OF EQUALIZING THE CIRCULA- 
TION AND CURING ACUTE COLDS, OR FEVERS 
FROM COLDS, AND SUDDEN CLOSURE OF THE 
PORES, AS PRACTICED IN THE DAYS OF POWHA- 
TAN. 
COMMUNICATED BY POCAHONTAS. 
My father promises now that, through me, he will give you as 
plainly as possible a description in words of the old magnetic treat- 
ment as it was practiced among the children of Nature five hundred 
years ago. 
You will readily understand that diseases were far less numerous 
and complicated, there and then, than now among your civilizees. 
But it did sometimes happen that undue exposure or sudden chill 
brought on a contraction of the pores of the skin, stopped the 
constant invisible perspiration, and, neglected, fever -was the conse- 
quence. 
Then the medicine-man was summoned, a clear day w'as selected, 
the patient was taken out from the sheltering wigwam, pine-needles 
were gathered from the forest, and spread thick and soft on the 
ground, a buffalo-skin was laid over them ; and there in the sunshine 
the sick one was laid, while the powwow rubbed him from head to 
foot, sometimes using the dew for ointment, sometimes a species of 
oil found among certain kinds of rocks, and called Tontowonta, or 
life-giver. 
Usually the medicine-man had with him a female assistant, and 
after the patient had been anointed and rubbed lightly by the pow- 
wow, the squaw completed the work by thoroughly rubbing, pound- 
ing, and kneading the sufferer until the perspiration followed every 
movement of the hand ; then a dip in the river, followed by more 
rubbing, a wrap in a warm, dry bear-skin, and it seldom happened 
that a second treatment was needed. 
When the medicine-man himself was taken sick, as he often 
would be after treating severe cases, or treating more than one 
patient per day, no person was allowed to touch him ; they seemed 
to have an instinctive knowledge that he gave more than he received 
of magnetic strength, and so, while doing every thing for his comfort, ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
483 
only his tame wolf was allowed to lie at his feet, or his faithful dog 
to lick his face. And when he was carried to the river to bathe, 
four or six stalwart braves lifted him in his stout soft blanket, bore 
him to the running stream, walked in and dipped him three times, 
blanket and all, then wrapped him in dry skins and took him back to 
his charmed home. 
Ah! we treated our medicine-men better than the pale-face does 
his. 
ANOTHER MODE OE PRACTICE AMONG THE INDIANS TO EQUALIZE THE 
FORCES AND OPEN THE PORES OF THE SKIN, WAS GIVEN BY 
THE CELEBRATED QUAKER, WILLIAM PENN, TO DR. BAYNARD. 
" I once saw an instance of it, with divers more in company. For, 
being upon a discovery of the back part of the country, I called 
upon an Indian of note, whose name was Tenoughan, the captain- 
general of the clans of Indians of those parts. I found him ill of 
fever, his head and limbs much affected with pain, and at the same 
time his wife preparing a bagnio for him. The bagnio resembled a 
large oven, into which he crept by a door on one side, while she put 
several red-hot stones in a small door on the other side thereof, and 
then fastened the doors as closely from the air as she could. 
" Now, while he was sweating in this bagnio, his wife (for they 
disdain no service) was, with an ax, cutting her husband a passage 
into the river (being the winter of '83, the great frost, and the ice 
very thick), in order to the immersing himself, after he should come 
out of the bath. 
" In less than half an hour he was in so great a sweat that, when 
he came out, he was as wet as if he had come out of a river, and the 
reek or steam of his body so thick that it was hard to discern any 
body's face that stood near him. In this condition, stark naked, he 
ran into the river, which was about twenty paces off, and ducked 
himself twice or thrice therein, and so returned (passing only through 
his bagnio to mitigate the immediate stroke of the cold) to his own 
house, perhaps twenty paces further, and wrapping himself in his wool- 
en mantle, lay down at length near a long (but gentle) fire, in the mid- 
dle of his wigwam or house, turning himself several times till he was 
dry, and then he rose and fell to getting us our dinner, seeming to 
be as easy, and well in health, as at any other time." (Baynard, 
pp. 103, 4.) 484 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
CURE FOR BRAIN DISEASES BY WARM SHOWER-BATHING. 
The Indian method of treating diseases of the brain is much in 
accordance with that of Dr. J. R. Newton and other skillful mag- 
netic healers. They (the Indians) use hot water, with percussion 
down the spine, and particularly to the feet and soles of the feet, for 
the purpose of equalizing the circulation or drawing the preponder- 
ance of congestion or nervous excitement from the head, and dis- 
tributing it in all parts of the body. 
Says Dr. Newton: "In my healing I have discovered a cure for 
all diseases of the brain, and it should be known to every physician 
Fig. 120.-Showering the Head for Inflammation of the Brain. 
and every man. If a physician is called in 'brain-fever,' and most of 
other brain diseases, they put cold water or even ice on the head, 
which is a gross mistake. 
"All diseases of the brain, water on the brain, dementia, de- 
lirium tremens, congestion, insanity, paralysis of the brain, and even 
scrofula, can in most cases, be cured by pouring hot water on the 
cerebellum, or base-brain. It should be, in extreme cases, one hun- 
dred and twenty-two degrees, and poured on from a pitcher, or, what ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
485 
is better, a watering-pot with spout, as represented in the cut, in a 
small stream, several pailfuls at a time, holding the head over a tub, 
or, what is still better, sitting in a tub, causing the water to run over 
the forehead. 
" I have taken cases of delirium tremens, and in fifteen minutes 
entirely cured them, when it was thought the person could not live. 
This is important, and should be promulgated. 
"Now, this is a matter of knowledge, not simply of experiment. 
I have never known any thing but benefit to result from it," THIRTY-SEVENTH SECTION. 
CHIEF SILVER-ARROW'S EXPLANATION OF THE OF- 
FICE OF THE INDIAN IN THE SCIENCE OF HEALING. 
Sagamore Silver-Arrow have got leave of the pale-face chief 
Abernethy to tell all the peoples of earth's great hunting-ground 
what for the red men be always making big talks, always giving big 
shakes, big pounds, big breathes, when medicine-men come from hap- 
py hunting-ground to make the feel-bad peoples feel-good peoples. 
All the things that be in the first hunting-ground fill each its own 
place, to make all the other things that be, all good. If you take out 
one of the things that be in the air that you breathe to make you live, 
the other things that are left will not be all good, and it will put out 
the light, the fire, the life. All together, it be all good ; part out, 
then no life in it. 
So with the water, so with the soil, so with the sunshine, so with 
every thing. The Great Spirit put in nothing but what must be in 
to make it all good. Then when he make pale-face, red skin, yellow 
skin, and black skin, he make each one because all the others not all 
good without him. Red man not understand Great Spirit when pale- 
face seek his hunting-ground. Pale-face not know he have need of 
red man too. So they each one hate the other, kill the other ; and 
pale-face say red man shall have no place in the earth hunting-ground, 
and the Great Spirit say pale-face will have the feel-bad if he not 
have the part the red skin supply. So what he not accept of him be- 
fore he go dead, he must receive of him after he go dead. Indian 
be broad between ears, big under eyes ; have much magnetism, big 
much strength. He spread out broad, close to the Earth-Mother. She 
whisper to him, he hear. She tell him the secret of root, of herb, 
of bark, of many more of her servants. He live close to her breast, 488 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
draw big much sustenance. What she tell him to do, he do it. So 
he be mighty strong. 
Squaw no have the feel-bad for pappoose before he be pappoose, 
and so make big feel-bad come, make die come, because she live close 
to Earth-Mother ; what Earth-Mother tell her, that she do. 
Pale-face make one great mistake. He think great Spirit-Father 
have no love for good Earth-Mother. So he think the farther he get 
from Earth-Mother, the nearer he get to great Spirit-Father. So he 
not listen to Earth-Mother, but push her way off. So he get so far 
off quick that the Earth-Mother let go, and he go dead. 
Then the great Spirit-Father see he come to him too fast, and he 
send Indian to give pale-face his big bottom strength; to tell him 
what Earth-Mother want he should go do to keep much strong ; to 
fasten him more close to Earth-Mother, so that she not let go too 
quick. Pale-face live in top-brain, do many fine things ; learn many 
high things. Indian want part of what pale-face got. Indian live 
in bottom-brain, do many strong things ; learn many sharp things. 
Pale-face need part of what we got. Great Spirit say, Go mix 'em. 
So we put on gay blankets of happy hunting-ground ; put on feath- 
ers ; put on beads ; put on hoops of silver; put on much paint. 
Then when pale-face put hands together right, form electric trail, so 
we can come on it, then we act us with pale-face body ; make him 
whoop, make him jump, make him pound out the feel-bad. Make 
the big Indian strength come ; make pale-face hear Earth-Mother's 
talks, and do what she pushes him to do. Then they get mixed, 
and Indian get the know-it of the pale-face top-brain, and pale-face 
get the do-it of Indian bottom-brain. So knowledge and power 
hold on again, and pale-face stay in first hunting-ground and do his 
work. Indian come from second hunting-ground and help him do 
what Indian could not do himself, and so Great Spirit let him go 
dead. 
Indian likes to do that way, for he have the think-feel-bad because 
he not do good things for pale-face brother, when he come over the 
big waters. Because he give him the tomahawk instead of bread, 
and poisoned arrows instead of meat; and when he sees how much 
good pale-face brother would have done him, and how much good he 
would have done pale-face brother, he have the think-feel-bad. Then 
when he sees how Great Spirit not let him keep his hunting-ground 
because he did that way, but let pale-face have it, then he have more 
th ink-feel-bad. Then when he sees how the pale-face fix up the soil 
over the flesh and bones of his peoples, and raises his eats out of 
them, and how the very flesh and bones of the pale-face are built up ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
489 
out of his flesh and bones, then he have big much think-feel-bad. So 
he likes to get into the bodies that some belong to him that way, and 
make pale-face mind him some, and so he be chief again. 
But Great Spirit say he must do much good, and get much know- 
it, and then all the think-feel-bad will go away ; so when he comes, 
he gives the pale-face his great strength, and helps him to take hold 
of the Earth-Mother's hands, so pale-face can live longer in the first 
hunting-ground, and do big works, and not have the feel-bad. So 
when the high pale-face chiefs of the happy Hunting-ground think to 
do some new great good for the peoples of the first hunting-ground, 
they lay the foundation-stones-like the granite rock-of Indian. 
They call them that have got most know-it together, and the best do- 
it, and tell them they shall be chiefs again, and rule the pale-face for 
their good. Then we be much glad, and what the pale-face chiefs 
tells us we do it. So the Great Spirit move wise pale-face spirit, 
wise pale-face spirit move Indian spirit, Indian spirit move medium, 
medium move the feel-bad, and so the feel-bad peoples become feel- 
good peoples. 
Pale-face spirit chiefs Johnson, Harvey, Cooper, Brodie, Hahne- 
mann, Mott, and Abernethy-chairman of the seven they call him- 
have formed a mighty league to drive off the feel-bad from all the 
peoples. 
They have many more to do big works with them, but they be the 
executive committee. 
That's the way they tell me to say it. So they hunt all round the 
happy hunting-ground for Indian foundation-rocks to build up their 
new Gospel-house of strength and feel-good, strong. So they find 
Powhatan, who have many think-feel-bads to rub out ; and Tecum- 
seh-just the same ; and Miantonomah, and Black Eagle, and Red 
Jacket, and Big-Heart, and Silver-Arrow-that's me-for the seven 
corresponding bottom-brains. Many more counsel with us, and are 
seen in our band ; but we are the same long word used before. 
Then we have as many squaws of both colors, to give the attrac- 
tions to us that we need. We formed a mighty league to bring to 
the earth hunting-ground a mighty power to cast out the feel-bad. 
Then we must find a corresponding seven medium bodies that we can 
work through They may be many more, too, but seven acting 
chiefs. We be fitting up many, many, making them whoop, making 
them dance, making them beat out the feel-bad, and the ones we can 
do most good with, the ones that hear best what the Great Spirit 
says. What the white chiefs say, what the red chiefs say, what the 490 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
Earth-Mother says, they shall be the chosen seven to represent the 
royal league, to be the long word, " Executive Committee." 
Big Chief Stone, who hears best what Chief Abernethy says, has 
these many twelve moons, these one fourth of a hundred twelve 
moons, been building a place for such a council-fire as this we be pre- 
paring for the first hunting-ground. He have the great wigwam 
(the Institute), the pure air, the fine see-out (panoramic view), the 
good water, our face-paintings, the big bath-rooms, the green hunt- 
ing-ground, the strong will-power, to bring all things needed. Chief 
Abernethy move the Indian seven to build their council-fire in Chief 
Stone's big wigwam. Fill it full of their mighty magnetism, bring 
the mediums they control into sympathy with each other, and guide 
them to the great council-fire, unite all their forces, get so they fully 
understand all we want to say to them, get strong to do all we want 
to do through them, get wise to teach all the know-it we have for 
them. 
Chief Abernethy make big book (The New Gospel of Health), to 
tell all the peoples how to get rid of their feel-bad. Chief Stone pro- 
vide the way, and the seven that be the royal league will do the 
work. 
Now Sagamore Silver-Arrow say to all the people who have the 
feel-bad, Come to the big council-fire ! If your brain have the feel- 
bad bad, come quick, before them that no got the know-it shut you 
tight in the mad-pen, where your feel-bad will get more and more feel- 
bad from all the rest who have got the brain feel-bad. For they all 
toss it back and forth, and catch it bigger and bigger, and get no 
better very fast. 
Come quick to the big council-fire ! If the top-brain be too much 
top, the Indian forces will give big power to the bottom-brain, and 
hold it down square, so that it feel good again. Or if the bottom- 
brain burn up the top-brain, then the pale-face seven will build it up 
again, and the straight-head mediums will make the cool reason come 
in again. They will find the good thing to do for the part of the 
brain that did not do enough, and big rest for the part that do too 
much, and so make all feel good again. 
If your heart have the feel-bad, come quick to the big coun- 
cil-fire ; for the seven will have some one who will see straight where 
the poisoned arrow of grief have pierced it, who will have just the 
know-it to take it gently away, and fill all the thought feel-bad with 
laughs and joyfulness, and then the heart will not get the hard beats, 
will not get the fine pains, will not get the inflamed membrane, but ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
491 
will send the red blood beating through all the little streamways, and 
so that feel-bad will go away too. 
If you have got the backbone-feel-bad, come quick to the big 
council-fire, and the strong backbone mediums and spirits will fill the 
marrow of every joint with new electric force, with new magnetic 
life. They will send the big strength from the happy hunting- 
ground out through the little knot of nervous fibre that clusters in 
every joint, and make you bound like the deer when pricked by the 
Indian's arrow ; and when you stand up straight like the Indian, that 
feel-bad will be all gone the same. If you have got the feel-bad 
where the eats and drinks go, come quick to the council-fire I Or 
them that have not the know-it will go put the poisons in among the 
eats and drinks, and the blood will take it to the lungs, and the liver, 
and the kidneys, and out into all parts of the body, and you will be 
poisoned all over. 
Come quick to the council-fire, and the chiefs will get such eats 
and drinks as will not give the feel-bad, and will give you strength 
to use up the eats and drinks to make bone, and blood, and muscle, 
and the rest, and to move through all the winding ways of the intes- 
tines, and the sewers, such parts as you have no more use for, with- 
out letting them stay so long that Earth-Mother must build a fever- 
fire to burn up the refuse. 
League chiefs will see straight what you must not eat, what you 
must not drink-will find for you all the good kinds that will make 
the liver active and the stomach strong, and the bowels faithful. 
If the squaws have much big feel-bad in the pappoose-place, be- 
cause they not do right what Earth-Mother tell them, come quick to 
the league council-fire. We will get hold strong of some medium 
squaw, who shall have much know-it, who shall see what you have 
done too much, what you have not done enough. She shall be filled 
full of Indian's big strength, shall build up pappoose-place all new 
and good, so no feel-bad come every moon, so head no turn round, 
heart no flutter, no big tired through shoulders, and all the rest that 
goes with it. 
Brave, have you had feel-bad through loins, through kidneys ? 
Come quick to the chiefs' council-fire ! Before you take the big poi- 
sons that destroy all the life, all the power that braves be proud of. 
We will pound out the bad that wrong do-its have got there ; we will 
send the electric life to make the forces fill all the places like they 
ought to-and not all get in one place ; we will tell you what to do, 
and what not to do to keep even straight; we will stop that big 492 
ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
pounding in the ears, that big pounding at the heart, that shaking all 
over, and make you feel-good all right again. 
So if you have now got the lungs feel-bad-we will give you air 
to breathe that is full of the cure.* 
Chief Stone have got the do-it things, and while we give so much 
of our vital power that you can make good blood from all the eats 
and drinks to keep the lungs good, you can breathe the cure-it air 
from Chief Stone's fixed things, and so that feel-bad will have no 
place to be. So we will find just the way to drive out all the feel- 
bad. We will call to all the parts of all the Great Spirit makes and 
draw from them just what each of the feel-bad peoples need, and 
make them all good new again. 
Fig. 121.-Fishing for Health. 
We have made mighty toil to form big council-fire. Great Spirit 
smile on it, and now we say, Come, all ye feel-bad peoples! We will 
go hunt; we will go fish; we will go run, and jump, and shoot arrow; 
we will make fruits grow, make grains grow, make flowers grow. We 
will make nice sing, nice paint, nice shining things. We will make 
big books, big machines, big blankets. We will do all the things that 
make us happy, that not make feel-bad come. We will open the in- 
side eyes, that you may see us of the second hunting-ground. We 
will open the inside ears, that you may hear us make big talks ; and 
* Referring to the inhalation of medicated vapors as practiced in the treatment 
of the Institution. ABORIGINAL MAGNETISM. 
493 
sharpen the inside feels, that you may know when we put on the 
magnetic fingers to make you much strong. We will do our part 
Fig. 122.-Hunting for Health. 
mighty well. Come, all ye feel-bad peoples to Chief Stone's big coun- 
cil-fire, and do your part well, and all the feel-bad shall go away ! 
Silver-Arrow have done. 
Magnetic Exercise. ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC 
REMEDIES. 
USED IN TREATMENT BY THE INSTITUTION. 
Dr. Stone's Tonic In- 
haling Vapor. 
The elements that com- 
pose this form of vapor 
are a certain specific for 
diphtheria, malignant 
sore-throat, quinsy sore- 
throat, chronic catarrh, 
and that periodical ca- 
tarrh known as hay-asth- 
ma ; and for aiding 
ulcerated caverns of the 
lungs to heal in chronic 
tubercular consumption, its equal is not yet found. 
Whenever the lungs, the bronchial tubes and organs of respira- 
tion have been attacked with inflammation, colds, catarrhs, or influ- 
enza, they invariably become debilitated ; this is especially the case 
after long-continued catarrhs, and invariably is a sequent of pneu- 
monia. Hence, after the inflammation has been subdued by using 
the Soothing Balm or Anodyne Vapors, a course of Tonic and Bal- 
samic \ apor is absolutely necessary to restore tone to the delicate 
tissues of the air-cells, and the lining membranes of the bronchial 
mucous surfaces and glands. 
This tonic vapor is admirably calculated to overcome this other- 
wise dangerous condition of the lungs. It energizes every part, pe- 
netrates ulcerated cavities, stimulating them to a healthy condition 
for nature to heal. For bronchitis, laryngitis, and trachitis or in- 496 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
flammation of the windpipe, and nervous asthma, it is a never-failing 
cure, if used in season. 
Directions for Use.'-Pour upon the sponge in the glass bottle 
from one to two tea-spoonfuls (sufficient for each day). Placing the 
glass tube in the mouth, draw through the tube a slow, full breath; 
after having filled the lungs, remove it from the mouth till expiration 
has taken place. Allow half a minute or more to elapse before the 
lungs are filled again, which must be done in the same manner. As 
a general rule, the lungs should be filled from twenty to forty times, 
four times a day, at intervals of three or four hours. 
DR. STONE'S EXPECTORANT INHALING VAPOR. 
When the lungs and 
bronchial tubes seem to 
be choked up and con- 
fined, and the patient 
is troubled with diffi- 
culty of breathing, then 
the Expectorant Vapor 
alone, for the time be- 
ing, is to be made use 
of, for the purpose of 
dissolving the tough, 
mucous secretion which 
lodges upon the lining 
membranes of the air- 
passages or in the 
tubes, and, as it were, 
closes them up from its 
viscidity or toughness. 
Directions for 
Use.-Pour upon the 
sponge in the glass bottle from one to two tea-spoonfuls (sufficient for 
each day). Placing the glass tube in the mouth, draw through the 
tube a slow, full breath; after having filled the lungs, remove it from 
the mouth till expiration has taken place. Allow half a minute or 
more to elapse before the lungs are filled again, which must be 
done in the same manner. As a general rule, the lungs should be 
filled from twenty to forty times, four times a day, at intervals of 
three or four hours. 
This cut illustrates how readily the air-passages are entered by 
inhaling the remedy. ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
497 
THE VITALIZING BLOOD INHALING VAPORS. 
The wonderful deve- 
lopments of chemistry 
and modern science af- 
ford ready facilities for 
so concentrating and 
etherealizing all vegeta- 
ble remedies as to ena- 
ble them to be breathed 
or inhaled, and thereby 
made to enter the blood 
through the medium of 
the lungs, saving the 
stomach from being 
nauseated, irritated, or 
inflamed, which is too 
often the case where 
drugs are poured, as it 
were, indiscriminately 
into the stomach. 
The stomach is the la- 
boratory for manufactu- 
ring the pabulum of life, 
and this pabulum can 
only be elaborated from 
healthy foods, aliments 
that contain in them- 
selves the inherent pri- 
mary elements organically adapted to that ultimate purpose. 
Medicines, drugs, are not foods; they do not contain the elementary requi- 
sites of the vital pabulum, the blood; hence it legitimately and practically fol- 
lows that to mix medicines with foods in the stomach perverts the healthy gas- 
tric secretions, or arrests the flow of this very essential digestive solvent, and the 
process of digestion, chyme, and chyle-making, and sanguification, is of necessity 
perverted into a morbid or abnormal process. 
Organic tissues can not be made from noxious drugs mingled with food 
when in the vital process of digestion ; neither can the body or organic struc- 
tures be built up. But the medicinal properties of very many medicines may 
be, and often are, found highly beneficial in aiding to overcome an abnormal or 
perverted function of the body. The liver, whose function is to secrete out of 
the blood the bile, which is no other than effete or broken-down blood-globules, 
may be torpid and inactive, and need the stimulating action of some chola- 
gogue. This may be inhaled, and pass directly into the blood without the lia- 
bility of deranging digestion and perverting a healthy appetite. So also can the 
spiritual property of any laxative medicine be inhaled directly into the blood 
and at once enabled to be secreted by the colonic glands of the large intestines : 
This cut illustrates how readily the medicine will enter the blood 
when inhaled, and be thrown by the heart to all parts of the sys- 
tem. 498 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
the normal function of the bowels at once established, and the blood purified 
or unloaded of much effete matter-many morbid principles which before only 
served to produce headache, cerebral congestion, pneumonia, pleurisy, neural- 
gia, or rheumatism, or heart disease ; for all these fatal diseases arise from poi- 
sons in the blood. 
Then let the blood be vitalized and purified in a natural manner, in accor- 
dance with the organic laws. Do not poison the food and pervert a healthy 
process of digestion and blood-making by drugging the stomach. Inhale, as by 
natural breathing, the very pleasant and agreeable vitalizing blood vapors of 
Dr. Stone, which are prepared on scientific philosophical principles, and " throw 
physic to the dogs." 
Directions for inhaling and using accompany each bottle. 
DR. STONE'S BALM, OR SOOTHING, INHALING VAPOR. 
This Vapor is specially given to mitigate and cure cough, to soothe 
the irritable state of the lungs and the surfaces of the bronchia, la- 
rynx, and trachea. The preparation combines the ethereal magnetic 
ultimates or extracts of such anodynes as are best calculated to soothe 
morbid irritation, and allay exalted sensibility of diseased nerves and mucous sur- 
faces when exposed to the air ; hence, whenever the harsh or cold state of the 
atmosphere produces irritability and excites coughing or spasmodic breathing, 
the Balm Vapor, at such times, must be at once inhaled, and again and again 
resorted to until the cough has subsided. 
How much more rational the treatment, then, to carry the medicinal agents 
at once to the seat of disease without nauseating the stomach with squills, ipe- 
cac, paregoric, opium, and such gross remedies, destroying the appetite and per- 
verting all the nutritive functions ! 
So, in like manner, may Astringents be inhaled where the secretions in the 
bronchia are so profuse as to quite block up the air-passages. The victim of 
pulmonary maladies will take courage and hope that his case will be discrimi- 
nated, and the vapors will be adapted to meet all the emergencies of the case, 
however distant he may be from the Institution. 
Special directions accompany each bottle. ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
499 
THE ANTI-SPASMODIC OR ASTHMATIC VAPORS. 
These vapors are 
especially given to 
cure spasmodic and 
nervous asthma, and 
that difficulty of 
breathing denoted by 
great irritability in 
the nerves of the lungs 
and the nerves distri- 
buted to the bronchial 
mucous surfaces. It is 
well known that asth- 
ma is a spasm of the 
muscles of the bron- 
chia. Some morbid 
condition of the diges- 
tive organs, the liver, 
the diaphragm, or the 
blood exists in all 
such cases, causing 
great irrritation in 
the nerves leading to 
the windpipe, the 
respiratory organs. 
The most inveterate 
case of asthma can be relieved by inhaling these Anti-Spasmodic 
Vapors. The author has himself, as he has before mentioned, twice 
been subjected to the most severe attacks of Spasmodic Asthma. 
So intense was his suffering, for a little time, that he nearly suffo- 
cated for want of air; but he was almost instantly relieved after 
inhaling the Vapors. He has given them in hundreds of instances in 
his practice, with the same instantaneous effect of relieving the 
phenomena. 
This cut illustrates the only true philosophy of inhaling or 
breathing the remedies in the treatment of Pulmonary Affec- 
tions. 500 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES, 
THE KIDNEY SANATIVE OR DIURETIC INHALING VAPORS, 
FOR KIDNEY DISEASES. 
For curing Bright's Disease or Albumi- 
nuria, Diabetes, Inflammation, Ulceration, 
and Chronic Weakness of the Kidneys; 
also Calculary Affections of every name 
and nature. 
All vegetable remedies, the functions of 
whose properties are the kidneys, whether 
diuretic, tonic, or alterative, are ethereal- 
ized and administered by inhaling, and 
made to reach their destined organ as 
readily as when put into the stomach, 
thereby saving the nauseating disturbances 
and impaired appetite for food. 
Section of a Kidney in 
a State of Health. 
Directions for using accompany each Bottle. 501 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
DR. STONE'S 
MAGNETIC CHEST EMBROCATION. 
This Embrocation affords 
almost magical relief for pains 
of the chest, pleurisy, neu- 
ralgia, rheumatism, and for the 
many anomalous nervous pains 
and aches which invalids and 
consumptives are so liable to 
be affected with. 
It is equally well adapted 
to cure all pains of the spine, 
the back, the loins, and for 
removing stiffness of joints, 
contracted muscles, sciatica, 
hip-joint and spinal affections. 
Its superior property consists 
in inviting the blood with 
combined humors to the surface-not repelling from, as many other 
applications do ; hence no danger attends its free use. 
For nervous headache, it affords speedy relief and unbounded 
satisfaction. 
Full directions accompany each bottle. 
Cubing Consumption and Chest-Pains. 502 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
DR. STONE'S LIVER FILL. 
The liver being a large organ-the 
largest gland in the human body - is 
naturally predisposed to sluggish and 
languid action. Its function, however, is 
great, that of secreting the bile out of the 
blood ; and when healthily, normally per- 
formed, the amount in the twenty-four 
hours is from eight ounces to two pounds. 
But the liver is liable to sudden conges- 
tion, to great interruption from the fre- 
quent electric changes of the atmosphere, especially in damp and 
chilly weather. In' that case, the bile lags behind, poisoning the 
blood, giving rise to headaches and bilious fevers or derangements. 
While we can impart alterative and vitalizing remedies by in- 
halation to reach this organ, yet in all such severe cases, we deem it 
advisable to aid in overcoming such great congestion by adminis- 
tering the Magnetic Liver Pill, which acts like a charm to awaken 
the dormant function and open the constipated bowels. 
Directions.-One pill to be taken at bed-time, and repeated every 
night until healthy bile-evacuations take place. In obstinate cases, 
one taken an hour after dinner also may be advisable, in conjunc- 
tion with the night pill. ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
503 
DR. STONE'S 
ELECTRO-VITAL STOMACHIC TONIC BITTERS. 
But few people, who live 
and eat, ever think of the im- 
portance of the digestive visce- 
ra to the cure of disease. In 
every case of disease, let it be 
dyspepsia, nervous debility, or 
general physical prostration,the 
successful results produced by 
our efforts at cure depend upon 
how far, how wisely, or how 
foolishly these organs are 
watched over by the victim 
himself. To an unhealthy 
state of the digestive viscera 
we can trace, by distinct and unmistakable symptoms, many diseases; though 
they may not be manifested to our senses in the stomach, yet they derange all 
the other vital organs and the whole constitution. Hence, the cause of tuber- 
cular consumption of the Lungs, or marasmus-a general wasting of the tis- 
sues-and consumption of the chyle, the vital juices of the body, and blood 
itself ! The victim is not nourished, because of a deficient vital action of the 
stomach, liver, pancreas, and duodenum. To the same cause may be traced an 
obscure inefficiency of mind, inability for making an effort, feebleness and con- 
fusion of ideas, want of memory, want of confidence, easily disposed to fright, 
to startle at the least sudden noise, given to forebodings, and frightful disturb- 
ance of the heart, and palpitation. 
This class of invalids complain that they awake in the morning, not only 
unrefreshed by sleep, but seemingly more tired than when they went to bed. 
Often, an aching lameness of the whole body, and bones, even, as though they 
had been pounded. There is an unaccountable despondency and carelessness 
about the future, accompanied by a foreboding that something or other unfor- 
tunate is going to happen. They have no power to prevent this. Their un- 
willing limbs are dragged languidly to the daily task ; labor becomes a burden ; 
what may be done, is done imperfectly or confusedly ; the figures get confused 
as the merchant adds up the ledger ; the clerk knows that he has some impor 
tant duty to perform, but can not call to mind what it is ; the school-miss pines 
away, becomes sad and gloomy, and her lessons become a bitter, cruel task. 
To the matron, even the light labors of daily housekeeping are a heavy burden ; 
food becomes repulsive ; if sleep is sought, it is broken by painful dreams, or 
frights, or wakefulness. If there is an hereditary tendency to consumption, 504 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
scrofula, or insanity, now is the time when it will be developed, unless the ex- 
isting cause is rapidly cured. This condition of the stomach and digestive 
functions can not long maintain, before another chain of morbid sympathies 
will be developed : obstinate rheumatism, affecting the joints, deep-seated 
muscles of the chest, and often the heart itself. Neuralgia, with her many 
torturing pains of the temple, face, jaws, eyes, and ears, sets up her command- 
ing authority. And soon glandular swellings, dropsy, and kidney diseases 
follow in the train, as will be most sensibly manifested by organic acids and 
calculary brick-dust deposits in the urine. 
Whatever value the invalid may attach to the evidence of the dependence of 
disease on the digestive organs, it is very clear to the scientific, judicious physi- 
cian that he must look to them for relief from these diseases. So long as the 
heart, lungs, kidneys, and other important organs are affected by a disordered 
state of the blood, then these disorders can only be cured by securing the proper 
active working condition of the stomach. Understand that labor, time, and 
money will be wasted in clearing away abnormal or diseased structure, if new 
structure does not take its place. To this end the only path is to insure the as- 
similation of food, for it is wasted toil to try to enter locked doors ; that is, to 
restore other organs until the stomach-the great laboratory of the pabulum of 
life-is made healthy. Will the patient reader consider this great truth, namely, 
that no chain is stronger than its weakest link ; and the interruption of the 
function at one point is the interruption of the whole ? 
After more than thirty years of hard study in my profession, of scientific 
research, and the chemical analysis of the blood, the brain, the secretions of the 
liver, the pancreas, and the kidneys, and the glandular system of the body, I 
have developed a perfect and entirely new system of remedies, which act in 
harmony with the electro-vital forces of the brain and nervous system. In all 
disorders of the stomach, of impaired nutrition, the harmony between the vital 
and chemical action of making the food into chyme, digestion, and chylification 
-chyle-making, or the entire process of making food into chyle and blood-is 
destroyed ; the life or nerve-forces have become negative, and a purely chemical 
action gains the ascendency. Hence the decomposition or fermentation of the 
food in the stomach, which gives rise to a generation of gases, belching, acidi- 
ty, headache, heart-burn, palpitation, depression of spirits, despondency, and a 
long chain of morbid ills. 
The direct effect of these remedies is to arouse and restore vital force, and 
give tone to the glands and mucous coat of the stomach, and thereby establish 
the harmony and restore the normal function. But as valuable and restorative 
as are these new remedies, they would be inefficient without due regard to the 
diet and ingesta and regimen of the patient. 
Let the patient understand that these new remedies are to fulfill one great, 
important function in the animal economy, namely, to arouse the vital and 
nerve-forces, and restore the lost harmony, while food and aliment are to 
nourish and give the resources for new material, new blood, and new tissue to 
build up new structure. How important, then, for a judicious system of dieta- 
ry to be pointed out to secure these great results ! A system of dietary and 
rigid hygiene are always written or printed out for each special case. Upon no 
other condition can correct treatment be based or a cure expected. 
Dose.-One small tea-spoonful just before each meal. ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
505 
DR. STONE'S MAGNETIC PLASTER. 
The science of medicine hav- 
ing made the most rapid strides, 
lias developed but recently the 
fact that the most wonderful 
cures have been effected by the 
agencies of both magnetism and 
electricity, in restoring very many 
chronic cases of paralysis and 
chronic rheumatism, where the 
victims had been helpless for 
years. 
Both electricity and magnetism 
are differently directed and adapt- 
ed to cure such chronic maladies in various ways. The magnetic 
properties of gums and resins, when etherealized and concentrated, 
give the most decided relief in the form of plaster ; stimulating the 
pores to open their closed surfaces, causing a free evacuation of the 
pent-up poisons in the blood ; the nerves which were diseased and 
made painful by such poisons pressing upon them are relieved ; at 
the same time, the soothing anodyne effect of the magnetism com- 
bined in the plaster penetrates, carrying its benign effects not only 
to the nerves, but into the blood, circulating all through the system. 
By this mode of operation, then, a magnetic plaster applied to 
the loins, over the kidneys, to a lame back, or the chest, or a diseased 
joint, not only cures the local affection, but, by the process of ab- 
sorption of the magnetism, as above explained, the blood throughout 
the whole system becomes vitalized, and the brain even is again sur- 
charged with healthy magnetism in an unlooked-for manner. 
This plaster affords, also, wonderful support to weak muscles; the 
weak backs of females, so very prevalent in civilized or artificial life, 
finds wonderful relief in its use. It is adhesive, cleanly, easy to 
manage, and the strength of one remains good from three to five 
weeks before renewal is required. 
How cheeringly progressive, then, is the science of medicine, sub- 
stituting everywhere a most agreeable and improved class of medical 
agencies for the painful, distressing, and devitalizing process of 
blistering, burning, and cupping of the old-school system of other 
days ! The true science of healing is to relieve, not cause, pain-to 
build up, not tear down. 506 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
DR. STONE'S 
LIQUID CATARRH REMEDY. 
A NEVER-FAILING REMEDY. 
There is no disease so common in 
this country as catarrh. It is a dis- 
ease affecting the lining membrane of 
the nose, extending to the throat. Its 
symptoms are unnatural discharges 
from the nose, sometimes falling into 
the throat, and are thrown off by 
coughing or hawking. As the disease 
progresses, the discharges become 
thicker, offensive, and disagreeable, 
causing a bad breath. The sense of 
smell is frequently destroyed or les- 
sened, and the voice becomes unnatu- 
ral, with a frequent desire to clear the 
throat. 
This chronic congestion, or inflam- 
mation, or morbid condition, sooner or 
later extends downward through the 
larynx, the whole length of the trachea or windpipe, affecting more or less all 
its branches, the minute bronchial tubes, when permanent bronchial consump- 
tion has now begun. And such are the causes of consumption in nine cases out 
of every ten. lhat is, let it be distinctly understood, it commences with a cold 
or catarrh in the head; if left uncured, terminates with death or destruction in 
the lungs. 
Catarrh means a defluxion, or increased secretion of mucus from the mem- 
branes of the nose, fauces, and bronchi®, and is the result of cold or congestion 
in or affecting the membranes and glands to produce the phenomena. It is 
either acute or chronic. Its commencement is generally acute ; that is, the 
effects above named are profuse, attended with more or less uneasiness in the 
forehead and pain in the frontal sinus. If not cured in this stage, it soon ter- 
minates in the chronic, when the acute pains subside, the secretions continue 
profuse, but of a much thicker character, often blocking up the nostrils or the 
posterior nares, and covering the fauces with a gluey substance, especially in 
the morning, that is very hard to dislodge, and often very disagreable to the ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
507 
taste. This foul, morbid secretion in turn deadens the organic structure of the 
parts beneath and immediately surrounding, devitalizing the nerve-centres, so 
that diphtheria and ulcerated throat is very frequently the result ; for when any 
foul secretion lies long on a diseased surface exposed to the air, and especially 
so directly so as the matter about the nostrils and throat, that foul matter still 
more decomposes into that which becomes deadly and destructive to all organic 
life. The masses of people, unread in the chemistry of organic life, little think 
of this great and momentous fact, namely, a speck of foul matter, not cogniza- 
ble to the human eye, placed in contact with the absorbents, becomes taken into 
the general circulation, a ferment takes place in the blood, and hence arise diph- 
theria and numerous maladies of a most fatal character, to which people daily 
are falling victims, and they wonder at the cause, or whence it came. Hence, in 
this view, " To know thyself !" is an important command. 
But what are the causes? Morbid or poisonous principles in the blood, want 
of vitality, want of magnetism, want of requisite materials or principles in the 
blood, which are in turn results of bad diet, errors of eating, derangement of 
other glandular functions, as the liver, skin, kidneys, and glands of the colon or 
large intestine; hence, in turn, constipation and retention of the excretions, 
which are deadly in their effects, poisoning the whole alimentary track upward 
to the head and brain itself, with retention of mephitic gases. A legion of 
causes are understood and expressed in unphysiological, unhygienic modes of 
living ; or again, in other words, false, artificial modes of life. 
The Liquid Catarrh Remedy which I offer to the public, is a pleasant and 
agreeable liquid resembling milk, and is used by insufflation, or by snuffing it 
up the nostrils the same as water. It causes no pain or even sneezing. The 
beneficial effects of this Remedy are experienced at once. The thick and ad- 
hesive discharges from the nose and throat are lessened in quantity, and all 
offensive odors of the breath are immediately destroyed. The hawking and ex- 
pectoration from the throat, in the morning, are done away with. The voice 
becomes natural and the head clear. In ordinary cases, when the disease is not 
of long standing one bottle, and sometimes less, is sufficient to effect a cure ; 
but, when firmly seated, two or three are sometimes required. 
Be it distinctly understood, that the Liquid Catarrh Remedy only reaches 
the surface of the nostrils, fauces, or throat, and the tonsillary glands-parts 
above the top of the windpipe. Now, where the affection has passed the glottis, 
into the trachea or windpipe, as in the chronic stage above named, no liquid 
can enter. Then the Tonic Inhaling Vapors, before named, with inhaler, 
must accompany the Liquid Catarrh Remedy, and, in constitutional blood affec- 
tions or diseases, Vital Corrective Remedies, or Vapors, must be used to 
cleanse the fountain. 
Will be forwarded to all parts of the country, per express, on receipt of two 
dollars. 508 
ELECTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
PULMONARY CONSUMPTION, 
THAT FATAL DESTROYER OF MAN! 
ITS CURABILITY DEMONSTRATED ON NATURAL PRINCIPLES ALONE. 
COMBINING MEDICATED AIR, MEDICATED INHALA- 
TION, AND NATURAL HYGIENE. 
BY ANDREW STONE, M.D., 
INVENTOR OF THE PULMOMETER, OR TESTER OF THE VITAL CAPACITY ; AUTHOR OF THE THER- 
MAL OR COOL SYSTEM OF MEDICATED INHALATION ; AND PHYSICIAN TO 
THE TROY LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE. 
" The lungs are breathing or respiratory organs alone ; and as the blood, 
the brain, and nervous system are contaminated and diseased through them, by 
mephitic or poisoned air, so also can the antidote or sanitary remedies be suc- 
cessfully administered through the same medium."-Author. 
" He studied from the life, 
And in the original perused mankind."-Armstrong. 
" While the sufferings and the untimely end of the consumptive are hidden 
l>eneath the pleasures of fashionable life, the couch of sickness and the pre- 
mature grave will not want for tenants from the ranks of youth and beauty." 
ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES. 
CONTENTS. 
Portrait of the Author. 
Title-Page. 
The Pulmometer. 
Preliminary Remarks. 
Form of Report. 
Motives for adopting Pulmonary and Chest Diseases as a Specialty. 
Pulmonary Consumption. 
Authority and Testimony of the perfect Curability of Pulmonary Consumption. 
Symptoms of Tubercular Consumption. 
What is Tubercular Consumption ? 
Causes of Tubercular Consumption. 
Heat and Light next in importance to Pure Air for the sustaining of our Physi- 
cal Existence. 
Light essential to the maintenance of perfect Health; Seclusion from it another 
great Cause for Tubercular Consumption. 
Catarrh or Cold a certain Precursor of Pulmonary Consumption. 
Causes of Catarrh ; Tendency and Dangers of Catarrh. 
Practical Remarks on Catarrh. Bad Breath from Catarrh. 
The great Advantage of the Newly-Discovered Methods of Exploring the Chest, 
and determining the Incipient Stages of Tubercular Consumption, especial- 
ly by the Author's Pulmometer or Lung-Tester. 
Scrofula the Foundation and Cause of Tubercular Consumption. ELEGTRO-VITAL AND MAGNETIC REMEDIES. 
509 
Diphtheria and Plastic Bronchitis. 
Treatment of Diphtheria and Plastic Bronchitis. 
Bronchitis. 
Treatment of the Acute Stage of Bronchitis. 
Chronic Bronchitis. 
Asthma, or Spasmodic Difficulty of Breathing. 
Treatment of Asthma. 
Hay-Asthma. 
Tubercular Disease of the Kidneys-Bright's and Addison's Diseases of the 
Kidneys-Atrophy, or Morbid Wasting of the Kidneys, and other Diseases 
of the Kidneys. 
Tape-Worm, Taenia Solium ; its intimate connection with Tubercular and 
Scrofulous Constitutions. 
Disease of the Heart, Organic and Functional. 
Laryngitis, or Acute Inflammation of the Larynx. 
Chronic Laryngitis. 
Treatment. 
Diseases peculiar to Females. 
Practical Remarks. 
Marasmus, or a Consumption of the Tissues and Vital Fluids of the Body. 
Self-Immolation, or Sacrifice on the Altar of Passion, the Cause for the 
Early Physical Degeneracy of the American People. 
Of the Treatment and Cure of Consumption. 
The Manner of Administering Medicines by Inhalation. 
Mode of Inhalation of the Cool Medicated Vapors. 
Change of Climate unnecessary and highly injudicious. 
Exercise in the Open Air becomes highly essential to the Cure of Tubercular 
Consumption. 
Treatment of Consumption by External Application to the Skin. 
The Chest-Expander. 
The Cure of Pulmonary Consumption by the Medium of the Stomach. 
The Dietary of the Consumptive. 
Manner of Eating. 
The Clothing of the Consumptive Invalid. 
The Sleeping Apartment of the Consumptive Invalid-Air and Ventilation. 
The Ablution and Bathing of the Consumptive Invalid. 
The Cure of Consumption in Infants and Children by the Inhalation of Medi- 
cated Vapors. 
Closing Address to Invalids and Consumptives. 
312 pages, bound in muslin. Will be mailed to all parts of the Union, for one 
dollar and twenty-five cents. 
A TREATISE ON THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED SYSTEM OF 
ELECTRO-VITAL REMEDIES AND TREATMENT. 
By ANDREW STONE, M.D. 
Highly Illustrated ; pp. 151. Will be forwarded by Mail on re- 
ceipt of Twenty-five Cents. INDEX. 
A 
Art-Gallery of the Institute, 329 
Abortionism, 164 
one of the darkest blots, 164 
Abnormal conditions of the sexual in- 
stinct, 36 
Ach Weil, 100 
American people immoderate in eating 
and drinking, 117 
A Model Home for Inebriates, 223 
Anaesthesia a substitute for magnetism, 
105 
James Y. Simpson on, 105 
Angels waiting to answer, 6 
Animal fats, non-conductors of elec- 
tricity, 158 
Angle, Miss Ann E., 267 
Apoplexy, 142 
Apparatus for analyzing urine, 129 
Arago, Dominique Francois, 51 
his Lecture on Vital Magnetism, 41 
Arsenic, its dangers by Homeopathists, 
200 
Ascending douche and spray, 141 
Aumock, W. S., 250 
Avoid Vesication, 105 
B 
Blood and its Diseases, by Mott, 135 
circulation of, Dr. J. Hughes Ben- 
nett, 137 
arterial, 136 
globules, 137 
Brock, Rev. John R., 270 
his case of cure, 270 
Brain, a magnetic reservoir, 41 
and its functions, 461 
Lecture on, by Robert Bentley 
Todd, 461 
Bright's Disease, 129 
case of A. L. Burgess, 257 
Buchu, 140 
Burgess, A. L., 257 
Buttermilk, 149 
Bateman, Thomas, 196 
diseases of children, 189 
his remarks on water-treatment 
for scarlatina, 194 
Baby, to be simply dressed, 187 
Baker or cook, 218 
Bath, electro-medicated, 147 
brick, douche, Indian, 208 
earth, 319 ; local, 319 
milk, 207 ; shower, 320 
steam, 208 
sun, 16 
Battery, Galvanic, 16 
Bell, Luther V., 225 
Bird, Dr. Golding, his remarks on 
value of electricity, 19 
his urinary pathology, 127 
Big-Heart's Lecture on Magnetism, 473 
Biology, 101 
Boating for health, 327-332. 
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 184 
Botanic practice, 13 
C 
Cancer, 140-147 
Consumption, 63 
bronchial and laryngeal, 78 512 
INDEX. 
Consumption cured by inhaling cold 
medicated vapors, 72-76 
general prevalence-causes, 63 
chest-expanders for, 82 
Lecture on, by James Rush, 63 
Laennec on, 103 
Dr. Stone, Treatise on, 508 
importance of healthy skin in, 69 
Consumptives, cultivation of shrubbery 
for, 331 
ideal Home for, 75 
Carbolic acid, 146 
soap, 149 
Carpenter, his physiology, 
Capital punishment, done its work, 235 
Cases of Cures : 
Angle, Miss Ann E., 267 
Aumock, W. S., 250 
Brock, Rev. John R., 270 
Burgess, A. L., 251 
Clark, Thomas H., 268 
Clark, George, 252 
Greene, Amanda E. (Mrs. Nichols), 
261 
Gove, Almon H., 265 
Hodgkins, Mrs. Sarah E., 267 
Hain, Mrs. H. E., 240 
McFall, Dr., 269 
Longcor, Isaac, 268 
Killebrew, M. L., 269 
Keyes, A. D., 262 
O'Donnell, A. L., 260 
Pierce, David H., 264 
Sawyer, Mrs. Franklin, 266 
Cases of remarkable cures, 239 
Catheter, 124 
Cerebrum and cerebellum, 219 
Chest-expander, Figure of, 82 
for cure of consumption, 82 
for cure of scrofula, 90 
Cut of, 90 
Childbirth, magnetism should be used, 
109 
Children, often managed too much, 172 
Clark, Dr., important remark, 33 
George, 252 
Thomas, 268 
Clairvoyance embraced in magnetism, 
51 
Christ the great magnetic Healer, 100 
Chloroform, 105-106 
its claimants, 105 
Dr. Simpson on, 105 
Chocolate, 120 
Cocoa-plant, 120 
Complexion, how to maintain, 210 
Cold bathing, to be used with caution, 
206 
injurious to many, 206 
Cooper, Sir Astley P., 147, 184 
his Lecture on Hernia, 343 
Cosmetics, Lecture on, by Frances 
Anne Kemble, 205 
Costiveness, 149 
Coffee-plant, 119 > 
Courtship, the days should never end, 
36 
Corsets never should be worn, 36 
Crime as a disease, 227 
Dr. Hoffman on, 227 
Chopping in the forest, 142 
Croup, cautions for, 192 
Cruel Thirty Years' War, 53 
D 
Dancing for health, 221, 332. 
Department of Primitive or Aborigi- 
nal Magnetism, of the New School, 
471 
Diana of the nineteenth century, 206 
Diana of Poitiers, 206 
Diagram of the heart and lungs, 136 
Diseases of children, 189 
Bateman on, 189 
Dress, ungraceful style of, 37 
a model form described, 38 
Drinks and their effects, 137 
Drunkenness as a disease, 117 
three forms of, 121-122 
Dysmenorrhoea, 178 
Dyspepsia and its horrors, 149 
E 
Earth-bath, 319 
Effects of alcohol upon the kidneys, 
122, 123 
Electrical currents, 17 
Cut of, 17 INDEX. 
513 
Electricity, its importance, 
Electrical exhalations, 155 
Electro-chemical baths, 145 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4 
Eternity a vantage-ground, 101 
Exercise and use of all the organs 
necessary, 223 
Exercise for the muscles, 324 
by chest-expander, 82-90 
F 
Faith, 102 
Figure of, 102 
Falling of the womb, 179 
bowels, 179 
easily cured, 37 
Female weakness, 175 
cause of consumption, 175 
Food, 149-159, 338 
Fools die for want of wisdom, 250 
Foote, Dr., 138 ; Plain Home Talk, 18 
his case of magnetic cure, 139 
Fruits for breakfast, 158 
G 
Galileo, 57 
Gastric fluid, its importance, 149 
Grapery and Garden for Invalids, 112 
Goldthread, 141 
Gove, Almon H., 264 
Grains, the most natural food, 153-154 
Grecian bend, seriously condemned by 
Laennec, 104 
Greene, Amanda E. (A. S. Nichols), 
261 
Gymnasium, 335 
H 
Healing, a divine right of, 2 
Hain, Mrs. H. E., 240 
Hahnemann, 60 
his lecture, 197 
he denied the faith, 60 
on scarlet-fever, 195 
Harvey, William, demonstrated the cir- 
culation of the blood, 10 
Heat, artificial strengthening. 44 
Healers, leaders of all kinds should 
be, 2 
Heart, hungry for the bread of life, 6 
disease of, 144 
Hemorrhoids or piles, 141 
ascending douche for, 141 
Hewson, William, 94 
Lecture on Scrofula, 85 
Hippocrates, 190 
Hoffmann, Adrian, his Lecture on 
Crime as a Disease, 227 
Homeopathic physicians progressive, 13 
not honest, 201 
Homeopathy, 13 ; not a science, 61 
a maudlin pretense, 61 
Hooping-cough, should be cared for, 
192 
Husband receives a message from his 
last wife, 6 
Hot drinks bad, 149 
Hot-air bath, 246 
How to be receptive, 313 
I 
Ideal Home for the Consumptive, 75 
Ideas passed from spirit-life, 5 
Incomprehensible magnetic power, 46 
Individuality to be respected, 21 
Infanticide, 184 
Inhaling-tube, Dr. Stone's, 76 
Instances of children procured under 
unfavorable circumstances, 215, 216 
Institutions consecrated to health need- 
ed, 43 
Introductory by Galen, 9 
Intemperance, how to cure, 224 
Inventions in the air, 4 
come from the spirit-life, 5 
J 
Jacob, Zouave, 43 
James, Robert, 161 
Lecture on Stomach, 149 
Japanese manipulators, 14 
Jesus of Nazareth healing by laying 
on of hands, 109 
K 
Kenyon, Vincent, a magnetizer, 43 
health prostrated by not under- 
standing the law, 43 514 
INDEX. 
Keyes, A. D.,262 
Kidney, section of, 154 
Kidneys, inflammation of, 123 
Killebrew, M. L., 269 
Kindergarten, 196 
Kingdom, vegetable, 12 
Kleptomania, 230 
L 
Laennec, astounding remarks, 103 
causes for consumption, 103 
his remarks on inhalation, 104 
Let there be light, 101 
Library of the Institution, 330 
Livermore, Mrs. Mary, 33 
Local bath, 319 
Love the great remedial agent, 29 
the most important pre-natal in- 
fluence, 181 
Lymphatics, 145 
Lozier, Charlotte E., 188 
her Lecture on Mother and Child, 
181 
M 
Media, 49 
Mediums, 49 ; mediumship, 55 
many are charlatans, 49 
Mental sympathy, 110 
Metaphysical aspects of disease, 271 
Milk, bad for bilious habits, 157 
Mother and child, 181 
Motherhood, Cut of, 163 
a sad subject, 163 
Mott, Valentine, 148 
his Lecture on the Blood, 135 
Movement-Cure, 14 
Mercury, its poisonous and destructive 
agency, 12 
Mental anaesthetics, 110 
Microscope, 126 
Magic, black and white, 53 
Magnetic currents, 16 z 
exercise, 143 • 
fascination not love, 32 
Hand, 113 
ride after dinner, 149 
rubbings for kidney diseases, 132 
strength should be hoarded, 28 
vampires, 28 
Magnetism, for constipation, 154 
gathered from horses and animals, 
159 
gathered from the air, 148 
in water, 31 
Lecture on, by Sir Arthur Clark, 
23-31 
only another name for vitality, 3 
permeates every human frame, 
vital, 31 
will relieve pain in kidneys, 154 
Magnetizing, conditions for, 20, 21, 32 
good homes essential, 32 
Manipulators, Japanese, 14 
Maternity should be under the control 
of the mother, 167 
Medicine, Physiological Proem, 351 
not an exact science, 354 
far from perfect as an art, 354 
a science and an art, 357 
Etiology, 359 
classification of the causes of dis- 
ease, 360 
predisposing causes of disease, 361 
general predisposing causes, 361 
seasons and localities, 362 
special predisposing causes, 363 
sex, 364 
exciting causes of disease, 366 
chemical causes, 367 
sudden changes of temperature, 367 
heat, 368 
specific causes of disease, 369 
epidemic diseases, 369 
epidemic causes of disease, 372 
infection and contagion, 374 
primary elements of disease, 378 
derangements affecting tonicity, 
380 
functional derangements of the 
nervous system, 381 
local derangements of sensibility, 
383 
derangements of voluntary motion, 
385 
derangement of intellect, 388 
derangements of reflex system, 389 
derangement of the processes of 
secretion, 392 INDEX. 
515 
Medicine, the blood, analysis of, 400 
disorders affecting the red corpus- 
cles, 400 
remedies, 403 
the fibrine in disease, 403 
derangements affecting the serous 
elements, 406 
anaemia, 417 ; Cut of, 417 
atrophy and degeneration, 423 
asthenic congestion, 435 
inflammation, 442 
treatment, 456 
Mesmer, his beautiful mother, 53 
visits to Vienna and Paris, 54-5 
Mesmerism, 53 
lecture on, by Friedrich Anton 
Mesmer, 53 
N 
Nature always does her best, 181 
Nerve-telegraphs, 42 
Nephritis produced by drinking, 123 
treatment for, 123, 124 
sitz-baths for, 124 
Newton, Dr. J. R., 43 
Nott, Eliphalet, 133 
his Lecture on Drinks and their 
Effects, 117 
O 
O'Donnell, A. L., 259 
Odylic force, 95 
Organs indicating the various faculties 
of the mind, 325 
P 
Pains incident to childbirth, 185 
Paralysis, 144 
Peasants' War, 53 
Perfect health, perfect love, 28 
Pharynx, 151 
Philanthropists, 110 
medical, wanted, 110 
Physician, true mission of, 4 
may be found in every household, 
4 
best qualifications for, 203 
good magnetic, 101 
Physicians, Homeopathists, not like 
Hahnemann, 203 
Physiological works should be studied, 
21 
Pierce, David, 264 
Poisons, subtle, lurks in bad magnet- 
ism, 29 
Pork, bad diet, infested with trichina, 
152, 153 
Powel, Henry, 232 
his unjust punishment, 232 
Principles laid down by Jesus, 109 
Progressive treatment, 255 
Prolapsus uteri, 173 
causes for, 178 
Psychical powers of man, 98 
Psychology, 101 
Punishment, capital, has done its 
work, 235 
Pulmometer or lung-tester, 83 
R 
Randolph, P. B., 69 
his remarks on tears, 211 
Remarkable cases of cures, 239, 240 
instance of magnetism in child- 
birth, 109 
Reichenbach, Carl, 95 
his odyle and odic force, 95 
Rheumatism, 137 
in the knee-joint, cured, 139 
Richmond, Dean, 234 
Rush, Benjamin, 21 
his Lecture, 11 
James, 63 
his Lecture on Consumption, 63 
S 
Samaritan, 110 
Sawyer, Mrs. Franklin, 266 
Scarlet-fever, 193 
Scientific selection of food, 337 
Section of the brain, 115 
Section of kidney, 130 
Scrofula, often associated with con- 
sumption, 76 
Lecture on, by William Hewson, 85 
best diet for, 87, 88 
how cured, 86, 87 516 
INDEX. 
Silver-Arrow's Lecture, 487 
Simpson, Dr. James Y., 105 
Skating for health, 221 
Smyth, Tyler, M.D., 179 
Soothing the baby by magnetism, 171 
Spading for health, 157 
Spiritualism, 1 
like Christ-spirit, 1 
is not a destroyer of religion, 1 
gives life and vitality, 1 
comes through different chan- 
nels, 6 
has myriad voices, 6 
Stethoscope, double, 79 
St. Dymphinia, 225 
St. Martin, Alexis, 18 
remarkable case of musket-wound 
in stomach, 18 
Stomach and digestive organs, 149 
Subtle force of magnetic poison, 29 
Sun-bath, Cut of, 16 
restores magnetism and vitality to 
the blood, 16, 156 
Sun-stroke, 45 
greatly increased by wearing dark 
coverings on the head, 45 
Swedenborg, 48, 59, 60, 99 
Swing, horizontal, 94 
Sympathy, 110 
the " true idea" of healing, 295 
T 
Tea, a healthy beverage, 118 
Tea-plant, 118 
Teething, 190 
The brain not to be trifled with, 114 
The compressed air-bath, 317 
The air is magnetic, 101 
The days of courtship should never 
end,36 
The exercise and use of all the organs 
and powers of the human being, 323 
The food a person is forced to eat 
never satisfies, 36 
The necessity of a combination of 
healers, 305 
Toothache a divine monition, 151 
The scientific selection of food indis- 
pensable, 337 
Turkish bath, 146 
figure of, 160 
U 
Unfortunate specimens of children, 214 
Unhealthy lives of women, 185 , 
i 
V 
Vapor-bath, 161 
Venerea, 139 
Ventilation, essential, 144 
Virtues of homeopathy only in faith,113 
W 
Wail of the mother's heart, 35 
Warren, Dr.' Ira, 173 
his Lecture on Womanhood, 163 
suggestions for apoplexy, 125 
Waste of semen, waste of life, 220 
Will should be strong, yet gentle for 
kindly influences, 20 
Woman, her strength, 32 
her desire for notoriety, 33 
three fifths of controlling influence 
to the mother, 35 
Womanhood and maternity, 163 
Women naturally more faithful than 
men, 166 
many unfitted to bear children, 167 
Womb, Cut of, 175 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
Fig. Page 
Goddess Hygeia Frontispiece. 
1. A salivated patient, the ef- 
fects of calomel 12 
2. Japanese manipulators 14 
3. Japanese manipulators 15 
4. The sun-bath 16 
5. Electric battery 17 
6. Illustrating the two currents 
in the atmosphere, one elec- 
trical, the other mag- 
netic 17 
7. A matron 34 
8. Nerve-telegraphs 42 
9. The magnetism derived from 
horses and animals 44 
10. The sunshine essentially ne- 
cessary to health 45 
11. Showing the magnetism im- 
parted to the babe by the 
mother 46 
12. Faith 47 
13. This cut illustrates the front 
view of the lungs, the 
three lobes of the right, the 
two lobes of the left ; the 
diaphragm below, the pleu- 
ra pulmonalis, pleura cos- 
talis, the larynx and tra- 
chea above 64 
14. The advantage of carrying 
burdens on the head to pre- 
vent consumption 66 
15. Consumptive milking 72 
16. Medicated air-chamber 73 
Fig. Page 
17. The ideal home for the con- 
sumptive , 75 
18. The inhaling-tube and ap- 
paratus for inhaling or 
breathing the cold medi- 
cated vapors as practiced 
and used by Dr. Stone, and 
furnished to all patients 
under treatment at their 
homes 76 
19. Tubercular cavity in the act 
of healing 77 
20. The larynx, trachea, branches 
of the trachea called bron- 
chia, and minute bronchial 
tubes, the seat of bronchial 
catarrh or bronchial con- 
sumption 78 
21. The double stethoscope 79 
22. The chest-expander 82 
23. The puhnometer or lung-tes- 
ter 83 
24. Work out doors 86 
24. Form of chest-expander 90 
25. Rachitis or rickets 92 
26. Illustrating instrument to 
support the spine or weak- 
ened limb 93 
27. The good Samaritan pouring 
in the oil and wine 110 
28. A grapery and garden for the 
invalid 112 
29. The magnetic hand 113 
30. Tea-plant of China 118 518 
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
Fig. Page 
31. Coffee-plant 119 
32. Theobroma, cocoa 120 
33. Morbid deposits as seen in the 
urine under the microscope, 
indicating triple phos- 
phates, lithic acid, and 
amorphous matter 123 
34. Manner of taking the bath... 124 
35. The ax for health and exer- 
cise 125 
36. Microscope 126 
37. Analyzing-case 129 
38. Section of a kidney in a state 
of disease, representing a 
condition very often found 
after death, called Bright's 
disease or consumption of 
the kidneys 130 
39. Cut inserted to show the very 
important function of the 
skin 131 
40. This cut illustrates the bene- 
fit of magnetic treatment, 
and being rubbed by mag- 
netic hands 132 
41. Diagram of the heart and 
lungs 136 
42. This cut illustrates how the 
leg was cured by magnet- 
ism 139 
43. Buchu 140 
44. The ascending douche and 
spray 141 
45. Chopping in the forest 142 
46. Magnetic exercise 143 
47. The stomach and digestive 
organs 150 
48. This cut represents the Taenia 
Solium, or tape-worm, 
which was dislodged from 
a patient after being its 
subject for nine years, and 
having been reduced to the 
brink of the grave by its 
pernicious effects 152 
49. Sheaf of wheat 154 
50. Vertical section of the kidney 154 
51. Electrical exhalations of the 
Fig. Page 
skin.-The importance of 
its healthy function 155 
52. Wet pack 156 
53. Going from the pack to the 
douche 156 
54. Walking or running for 
health 157 
55. Spading and working in gar- 
den for health 157 
56. Fruits for the breakfast-table 158 
57. This cut is designed to show 
the magnetism that exhales 
from horses, and the in- 
vigorating effects of riding 
after or mingling with / 
horses, or other young ani- 
mals as well 159 
58. The Turkish bath 160 
59. Motherhood 163 
GO. Soothing the baby by mag- 
netic passes and rubbing.. 171 
61. The vital temperature 173 
62. The womb 175 
63. The left-hand figure shows 
the womb fallen down into 
the vagina. The right-hand 
figure represents a well- 
formed, healthy female 
figure, having all the or- 
gans in their natural con- 
dition. The reader will ob- 
serve the striking difference 
in the position and appear- 
ance of the bladder and the 
uterus 179 
64. Female with flowers 206 
65. The magnetized hand 207 
66. Unfortunate specimen of chil- 
dren generated under such 
conditions 214 
67. Out of-door magnetic exer- 
cises of children 217 
68. Baker 218 
69. Section of the cerebrum and 
the cerebellum; showing 
the nerves of the cerebel- 
lum, the seat of the will ; 
also the eye, the optic INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
519 
Fig. Page 
nerves, and the nerves dis- 
tributed to the face 219 
70. Skating for hygienic exer- 
cise 221 
71. Dancing 221 
72. Illustrating a model home 
and resort for inebriate 
patients 223 
73. Play-ground 236 
74. Work-shop 236 
75. Mrs. H. E. Hain 240 
76. The good Samaritan pouring 
in the oil and wine 252 
77. Inhaling apparatus 257 
78. The posterior portions of the 
lungs, and below, the broad 
muscle, that separates the 
chest from the abdomen, 
conveying the danger of 
compressing and restrain- 
ing these organs, as is al- 
most universally practiced 274 
79. The old man borne down with 
allopathic drugs. 276 
80. The mother offering her child 
to the healer 278 
81. The healer restoring the para- 
lyzed, the gouty, and rheu- 
matic 279 
82. Dyspeptic young lady 285 
83. The prematurely old man. 
" My liver is bad !" 286 
84. Magnetizing 287 
85. Goitre of the neck or thyroid 
gland, showing hereditary 
scrofula 288 
86. The breakwater 289 
87. Down brakes and reverse the 
engine 290 
88. A plunge-bath in the sea 293 
89. Inhaling 293 
90. Magnetic inductor 294 
91. Young girl 301 
93- Hebe 302 
93. The young wife and mother 
sinking at the very thresh- 
old of her kingdom 306 
94. The spiritual Diana 311 
Fig. Page 
95. The compressed air-bath 317 
96. Local or partial bathing 319 
97. Shower-bath 320 
98. One form of douche used in 
the institute. 320 
99. Exercise for the muscles.... 324 
100. Organs indicating the various 
faculties of the mind 325 
101. Boating for health 327 
102. Art-gallery of the institution 329 
103. Library of the institution.... 330 
104. Cultivation of shrubbery de- 
velops healthy magnetism. 331 
105. Dancing for health 332 
106. Boating 332 
107. The Madonna of the present 
age 333 
108. The gymnasium of the insti- 
tution 335 
109. Hernia 344 
110. Represents the leaden hue of 
the complexion in anaemia 417 
111. Section of the cerebellum and 
base of the cerebrum 462 
112. The eye 434 
113. Exercise for health 468 
114. The healer or medium per- 
cussing the patient, to 
drive out dyspepsia and 
liver complaint 474 
115. Manipulating to cure con- 
sumption 475 
116. Curing liver complaint 476 
117. Percussing for kidney dis- 
eases 478 
118. Illustrating the true process 
of percussion of all the 
muscles from the back of 
the head down the entire 
body, to cure headache, 
neuralgia, rheumatism, fits, 
etc 479 
119. Percussing and manipulating 
for croup or asthma 480 
120. Showering the head for in- 
flammation of the brain.... 484 
121. Fishing for health 492 
122. Hunting for health 493